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INDEX FOR JANUARY-JUNE, 1953
\
BURLINGAME
PUBLIC LIBRARY
Burlingame, Cali:
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America’s Leading Liberal Weekly Since 1865 AG 15
\
| INDEX TO VOLUME 176
) a be oS “}
| yi,
We
an JANUARY 3, 1953 to JUNE 27, 1953
PAGH PAGE
The following letters are used to indicate diplomat. E. Pohoryles; S ........ 306 Arming, United States. See United States
the type of article: Algren, Nelson; article on American — Defense
Christmas, in issue of December 27, Around the U. S. A., January 3, January
Art 1952, praise for; letter by i. Sonn: 10, January 24, January 31, February
Correspondence BOWE joy teieys2 se nicteletelveteisioioiay= a L5G 7, February 21, February 28, March 7,
Cartoon Allen, Charles March 14, March 21, March 28, April 4,
Drama p Academic freedom; Dunham case; §S, April 11 (see also E, 297) ; April 25,
Editorial Article issue of May 23 May 9, May 23, May 30, June 13
Music E Allen, Edward S. Art
Moving Pictures On article on the fifth amendment; C, Communistic, in San Francisco federal
Poetry issue of June 27; see also ....... 472 building, G. V. Sherman; §, issue of
Signed Article Alvarez del Vayo, Julio January 10
: : Austria; lesson of; S ........ 2 161 Notes .. 255, 275, 295, 315, 335, 355, 463
Book reviews and reviewers are indexed Economic commission for Europe; Gen- Reviews. See Faison, S. L., Jr.
Separately in the Book Review Section. eVvanmemectinegs © Si Wiis scleicuciclectale ce 341 Visual; International foundation for ;
Europe: establishment. D. S. Greenbaum; S 54
“Legion,” proposed; S ........... 181 Asia
BUSDICIOUS 2) Gh “cisversialeieielclcve cles e eis 429 Formula for peace in, A. Bevin; S. 3
France: “ Peace conditions, Elsenhower- Dulles; E 337
1- 20 January 3 277-296 April 4 Political’ scripiasy Ss) sjtetelets is) st-1- «rere 470 Revolutions in. A, Bevan; S......... 454
21- 40 January 10 297-316 April 11 Workers wake up; S .....-.+-. 409 Socialism, militant; E........... ene so
f 41- 60 January 17 317-336 April 18 Germany ; unification ; negotiations still - Socialist bridge to. "A. FtOUM Sis syalatereeye 74
_ 61- 88 January 24 337-356 April 25 possible. J. Alvarez del Vayo; S. -. 93 Testing of. W. M. Ball; S..... 342
89-109 January 31 357-384 May 2 Israel; Anti-Israel policy, new S ... 500 Asia, east; Dulles balloon on settlement
ee: 136 February 7 385-404 May 9 Italy; election; not so neo- fascist ; Gf ‘Conflicts... earns meee .. 319
| 137-156 February 14 405-424 May 16 SST Wareisiel a ayenctnaie ojaotatel ate vefetetelinl sists intel's 7 517 Assembly, general. See United nations’
157-176 February 21 425-444 May 23 Results; setback ‘for Catholics; S 542 Astin, Allen V.; removal as head of Bu-
177-196 February 28 445-464 May 30 Korea; “peace moves’ by U.S.S.R.; S. 301 reau of standards; B. Catton; S..... 321
197-216 March 7 465-492 June 6 S cece cece eee e ee tee ee eee ees ae+ 801 Atlanta, Georgia. See Georgia
217-236 March 14 493-512 June 13 Latin America; and the new United Atomic Hombs: developments; the H-
237-256 March 21 513-532 June 20 States administration; S ........ 114 DOM D OW co ee ee ae fae 62
257-276 March 28 533-552 June 27 North Atlantic council meeting ; Atomic energy. commission ; to recommend
; Churchill the peacemaker? S ..-.. 389 ehdngestini laws) Wi. ad.) sieteeies ee teas 317
ae! North Atlantic treaty organization ; Atomic power ; grab for. L. Olds; S ..449;
| A arms) and™= politics ;” Ss sccans.> 10 25 FE On oer ioeya eter nial ais eee nels 466, pie 496
.: PAGH Rabelais: 1483-1953; S. ......-..00- 261 Uranium from South Africa; E...... 466
_ Academic freedom Spain; treaty with the United States; Attlee, Clement; visit to Asia, A. Roth;
Colleges to be investigated. E. Davis; S. 78 SU rete teen ee netote a eieiarele ia ale dstetatayiatetie 452 Mieiaieustovelaieie ore arataicia a ajetslsrariere see TA
' Colorado attack repulsed; E ........ 179 Union of soviet socialist republics; Auer, E. Everett
_ Congress on the campus. A. Barth, Military SEVEN STH IS) cate w vices si00 66 Congress on the campus; comment on
f S .... 322; see also S, issue of May United nations: article by A. Barth; C, issue of May
6 . General asembly debate on Korea; DG: HOG! RIBO, Peetieetccere cmt 322
Danger from within, S. Buchanan; S SS ola mictlonarclcnn sislotetercvelots[alsis cis plelstsi nts 5 Austria ; failure in. Cra. Hoffman ; Ss. 348
eg cicie oc a celk s suvie 0,0, 433 General assembly. session ; Lodge ac- Lesson of. J. Alvarez del Vayo; ‘sh 161
’ Discussion by American association of LOTS ee Sree etae etre staterare alate sletelal ayia cle 201 Authors. See Books
university professors. A. Whitney; S, Help for the handicapped; S . 140
issue of April 11; see alsoE ...... 297 Key) questions: (Si fics. +s ee 329
_ Dunham, B.; suspension by Temple Secretary general; choice of; S.. 241 B
university. C. Allen; S, issue of May Stalin, death of; effect on U. N.
' 23 COUTEE) See eis ee eee oe 220 Ball, W. Macmahon; new member of The
+ Indiana colleges and universities asked Vishinsky return; S ......e-e06 - 283 Nation staff; BE ..... svoterctefelatersterrateiete 3
_ to bar New deal professors .........- 32 American abstract artists; A .......++- 463 Chinas testing of.s) Sites cate clever 342
_ judd, M.; dismissal from university of American association of university pro- Formosa; Eisenhower decision and the
ae: Colorado ; comment on editorial in fessors meeting ; and academic freedom, United nations; S........ ero nianette - 185
iene issue of November 29, 1952. M. A. Whitney; S, issue of April 11; see Ballet, the. See Haggin, B. H.
“ SSMU AG elon ieye) ofaiate 2,2 seis, ¢ hoe 136 AlBOME Gs... Cee pala eee eles 297 Baran, Paul A.
| Rutgers university; lost fight. B. Mit- American civil liberties union; Hays not Eoint) fours working of's iS.) . seis GAD
Ie SL CMINMMEES are oe. ai'siofSice cielleve. (0's. sy, s)0¢4)\n) cue 228 counsel for union in Rosenberg case; Bard college institute ; invitation to.
| Teachers for freedom. ™M. Bernstein; S, comment on article in issue of D. P. Hill; C, issue of June 27
issue of February 28; see also C, November 8, 1952. A. Reitman; C 60 Barnes, Stanley N.; nomination to Anti-
297; CG 2315 : American federation of labor. See Labor EYUSE IVISIONT ORS clein. ai. clas cieisvieiecia lem OOS
be War for. H. K. Beale; , alieis\ alae te sate nuance —Union Barr, Stringfellow
see also C, issue of oS. 6 Amish school at Geneva, Indiana. E. Point four; world action on world task;
th Acheson, Dean G.; testimony on employ- Toohy; S, issue of January 31 Ss 120; see alsoE ........ 110
‘Ment ‘of United States citizens by the Amlie, Thomas Barrault and Renaud company. M. Marc-
United nations; Stora) exctes cial etal 22 Discrimination in federal employment ; Sal Dereverateialals)sialelslsjctels'etaiaieenora tena ommend SS
Adenauer, Konrad. Sea Germany, western CPi aves wxvccr ta eirtencvereraceisiciete eve 60 Barth, Alan
dyertising; Freud and the hucksters; Andersen, Snorre; Av fieeescceccs vise ce GOD Congress on the campus; S.. soaen
R. Goodman; S .... 143; see also let- Anti-semitism. See Jews see also deperel: issue ef May 16
o. ters, 235; EH, 407; letter 465 Anti-trust division; nomination of S. N. Bam, Markit A. ciatsoise Paieietemeiett ree
Africa Bares peti hel aick-C eit ilo orecrerae' ale 338 Bauman, Paul G
Central; crisis in. B. Davidson; S .. 435 Arabian American oil company ; and W. The Harrison ‘affair: (Ci... <> esis 315;
Pan-african congresses; E ....-----. 427 > oh GSAS oe oro OG AR . 179 see also issue of February 21»
‘ aay See Union of South Africa Arabs. See Israel Beale, Howard K.
BeetrooS. U1, Faison Jr.; A, .ssecccscces LaF Aragon, L. Cardoza y War for academic freedom; S...412;
Agriculture. See Farming Guatemalan land question; § ...... 224 see also C; issue of June 6
Praia, economic, for foreign countries, See ~ Argentina; Duarte, J.; death of; DB .... 319 Bell, Charles G.
Economic aid for foreign countries erongvisitto Chiles) WO \..circcsinc «0 « 197 Songs: for a new. America’s Pa. . 51. Leo
Airman, the. W. R. Rodgers; P .... 79 Armed forces. See United States — Forces, Benn.tt, Hugh H.
Aldrich, Winthrop W.; million- dollar armed Soil-conservation; let-up in; S....... 436
EE
— ——— ———— ——
(January-June, 1953
Index
PAGE
Benson, Ezra T.; appointment as secretary
of agriculture; comment on editorial in
issue of December 6, aebe letter Dy
IM) Ta ylODa wicete sc «0 Seveiciwivvel ectatale 20
And corn... Catton; S....-cceseenne 246
Berger
Cartoon; Hisenhower needs ......+-.- 162
Berlitz, Jean
Removal of United nations from New
York suggested; S........... 264;
see also C, issue of ‘April 18
Bermuda conference, proposed. F, Kirch-
wey; S..447; see also Ct.......-. sieie LOL
Bernstein, Melvin H.
Academic freedom; attacks on; 5,
issue of February 28; see also C, 297;
C, 315
Bertram, Paul
Changes in The Nation; C........+.. - 107
Bessie, Alvah
Challenging Wittenberg article; C, is-
sue of June 6; see alSO ....-.+-+s 390
Bevan, Aneurin .
Formula for peace; S.....-+.--+-ee-- 324
India ; journey £07 [Sitar so teusieiwatiekeleleiets © 415
Revolutions in Asia; S......... 454
Bible case, Gideons. W. H. Kilpatrick ; Ce
issue of June 13
Biddle, Francis
Immunity proposal; S$ 477; see
ISO Ls, {Aina histo eels (otene ofa «lehorecarstelase 428
Birolli. S. L. Faison, SEY in LAR ists piaiaiedet eae 234
Birth control; in India; return of M, San-
ger. M. Gilman; S ..ceecnesecseces 169
Planned Parenthood; Catholic oppo-
PeLELOMN ae aoe euvieseune ip wielefa's ah saan 62
Bishop, Leonard
Buds of ugliness; S ..372; see also
C, ..445; C, issue of June 20
Bloom, Hannah
Vigilantism in New Mexico; S, issue
of May 9
Bohlen, Charles; opposition to appointment
as ambassador; to U.S.S.R.; E ......- 237
Confirmation; Wo. . wc. cerns ames les 279
Bombs, atomic. See Atomic bombs
Books
Authors; six; in search 369; see
also C, 445; C, .June 20
Censorship, at Saint Cloud, Minnesota.
D. Schoelkopf and T. Wilson; S, issue
of January 24
Demand for burning, in San Antonio;
BH .....) 55; seelalso. . ow. oi aso
Spread of. W. Murray ; Bcueiescuorenetacs 367
For Israel. See Israel
National book awards for 1953; E 111
Novels; writing of. W. Moore; C .... 463
Science fiction. R. Bradbury; S 364
Writers, younger; beliefs of .......-- 369
ivan ehh I Cibo coodecoocucc. 295
Booth, Philip
In defense of folly; P ....-.ccuss- 373
Boris Godunov. B. H. uiscein Me cues 442
Boston symphony orchestra. B. H. Hee ;
WM tele ecchnierels elteieisie pieteleisiciat=!cjelar ater 194
Bourdet, Claude
War in Indo-China; S....410; see also 344
Bourgeois, Louise; A ....----eeeee - 315
Boyd, Jesse L.
South, old; C, issue of June 6; see also
issue of March 21
Bradbury, Ray
Selenceae TiCeiON + Sissies wie whe shaletalars . 364
Brain-washing at Valley Forge; E .... 425
Brewsie and Willie. H. Clurman; D .... 353
Bricker amendment. See Treaty- “making
Bright road. M. Farber; MP ...... Teicu SOL
Browder, Earl
Death of Stalin, and possible effects;
Siavekelsiereierera ie etaiare Sir ciel ehevaioioe koran 221
Brown, “Rhea; A nie releienetalelatarsis Seleiee OS
Buchanan, Scott
Academic freedom; danger from within ;
AS Rererereeie ove okecoraia ous ihonetenavenens 433
Budenz, ‘Louis ; ‘testimony in loyalty “cases ; og
esi ariccs latevelove eos ieia ei clsts, oie etetnvonokaets f
Budget, ‘federal. See United States —
Finances
Bureau of Standards; removal of Astin:
Be Catton; Sy i. ciclehele row oe Rate OO.
Burlingham, Charles C.
N. M. Butler on Sacco-Vanzetti; C . 297
Busbey, Fred E.; charges against J. C.
Montgomery. R. Morgan) (Cre ieteteer= 197
Business mergers; EB .«-..+-c00~ 238
Business depression. See United States” =
Economics
Business men into generals. W. H. Neb-
lettis (SS! -.Gis) sea also) Me <r. 1eeteteharaielch
Butcher, Margaret Just
Challenge to Jim crow by Hisenhower ;
Seiniictonescioretoneusicie in taieicier cuca teiceatone 100
Butler, Nicholas Murray, on Sacco- Van-
zetti. C. CL Burlingham;) © ........ 297
Butler, Richard A.; visit to the United
States; BH cheteketeieiaievoners ene
cower renee
PAGE
Caliandro, Anthony
Intolerance in Italy; C
California
Central valley project; fight for control.
eee eee n eens
276
D. G. Farrelly; S ..12; see also BH, 2
Los Angeles; Mexican Americans and
the Community organization society ;
G. W. Sherman; §, issue of March 28
Samish, A. H.; master lobbyist; E... 427
San Francisco; communistic art in fed-
eral building. G. V. Sherman; S,
issue of January 10
Camino real. H. Clurman; D .. 293, 402
Camus, Albert; debate with Sartre on
rebellion. J.-M. Domenach; S........ 202
Canada
Election. coming. K. Hutchinson; S .. 225
Not screening its United nations em-
DIOFGOR) atic wae elem ens Sie ic clea a oun
Textile strike in Quebec; Te asteve recor el che ee
Cabinet, United States. See United States
Can-can. _H.. Clurman; D) s...00.. 441
Cancer, lung, and smoking. A. Ochsner ;
: 431; see also C, issue of June
0
Cardiff, Ira D.
Praise for The Nation; © ....... 5 445
Cardoza y Aragon, Luis
Guatemalan land question; § ...... 224
Carol W. R. Rodgers; P «..-csscusee 79
Carolus
Dulles vist to Europe; S. ei see
GIRO: AH io ai'v eidle bie ew meerenel eer nveiatater am Lena!
Carson, Saul
Television; education by; S ....... 205
Television; experiment; S ..... aiereta aD 2
Carter, Una F.
Republican) miink’s: SS aata recs rcleieistale isis 503
Cartoons. See Berger
Cary, Joyce :
Proposals. for Peace 2 v«<ecwwaesisinc 28
Catholic church. See Roman Catholic
ehurch
Catton, Bruce
Letters from Washington:
Administration, new; maharajah in
the White Houses. Sie set 97
Budget versus arms; §S .......- 430
Corn, price of, and Secretary Benson;
Ses Rina duponye ee atch ote ay atenec atebancieteteidians 246
Farm. Program, NOW! Sc ccc sews eirin< 165
Finance, governmental; outlook for;
Si on LST see: also Misia ao
Foreign policy ; RS Gewiach a oiatwinleyane, 204
G.O.P. builds a new machine; S 1223;
BOG: HIRO ML sve capeiclete sre a, cinleicle isiere 277
Grab, 100-billion-dollar ..... mao
HOO SOl mero sinitnintetsicielalslareiotenames 521
Morse, Senator Wayne; code of; S
4s) See) ALSO) Cy einen rata 216
Power, public, attack on; S . 265
Power give-away program number. 2;
So Zio eG: AlsOmale miele ae aiettareiate 115
Retrogression in Hisenhower admini-
StPALLON Gs iy eieleleletele elal> sisla COOL,
Cie MEIC MSc de ooradn 358: 359
Taxes into. prottsisoise a. cle etoienne 304
Weeks-Astin fight; S Salen ca seeerone
Cecil, Lord
Proposals LOT ADCACE te erie ee Sa nee
Cenerentola, la. B. H. Haggin; M Perera
Censorship:
Books. See Books
Motion pictures; ban on Limelight and
Moulin) “Rouges 7H! (ee oc acre O,
Motion pictures; Chaplin and “Lime-
light.’ “W. Murrayc S22... deans aa
Bea also 00)! (Cieycteraste met arencts .. 491
Central Africa. See Africa
Central valley project; fight for control.
Da Glerarrelly< 8. sass Sreiaialals ;
Be EO 2 baba obos soho ose omiS 2
Chaplin, Charles S., and his censors. W.
Merray’$\\Sisis leven: 247; see also 90; C.. 491
Cherokee drama, the. M. Cole; S; issue
of March 7
Chief Joueph dam; British bid rejected;
Chiefs" of stafi!> new. 5. elhierrelsisier pe late maiteae
Children’s hour, the. Me Marshall ; Dies eels
China
Testing: of. W.-M. (Ball@es) <0... erate
China, Communist
And Soviet Russia; new axis in the
makings) VAC) \Werthipaes are cn'elere “1 308
Red China diary. D. Donnelly; S .262; 287
China, nationalist
Troops for Korea; proposal; E...... 41
Christian, Marcus B.
iMheateacher sb cererciotebershetenercte ciels Siete maakt
Christmas, American; praise for articta
in issue of December 27, 1952, by N.
Algren; letter by R. Johnson .. 156
Christmas) (tleiclub)s ieee rere elas 514
Church and state; Gideons bible and ‘the
schools. W. H. Kilpatrick; C, issue
of June 13
Church, Catholic. See Roman Catholic
church
Churchill, Winston S. See Great Britain
—Foreign policy
Cigarette smokivg and lung cancer, A.
Ochsner 3“\S) icc crores ae mre see oie
Civil liberties union. See American civil
liberties union
Civil rights; conference. M. R. Evans; C
Clark, Lincoln
Sears, Roebuck “subverting” Latin —
Americas Si a... ..c.c.cie i viele) alelenelenenaen
Clinton, David
Loyalty oath in Harrison, New York;
S, issue of February 21; see also C ..
Clugston, W. G,
Censure of C. W. Roberts as lobbyist;
S, issue of April 25
Clurman, Harold; joins editorial staff ..
Play critics and reviewers; S .... é
Theater in Israel; .D =....
Theater in France; D.....
Review of plays:
Brewsie’ and Willie . << .\ccs sim
eee te tw wee
see et eee eee
Camino real) Ge aciere-isyesiciaiels - - 295,
Gam=Camd © éiirsienc miajsleteteterens 06 omen ia
Emperor’s clothes, the oO. atatele hiea#
Grass: harp, the |... 026 ceecer oaeee
Hazel Plage ...cc20.+46 suns
John, Brown's “body 9 \\.j=cimee :
Love's: labor's! lost) s..< mn ec A
Merchant of Venice, the ........
Misalliance ....... 9 ca els nto ele ee
My three angels ..
On borrowed time «) ofa) elerstareherate
Picnic” "sano. ie elierevanel ootete sels auehalere
Porgy, ‘and (Bess), oc oie (0 ecetaherene
Which way is home? ........
Wiliams, Emlyn; readings from
Dickens aceiocereee Sole ote, eee
Wonderful town eda so senarerene ic inene
Cold war. See War
Cole, Marley
Cherokee drama, the; S, issue of
March 7
Colleges. See Education
Collier, John
Indian affairs and bureau; letter to
Kisenhower; SS ..s.0cens
Colorado; attack on academic ‘freedon
TFeEPUlsed!s) MM eteter cre. ceerere
Colorado, university of ; dismissal of “M.
Judd; comment on editorial in issue of
November 29, 1952. M. Taylor; C .
Columbia conference. See Negroes—Dis-
crimination against
Comfort, Alex
McCarthyism impact on Europe; S .
“Comics” mile-high hysteria in. M.
Sherman; Ce iece: alleys aratlatelteiete eee
Committee on un- -American activities. See
Loyalty
Communism
Art in San Francisco federal building.
G. V. Sherman; S, issue of January
Q
al
Hysteria, mile-high, in ‘‘comics.’”’ M.
Shermans)” C0. 2, selesicis fonts een
In Hollywood; gray eminences. G. En-
dore:;) Cir iota arses a's Waeor
Purges and anti- “semitism ; B., ste
Purges; season of. A. Roth; s n opoterete
Communist party
Convictions of aeeae in New York;
Hunt in Pittsburgh. T, Miller ; Ss, issue
of April
“Non-communist” provision an Taft-
Hantley vact)) hie ana Soest
Rehabilitation of communists, “T.
nahan; C, issue of April 18
Conant, James B.; appointment as high
comniissioner for Germany; BH
Contoreuces, international. F. Kirchway ;
Congress. See United States
Congress of industrial organizations. See
Labor — Union
Conolly, :Thurloes Alvic\.d cleiciereiele etatetaieiate
Conscientious objectors; comment on Lynd
article in issue of December 27, 1952;
A. J. Muste;
Conservation of the soil ;
Bennett; S ....
“Moy-
“let-up in. H.
Corn, too much, or too much "Benson> B. ‘
Cattons: Simei ceictar-r
Coronation. See Great Britain
Courage; prizes for, awarded by Hillman
foundation ; Oar opete
Cox, Oliver C.
Negro’ teachers). Si ciiccretiel-ls teres
Crawford, Ruth Elizabeth
Dismissal by United Nations; S ....76,
see also C, 177, C, 217; C, issue of
April 8 (reprints available)
Crime investigation. See Jersey City
eee ewww ene
. 60
PAGE
, John, and radio. B. mn Haggin ;
sword puzzles. See ‘pack “pages
gg the. F. Kirchwey ; D
Reverend Edward Lodge;
di ens on United nations ane McCarthy ; age
Curtains up. M. Farber ; MP So
Customs duties. See United States —
reign trade
Matthew.
hoslovakia
iconomic crisis ;
See Pittsburgh
devalution ;
D
Dal: Bei eniior: S. L. Faison, Jr.;
p nce, the. See Haggin, B. H.
Janiel, Eugene
Rosenberg case; conviction of W. Perl
for perjury;
vidson, Basil
Jrisis in Central Africa; S
fense, national. See United States
aulle, Charles. See France — Politics
Kooning, Willem. S. L. aison, Jr.; A
Leon, Solon
lew format of The Nation; C .
‘Praise tor Zhe Nation; criticism of
and poems by A. Evans; C
eve Julio Alvarez. See Alvarez del
Vayo, J.
Demmier, Ralph D.; appointment to Se-
iirities and exchange commission; E .
Jemocracy’s Achilles heel; E
see also
mocratic party; errors in the presiden-
tial election. . Zimmerman; C ....
Department of State. See State depart-
ment
Depression, business. See United States
—Kconomics
estination Gobi. M. Farber; MP ....
Voto, Bernard; National book award
for “The Course of Empire’; E aia
Dickens, Charles; L. Williams readings
from Dickens. H. Clurman; D .
Dickinson, Donna M.
-Misquotation of Lk. W. Sinnott; C 317;
see also
ego, Julio de;
Discrimination; in federal employment.
mR. Amlie; C
See also Negroes
District of Columbia. See Washington
linsky, Nathan; A
“Dollars for sense,” for dissemination of
views of A. E. Stevenson; comment on
letter in issue of December 20, 1952
L. B. Woodcock; C
Domain, apc. See United States
bomenach, J.-M
Camus-Sartre “debate on rebellion; S .
Don Giovanni. BD. H. Haggin; M ....-.--
Lo anelly, Desmond
Red China diary; S
Don’t bother to knock. M. Farber; MP ..
rte, Juan. See Argentina
Du les, John Foster; and the Bricker
“amendment ; BE "318 ; see also ...
Balloon on ‘settlement in Asia; E ...
Visit to Europe. A. Werth, A. Roth,
e Carolus; S ..147; see also E =
can, Frank; A
inham, Barrows; suspension from Tem-
ple university; S, issue of May 23
Dunlop, John T
Avoidance of entre strike; S
duPonts; bonus for;
Duties, customs. See A hnited States —
, p foreien trade
E arnshaw, Katherine
On article on the fifth amendment;
’ C, issue of June 27; see also
East, middle. See Middle east
Economic aid for foreign countries
Point four:
_ Four years later. P. Weiss; S ...-..
Land-poor farmer. W. A. Lewis; S..
Working of. P. A. Baran; S
World action on a world task. S. Barr; ‘1
Ree.) 220: “see also E
Economic and social council. See United
nations
Economic commission for Europe; Gen-
eva meeting. J. Alvarez del Vayo; S .
See also United nations
Edelman, Irwin; advocacy of the Rosen-
_ bergs;
as
a i
. 466
index
444! ry ht
Nw Ry P3i4
Eden, Anthony ; visit to United States; E .
Education
PAGE
217
Colleges; aid to. by business; E..... - 159
Kentucky. A. Maund; S, issue of March
14
School, private, No. 1; Amish, at Gen-
eva, Indiana. E. Toohy; §, issue of
January 31
Schools, public. New York City ; under-
mining of; influence of Roman Ccatho-
lics; E
Teachers, Negro. O. C. ,
Teachers for freedom. L. iL Hayes: c
297; see also issue of February 28
See also Church and state; Televi-
sion
Eggleston, Arthur
United automobile
tion; S
Egypt; accord with Great Britain; E
Ebrlich, Howard
On article on the fifth amendment ;
issue of June 27; see also ....
Eisenhower, President Dwight D.
Address, inaugural; prayer;
Address on peace aims; HE
Adminstration :
And congressional investigations; E .
Campaign promises, undeliverable ;
E
workers conven-
Maharajah
B. Catton;
Squabbles among Republicans ;
See also United States Government
Appointments; business men into gen-
erals. Wy H. Neblett; S ..; see also
i)
Indian affairs and bureau; letter to
Eisenhower. J. Collier; S
Inauguration; E
Message on state of the palen Yo tere'
Needs. Berger; Ct
Prayer; inaugural address;
Election, presidential; errors by Demo-
crats. F. Zimmerman ; Cc
Electric power. See Water power
Elizabeth II. See Great Britain
Ellis Island. See Immigration
Ellison, Ralph; National book award for
“Invisible Man’;
Emperor's clothes, the. H. Clurman; D .
Emperor’s clothes, the. R. Hatch; D
Endore, Guy
Comment on article on Hollywood black
list, in issue of December 20, 1952;
letter by Endore
Energy. See Atomic power; Water power
Ervin, Charles W.; death; E
Ethics and parity. S. E. Greene; C
Europa
ae posts, Italian-French; burning
Suspicious. J. Alvarez del Vayo; S..
Union
Miracle or K. Loewen-
stein; S
Inching towards;
Netherlands favorable vote;
Visit by Dulles and Stassen; E
Evan, Louis; A
Evans, Abby; praise of poems.
Leon; C :
Evans, Malcolm R.
Civil liberties conference; C
Evjue, William T.
La Follette, Robert M., Jr.; death of;
and career; S
mirage?
Fair empoyment
halts; E
Faison, S. Lane, Jr.
Art:
practice ; progress
Salvador
Dekooning,
Ferber, H.
Gottlieb, A.
Maclver, L.
Marin,
Morlotti
Motherwell,
Museum of modern art; exhibitions
Pereira, aes
Refregier. Anton
Rouault, Georges
January-June, 1953)
PAGH
Sculpture at the Museum of modern
4
Fall, the. W.
Far east. See Asia
Farber, Manny
Motion pictures:
Bright road
Curtains up
Destinaticn
Ton’t pother to knock
Films of 1952
Five fingers
I confess
Jeopardy
Limelight
Little world of Don Camillo, the
Member of the wedding, the
Moulin rouge
Naked spur, the
Niagara
Oh, Amelia
Pennywhistle blues; disagreement
with Farber on. W. Hertz; C, with
reply by Farber
President’s lady, the
Sell-out. the
Something to live for
Strange ones, the
Taxi
Turning point,
Farming
Congressional clection of 1954, and the
farmer. G. Roth; S
Farmer, land-poor. Ww. A. Lewis;
Parity and Ethics. S. E. Greene; C..
Prices. See United States — Economics
Farrelly, David G.
Tight for control of Central valley pro-
ject; S....12; seo also E
Federal trade commission; appointment
of E. F. Howrey; E 277; see also....
Ferber, Herbert. S. L. Faison, Jr..; A
Merrer; Jose; ban on film, Moulin rouge;
Ks Rodgers ; nial
Ferstadt, Louis;
Fiction. See Books
Fifth amendment.
Fifth season, the. L.
Filling station; ballet. B. H. Haggin ..
Finances, United States. See United
States
Fine, Daniel
On article on fifth amendment; C, issue
of June 27; see also
Fine, Jacob
Congress on the campus;
article by A. Barth; C,
16; see also
Five fingers. M. Farber;
Flint, R. W.
Music in Boston;
see also
Forces, armed. See United States
Ford foundation. Sea Television
Foreign service. See United States
Foreign trade. See United States
a gee e Carl; blacklisted in Hollywood ;
Sea Loyalty
L D
comment on
issue of May
Formosa. See Korea, war in
Franca
Foreign relations:
ec Italy ; burning of frontier pony
Morocco ;
Labor; workers wake up. J.
del Vayo;
Mayer mission to the United States ;
results ;
Politics:
Crisis, J. Alvarez del Vayo; S ..
De Gaulle, man without a party; E .
Elections, municipal; results ; B. pee
Mayer, premier; Schuman, exit ; ey
Workers wake up. J. Alvarez del Vayo
Alvarez
Theater in, H. Clurman;D
Franco, Francisco, See Spain
Frantz, Laurent B., and N. Redlich
Silence and guilt; S....471; correction,
issue of June 13; see also C, issue of
June 27
Frasconi, Antonio; at siniete
Freedom
And McCarthyism; A. Tuttle; C...491
sea also issue of June 28, 1952
Committee in defense urged. K.A. Wells;
Cc
Essentials of; * comment on article by
E. Vittorino in issue of December 6,
1952. H. Koppersmith ;
Lattimore case. See Lattimore, O.
Plea for heretics. A. Macbeath; S....
Article reprinted in pamphlet form.
J. G. Moore; C
;
|
:
]
(January-June, 1953
PAGH
Risk, greater; from address by L. Hand
Senate indifference; E...........+++-
Freedom of speech; restricted by John
Hancock mutual life insurance com-
pany; E
Freedom of the press; address by J. R.
Wiggins
McCarthy and the press; E.........--
Freedom of thought; scientists in a mad
world. M. B. Visscher; S.........--
Freud and the hucksters. R. Goodman ;
S....143; see also C, 235, 465
Buller, Sue; A....-...ceccssere «.cietetets
Galantiere, Nancy; A
Garis, Robert E.
Recorded music
Garrigue, Jean
There is a dark river; P...........
Gaule, Charles de. See France—Politics
Gayn, Mark
Gerinan card, Russia’s ; S12 eve aierepat ene
Malenkov, G. M. Shain a attogn thy oxen
Purges and anti- semitism in U.S.S.R
and satellite countries; S ...-.. 94;
BEG PM AISO!S 5:6 xs, cree shovels: i s\euaue auatere 92,
Geismar, Maxwell; joins editorial staff of
The Nation
General essembly. See United nations
Generals from business men. W. H. Neb-
PGUG tomate 6; see also B........-.-
Geneva meeting. See Kconomic commission
for Europe.
Genius, Jeannette M.; A.....-seeeeees
Georgia; Atlanta; Negro victory in.
Reddick; S, issue of May 30
Germany
Eastern; change in Soviet policy; E
Easing of soviet rule; revolt by Ger-
ATIATS Ls os ao hs eiledais 106 lan aiopatace
Unification; negotiations still possible.
J. Alvarez del Vayo; S......--+-+++
Unity plus rearmament; Russia’s ecard.
DOPE V TNs SS /a)'o co islets (allel vi alate war's wo aibts
Western:
Elections; precautions by Adenauer ;
Bil tist ccctales chevehe scl cle mieiwueichelans absicseualtehe
integration with the
Moves toward
west ;E
Play for power; B
.. Topics of discussion. F. Sternberg ; Ss
Gideons bible case. W.H. Kilpatrick; C,
issue of June 13
Gilman, Mildred
Margaret Sanger in India; S......--
Glasco, Joseph;
Glauber, I. Peter
Psychoanalysis ;
Goldmann, Nahum
Weizmann, C.; S..... cs eereereceres
Golffing, Frances
Te CBULEAL 5. Pieiere ie cicle-0:0 210.0; 0)eia o'cielevehe
Golob, Meyer
Praise for The Nation; C, issue of
April 18
Goodman, Judge Louis E.; refusal to
answer questions of federal house com-
mittee; E
Goodman, Ralph
Freud and the hucksters; S..... 143 ;
see also letters, 235; E .. 407; C..
Goodrich, Frank C.
Lattimore defense fund; appeal for; C
Goods, surpluses of. See United States—
Economics
Gottlieb, Adolf. S. L. Faison, Jr.;
Government, United States. See united
States
Grab, 100-billion-dollar. B. Catton; S..
115; BEG) AlSOE ye coe choo ol age olehefe uve umes
Grass harp, the. H. Clurman; D ......-
Gray, Beata; A.....-.eercreseereecce
Great Britain
Civil liberties; effect of witch hunts in
the United States. A. Roth;
Coronation of Elizabeth II. K. Martin ;
s
Economics:
Loosened restrictions on trade with
Europe; E
Sterling and the dollar; search for a
sound basis; Eden-Butler visit to
the United States; E..........-
Foreign policy :
Accord with Egypt; E...........-
Churchill, peacemaker? Ae
del Vayo Ss
Churchill Visit to the United States; E
Politics:
Elections, borough; E ............
Greenbaum, Dorothea S.
Art; establishment of the International
federation for the visual arts; S ..
Greenberg, Haym; death; E
Greene, Shirley E.
Ethics and parity; C......-...-eeee
11
428
3138
457
387
69
463
463
489
398
394
242
117
160
275
513
533
93
394
137
257
357
49
169
315
143
32
168
494
465
135
38
521
303
469
277
217
157
389
44
426
Index
PAGE
Griffin, John H.
Withdrawal of the artist; S.....373;
see also C, 445; C, issue of June 20
Griswold, Erwin N.
Immunity proposal; S...... evel eek Cake
Bee also) Hien dacsr-, :crcresstecie ieras ie claete 428
Grunewald, Henry W.; deferment of sen-
tence s* Bios, cs ereceieieleretsrerete ent ereterore 514
Guatemala; land question. L. Cardoza y
ARBRE Slo aw, wae) a) udarcueturere ainbereNaietna ~. 224
Guimes, James B.
Vote for Morse; C..26; see also..... 141
H
H-bombs. See Atomic bombs
Haggin, B. H.
Praise. tor. Co Watkins iC. wmeiele ssc 445
Dance:
Filing station! syeicjcrele ai cleeiateynielcls 489
New York city ballet -154, 462, 549
Music:
Boris Godunov c.creclolenete steiaye arerere 442
Boston symphony orchestra ....... 194
Cenerentola lal oc eerie viel enevare ayarencr 334
Crosby, John and radio ........ 234
Don? CHOWAN (csisictaieicrezotenetenctehsterit 334
Lowell institute cooperative broad-
casting, cCouncill cy ccterere <ictalerore ors 235
Ralke?s, progress, the. cos cine wer 294
BAISCISUEO 06 in a elevate n, wiwre ptetolaeaterin's 194
Schnabel Ala sic 0,40 spieesabeteretegheuwelsay 194
Reviews of recorded music, 19, 39, 59,
86, 106, 132, 154, 175, 195, 254 (see
also C 296) ; 274, 314, 383, 403, 423,
462, 489, 511, 531, 549
Hamm, Beth Creevey; A........+.eee-% 335
Hammer, Jacob D.
Mediation in Korea; possibility; C. 40
Hammarskjold, Dag; election as secretary
general! ‘of Us. Ns} Wis sieess aiatetetetater gis 300
Hammett, James W., Jr.
Praise for The Nation’s campaign
against anti-semitism; C ........ 135
Hancock, John; traduced by his heirs; E 317
Hand, Learned; on the greater risk..... 11
Handicapped; help for, in the United
nations. J. Alvarez del Vayo; S...... 140
Happy new year; Happy days; issue of
January 10
Hatch, John
Malan’s victory; S....cccecccccesicnn 392
Hatch, Robert
Review of play:
The emperor's clothes .....+..+.++« 173
Hayes, Lester ‘
Teachers for freedom; C....297; see
also Bernstein article, issue of Feb-
ruary 28
Hays, Arthur Garfield; not spokesman for
American civil liberties union, in Ros-
enberg case. A. Reitman; C ........ GO
Hazel Flagg. Hi. Clurman; D).......... 193
Healy, John
Catholics and the fifth amendment;
C, issue of June 20
Heidenreich, Charles; A.........-+-+ azo
Hell’s canyon. See Water power
Heretics, plea for. A. Macbeath; S..... 10
Article reprinted in pamphlet form. J.G.
Moores) Ce a eciiee ter er cesaeietsleiete ite
Hertz, Will
Disagrees with Farber on movie, Penny-
whistle blues; C, with reply by Farber 195
Henderson, Loy; new ambassador to
ey pti, Mletsyoreisicrs) slcheneloloketonsteyeeuet te teis 138
High noon; motion picture; called by
New York critics best film of 1952; ae
Hill, Dorothy P.
Bard college institute; invitation to;
C, issue of June 27
Hillman foundation prizes for courage; E 514
Hoffman, Charles A.
Austrias) failure dimly; Sipeererterascl cen 34
Hollywood, California. See Motion pictures
Hompburger, Wreddy 5 “Ay citeteiete sie ol ciekalais 315
Hoover, Herbert; for lease of power Dred:
CCES MIN sialecus) a iejsveterermahoneteenete ac 339
Horne, George
New York’s water front jungle; S.... 163
House committee on un-American activ-
ities. See Loyalty
Housing; and loyalty. J. Segard; S, issue
of February 7
Howrey, Edward F.; appointment to Fed-
eral trade commission; E, 277; see also 223
Hsu, Athena Santoze; A...... Saicnenencieys 463
Hubbell, Ann
McCarthyism Ce is iseersens Byetietonehekeekoha emo)
Hucksters. See Advertising
Huling, Betty
New format of The Nation; C ........ 256
Hume, Robert R.
Congressional investigating comet eee: ee
Humphrey, George M; address | on war
and peace financing; Oia, eitaietesetele! (OOt
Vol. 176
PAGE
Hutchins, Maude
Lyre with one string; S.........371;
see also C, 445; C, issue of June 20
Hutchison, Keith
Retires from staff; H........ oe re Yo oti
Canada; coming election; S..... ae faite
Hydraulic power. See Water power
Hysteria, ee high, in ‘‘comics,”’ M. Sher-
man ;
eee ewes Hemme www ene
I
IT confess. M. Warber; MP ©... a... cee
Immigration
Ellis Island and its ‘“‘isolatoes” ;
of C. L. R. James; E
Hardships
BCU s) BD srk Cicvereseta c niotavedetel enema
Service, and refugees. M. Maverick ;
rita 135; ‘see’ also’ ‘Cr coe. a ealerade
Immunity. See Loyalty
In defense of folly. P. Booth; P.
ween
case
in operation of McCarran
India; birth control in; return. ‘ot 'M.
Sanger. M. Gilman; S..... o's si eloleraneee
Journey to; A. Bevan; Si... serie
Indiana; universities and colleges asked
to bar New Deal professors .......
Indians, American; affairs and bureau ;
letter to Eisenhower. J. Collier; S...
Cherokee drama, the. M. Cole; S, issue
of March 7
Indo-China; linking of war with struggle
in Korea; Bo. oiciclers cele sisistel oheaienenenan
Mess in. H. Mears; S....344; see also
correction, issue of May 16; also...
War in. C. Bourdet; S..410; see also
Indonesia; no man’s land; camping in.
H.. Konigsberger’;) S 2. + -sinonvermnnae
Ingersoll, Robert G.; praise for. V. Yar-
ros;; C....277; see also book review,
issue of December 6, 1952, page 535
International foundation for visual art;
establishment. D. S. Greenbaum; S...
Investigating committees. See United
States—Congress; Loyalty
“Tsolatoes.’’ See Immigration
Israel
And the Arabs; E........
Anti-Israel policy, new? dee Alvarez ‘del
Vays, Sierentascneere aoe
Bombing in Tel Aviv; break ‘with Israel
by Soviet Union ; appeal to Hisenhow-
ODIs HDG srvdicte weisve rare stone neeene ene a
Books for. V. Kaufman; G issue of
June 20
Disapproval by W. A. Eddy; E .....
Fifth anniversary ; need for peace with
Arabs and Soviet union; E........
Theater in. H: (Clurman);) De one
Weizmann, C.; passing of. N. Gold-
MANTA eS erat aenetare never aatalteretae sie agape
Italy
Election not so neo- =tasciet. J, Alvarez
del VayosS. siiin. Soe
Results ; Roman Catholic setback? a
Alvarez del Vayo; S...... Seehelanaey
Electoral reform; E ......... neat eller ated
Intolerance in. A. Caliandro ; Cc. a ale Netene .
Misrepresented? D. Silone; br. ite veh Us
S€e) (alsow ©) (A cteyerer) steele svalegette
Relations with France; “burning of
frontier posts; E.......... @ aceeleeeiia
J
James, C. L. R.; deportation case, and
essay on H. Melville; E.............
Jenkins, Wilbur L.
Task of liberalism; praise for The Na-
EAOMN FAC Navetatens eva ate <iainy'exwsei'e) ») oneeaeee
Jeopardy. M. Farber; MP ....... asia
Jersey City; justice in. W. Murray; Sie
Jeswald, Joseph; A
esc eee . wenn
Jews; anti- -semitism in purges ‘in com-
munist countries ; . 63; see also 92;
94, DTA CO aiieretateeeystekete toners o cvelelete
In Soviet Russia; .: “anti- semitism. A.
Wrerth:; Sir %.syereusvevsorenetetenere neta
Jim crowism. See Negroes——Discrimination
against
Joel, George W.
New format of The Nation; C.......
John Brown’s body. H. Clurman ; D- Oe, 0
Jobn Hancock mutual life insurance com-
pany ; restrict of freedom of speech; E
- Johnson, Russell
Praise for articles by A. Nelson and R.
VANS MO): Ge SB oIOe
Jones, James
Symbolism ; too much in books; S. .369;
see also C, 445; C, issue of June 20
Joubhaux, Leon; proposals for peace; S..
Judd, Morris ; ‘dismissal by university of
Colorado ; comment on editorial in issue
of November 29, 1952. M. Taylor; C..
Judiciary, federal. See United States—
Congress
ee eee ewww ee ew wee
196
22
31
257
297
. 878
169
415
32
29
385
410
344
138
500
137)
179
340
548
517
542
276
135
256 I
193
317
156
124
136 |
PAGE
K
K Cansas ; ‘censure of C. W. Roberts as lob-
byist. W . G. Clugston; S, issue of April
2
Kaplan, Hilda
On article on the fifth amendment; C,
issue of June 27; see also .....-+.-- 472
endall, Thomas EK.
‘Smear Pechmiques Go.ccceccsaccricess GOO
ufman, Vita
Books for Israel; C, issue of June 20
enen, Peter B.
On removing the United nations; C,
issue of April 18; see also ....--.-- 264
a Kennan, Richard Barnes
‘ _ Praise for Beale article on the teneiien °
a C, issue of June 6; see also ..-..--- 412
' tucky ; ; education in. A. Maund,; as
; issue of March 14
enya; Mau Mau terror; conviction of
Kenyatta. L. S. Leakey; S........345;
. pee also E...........-. ahestathe (ohtees attaata =x 337
. nyatta, Jomo. See Kenya
rby, Phil =
_ New format of The Nation; C........ 256
| | Kilpatrick, William Heard
Gideons bible case; C, issue of June 13
Kirchwey, Freda
%! Anti-semitism in communistic countries,
- Ls and purges; S..92; see also..-..-- 94
Conferences, ‘international ; Slee erases 447
loreign policy, United States ; trend of ; aes
i - Mercy for the Rosenbergs ; re Waroieheve: cus 24
40; Reviews of plays:
a Me and Juliet ....... Misi lefeterecelayeut - 530
a Mhemcrucible .........- epidnuinan 131
gy he love of four colonels ....-..-.-. 132
-Konigsberger, Hans
' Indonesia; S ..... arverste ists iaini che eketssel es 8
Kopelov, Connie
‘ On article on the fifth amendment; C,
ES issue of June 27; see also ...------ 472
Koppersmith, Hal
On freedom; comment on article by L.
WR Vittorini in issue of December 6,
ab ONGC oso = 210+ ens Bee reap ene? 17.6
1) Korea, war in
_ Blunder; treatment of Rhee freeing of
500 | prisoners. Observer; S .....+--++++ 537
F Chinese bid for repatriation of prison-
att Crs); 9H. ties ee
Wr f Conference on. F. “Kirchwey ; eres 447
’ i? Deadlock. J.D.H. Hammer and A. Silver;
WPPEGUH EE cele) cieisio = ols. 0s ccc creleiesc se 40
19) Debate in United nations general assem-
bly. J. Alvarez del Vayo; S......-- 5
ce b Deeds and words of Soviet Russia; E.. 513
4S ie Dulles balloon on settlement; E.....- 319
| Formosa:
a Blunders ans Ws a... cceecerccsece LAL
Fe Decision on; E........---+++: 137
f Bisenhower decision and the United
any nations. W.M. Ball; S.......-.- 185
Indo-China and the war; E..... 385
2} Mediation; possibility of. J.D. Hammer ; ; .s
§9 Coe eerceleis Pea e tact sicasistevoieieys
}} Nationalist “Chinese troops; proposal for
ik sending: Eo......-++++++-- Sasa, 2
15} Peace offensive by U.SS.R.;E. 219;
, see alsO .....-----+ees+esees 301
Prisoners, returned ; brain- _washing at
; MMITSVRIOLEE TIM) c.ercaecs.eccescicce 420
Truce talks:
After the truce; E ...... s 515
Agreement; reaching of; E .....--- 493
Rhee revolt; BE .....---cecee dance 465
Suspension; British and American
: ViewS; BE... cee es ree ceveeces 425
Ku Klux Klan; prizes” ‘for’ ‘opposition ;
RE a olicicia\ ain, «00)'s Sieiatcl olalatene<s eiaintnienal seue 514
upferman, Lawrence; A on sssteneta ict
Kutcher, James
Loyalty case; still waiting; S ...... - 188
. L
L. 8.
Review of play:
The fifth season ........ aioke: suskejevslemeeoe
_ Labor
Strikes; critical; avoidance of. J. T.
Dunlop; S. rcteveneusy chattels ieletelisreleia 5 VASE
* Textile, in Quebec; Wire ccscorstatenet ons 22
Union:
sf AFL and CIO unity discussed E ... 317
Longshoreman’s story. H. Vassar; S,
‘ issue of January 3
oe Strait-jacket for labor, new? R. A.
: Lester ; eile 51
ty Taft-Hartley act “freeze. R. Ww. “Wier; Py
Be Taft- -Hartley “act; “non- ~communist”
provision in; Dare, chet esnpemeoe
United automobile workers ‘convention. ™
‘- A. Eggleston; S ....... 284
La Follette, Robert M., Jr.; death | of, “and
career. W. T. Evjue; S .......---. 200
;
Index
PAGE
Land, off-shore. See Oil
Land conservation; let-up in. H. H. Ben-
MOti MS ea ia cislel ceeinisiemerinelaaieers1e) 4a0
Luandeck, Armin; A ...ccecccosesvceces S00
Landis, Bernard
Disheartening esays by authors; C,
issue of June 20; see also ..369;
Lange, Oscar
Proposals for peace; S ..-.eee+eee 7
Laos; communist advance against ; E .. 385
Latin America; and the new United States
adminstration. J. Alvarez del Vayo; S. 114
“Subversion” by Sears Roebuck. Te
Clark ; Nayeie cider choices 200
Lattimer, Gardiner
New format of The Nation; C .... 256
Lattimore, Owen; defense, book on; E.. 112
Defense fund; appeal for. F. C. Good-
MiCws (Gy sisters wee aiateveteiahsbela mievele wala. 135
Dismissal of four perjury counts; E . 405
Indictment; testimony of Budenz; KE. 23
Leakey, L. S. B
Terror in Kenya; conviction of Ken-
yatta; S....345; see also H...... 337
Hela h WAe eA adtenereeitee cece (OOD.
Lester, Richard A.
Strait- jacket for unions, new? S 51
Levitt, Eugene E,
Defense of social scientists; C, with
reply by R. Goodman 235;
BEG allSOMes mechs uisleiiciorieiiciisy-iorere aire kao
Levy, Albert
On article on the fifth amendment; C,
issue of June 27; see also ...... 472
Lewis, Frank W.; crossword puzzles. See
back pages
Lewis, Fulton, Jr., restriction on freedom
of speech; E ..... 317
Lewis, John L.; birthday ; A " endorsement of
West Virginia tax program; B ...... 177
Lewis, W. Arthur
Farmer, land-poor; S ....--.+++-+- 98
Liberalism ; task of ; praise | for The Na-
tion. W. L. Jenkins ; Ce eicteisisisielsterete 491
Liberty. See Freedom
Lie, Trygve; retirement as secretary
general of U. N.; B .weeeeee eevee 300
See also United ‘Nations —-Employees ;
United Nations — Secretary General
Limelight. M. Farber; MP ........+. 57
Liked in Boston. M. epee C
Eee sy BQ. A180) (eas sie. care Ee
See also Motion pictures. —_— Cen-
sorship
Lincoln university. O. C. Cox; S 347
Literature. See Books
Little world of Don Camillo, the. M.
Warbers, MIP? ici on siclcleleisiee «alesis eles 153
Lodge, Senator Henry C., Jr.; action at
United nations assembly session. J.
Alvarez del Vayo; S .....+-. atin nics: 201
Loewenstein, Karl
European union; S ......- ote sete ee
Longshoremen See Labor — _ Union;
New York City
Los Angeles. See California
Love of four colonels, the. F. Kirchwey ;
Lee eee ai eie intel aiatel sisi stevel oeveXavenats's 132
Love’s labor’s lost. H. Clurman; D 173
Lowell institute cooperative broadcasting
council. B. H. Haggin; M ....... pen oD,
Loyalty
And housing. J. Segard; S, issue of
February 7
Committee in defense of freedom urged.
ea MW OLIG s (OM ante exc s'vre'a sci enele! We 156
Congressional investigations. P. Witten-
DORE ine D2 ou. 390; see also letters
with editorial comment, issue of
June 6
Convictions of communist party leaders
for subversion; EE .....-.+..+-- 89
Crawford case; in the United nations.
R.E. Crawford; S..76; see also
177; C....217; issue of April 8 (re-
prints available)
Discrimination against United States
employees outside the United States,
on suspicion of pubyension- T. R. Am-
OM Cike ccs )e.« ein cestiece re 00
Fifth amendment ; “Catholics and the
amendment. J. Healy; C, issue of
June 20
Foreman, C.; blacklisting in MHolly-
OO Gis) OM ialie che! eleietelsliniice eters) 21
Harrison, New ‘York; loyalty oath ‘in.
D. Clinton ; s, als of February 21;
see also’ een opeintsiaiets tis 315
Immunity proposal. DEB: Richbers ;
Smee toc Asiitis'! SCG) MI SOm ar asia slene! = 428
Investigations; green light for; E 21
Kutcher case; still waiting J. Kut-
PHGr ESS <x arin eisai et siainieraco.s) oreress 188
Lattimore and Vincent cases ; testi-
mony of Budenz; E .... 23; see
also Lattimore, O.
January-J une, 1953)
PAGE
Montgomery, J. C.; case of. R. Mor-
BAN pr eo scien sipivleicle\cle’e:s: a sisisiaisvera 197
Purges in New York city public schools ; 5
astokavelavetal eye) eioisle's\sialslels’c sia) 6) eiatabeterore 445
ey new, for federal ‘employees ;
Silence and guilt. L. cs Frantz and N.
RGGIICH Mi sileieieictels ctetelots orote 471;
correction, issue of June 13
Smear technique of McCarthy and
Others yl eH i<endallisi@i ny. ieellerss tere 356
Sludentsn tests fOr, hil. sen eiisicnie LOM
Un- -American activities committee ; ‘cut-
ting off of funds advocated. V. Sha-
piro; C, issue of June 27
Intolerance at hearings. A. E. Rob-
son, Jr.; C, issue of May 16
Methods and procedures; E ...... 259
Vincent retirement trom state de-
DARCIVCNE me eate ete leloie ctcielelcretatatetey stots 218
Witch hunts in the United States : ; effect
on Great Britain A, Roth; §S 303
See also McCarthy, Senator Joseph
R.; United nations—Employees
Lund, David and Sylvia; A ........ 295
Lung’ cancer and smoking. A, Ochsner;
Ss aa 431; see also C, issue of June
Lynd, Robert S.; article on causes of
war, in issue of December 27, 1952,
page 601; praise for; loner by R.
HOMIE A "hia aokdom pdb socmda os melee ao
Macbeath, Alexander
Plea for heretics; S) 2.0... aYovel ohaparerate 10
Article reprinted in pamphiet form.
JenG Moore Cl. cioeiee mielsials renal!
Maclvyer, Loren. S. .L. Faison, ur.; A 134
MacLeish, Archibald; National book award
for “Collected Poems” ; El ivareteretateters 111
Malan, Daniel F. See Union of South
Africa
Malenkov, Georgi M. See Union of soviet
socialist republics
Maris John. S. L. Faison Jr.; A ...... 133
Marshall, Margaret
On her leaving The Nation; C .. 135;
see also issue of January 17
Reviews of plays:
aarenls Bours THE Weierarsjeielereinetee irene ALS
enaud and Barrault c
ea Kingsley iat ee ra
Oronation of Elizab ' ccc cw.s
Micon ee eth II.; S 469
Tidelands oil campai MAYS Ot ec ctexe
Matthews, Herbert L.; Eick on G. Or- at
well, in issue of December 27, 1952;
comment by Matthews and L, Trill-
Mau Mau. See Kenya aang! ar gaa
aun, Alfred
Nducation in Kentucky; 7
Mens y; 5S, issue of
Future comes to the south; § 47
Negro, the, and medicine; S ........ 396
Maverick, Maury
Immigration service, and _ refugees;
AU LOOl SEO ABO) ACe vs ere re
Maverick, Maury, Jr. ns aM
Book censorship in San Antonio; §S
ees SOLO) SCO) AIBO* MH “Gnidia nls deta 515
Mayer, Rene. See France; France —
Politics
McCarran act. See OCB Ear
McCarthy, Senator Joseph R.; and free-
dom: A. Titties, Crs teews. o 491; see
also issue of June 28, 1952
And the Presslseeld! tasers sete COICO Les
Combatting. AS Hubbell); Gos noctnen, 135
Conflict over, between UNESCO and the
state qoparguent one congress. A,
Werth ; Byaveveeretetelcvaletnrerem ke oe. 543
Impact on Europe. KO) ‘Comfort; S .. 302
Present danger; E ale Onis - 535
REDOTE on, by senate subcommittee ;
aotsiel deisisishet sel stsishs toes
Repudiacion ‘Oli ‘h eicietateletetare ealenrars 425
Revolt against; E ..... 198
Rosenberg pentence Dy McCarthyism ;
mattis (alaptusvelaisteleratererousre hans otetenete 513
Smear technique “of! McCarthy and
otherss ioe He kendalliC) foes esse sD6
PDACCICH; ekulencteterersieneratene 495
Tyranny of McCarthyism. B. “Stalnaker :
C, issue of June 20
Upheld by. Mather ‘Curran; EH .5.... 494
Me and Juliet. F. Kirchwey; D ...... 530
Mears, Helen
Mess in Indo-China; S 344; see also
correction, issue of May 16; see
BISOM pee takselatwlacaielone, ois ela storte 410
Medicine and the Negro; new day. ne
OST LUNN ss yas leteioPal nse sisie a renere sew eerie os 396
Melville, Herman: essay on, by Ch Ly RK.
SP BIMLCH seal sl cveteu sie eyelets aiateeay anes 257
Member of the wedding, “the, M. Far-
ber; Dinfetoleisvoreioie sreletelcletoleis)<(otelatemel OL)
ihe
(January-June, 1953
Index
Vol. 176)
PAGD
Merchant of Venice, the. H. Clurman;
D
Mergers, business ; E
Mexican Americans in the southwest. G.
W. Sherman; S, issue of March 28
Michelson, Mark
“Limelight” liked in Boston; C
SUB SEO n ISO, | avcie, 0:4, nlvic,5) retelejeiehelere
Middle east ; bungling in United States
policy; Henderson record; E ......
Link with world peace; 5B aie ci aaceneie
Militarism; move against. A. J. Muste;
Faterdint clot el cheycie ole orajove yer wiele o/seleieietele :
Miller, Terry
Communist hunt in Pittsburgh; S, issue
of April 4
Misalliance. H. Clurman; D
Mistral, Gabriela
Proposal for peace; S
Mitchell, Broadus
Rutgers university ; lost fight for aca-
demic freedom ;
Mitchell, Henry A
Monopolies. See Trusts
Montgomery, John C.; death and charges
against him made by F. E. Busbey;
RR. Mongar: Carag sis ecitcitet alsa
Moore, Arthur
More on hucksters; C, issue of March
14; see also 143; 235
Moore, J. G.
Plea for heretics, by Macbeath, in
pamphlet form; C w2tk. 868
LIB) © js. clay c:'e) yo luleyel a wlistays jelliatatehel afie\viels
Moore, Ward; novels; writing of; C
Morgan, Edwin
Societe anonyme; Peak ste ccs eles
Morlotti. S. L. Faison, Jr. 3 A wc.s-iigs
Morgan, Richard
Montgomery, J. C. death of, and charges
against him made by F. I. Busbey ;
(Cine eich oS saves, eres 8 le. 61g @iiemh hie hw tats elsitie
Morocco and France; EB .... scenes erees
Mormons. Sea Utah
Turmoil in. A. Werth; S .....48L;5) :.
Morse, Senator, Wayne; Morse code. B.
Catton; S 141; see also C
Motherwell, Robert. S. L. Faison, Jr.; A -
Motion pictures
Censorship:
Blacklistings in
ment in article in
Hollywood; com-
issue of Decem-
ber 20, 1952. G. Endore; C......
Hollywood ten; conviction of. A. Bes-
sie; C, with editorial comment,
issue of June 6; see also
Limelight, by C. Chaplin; ban on;
illic elie ichlevoisy cgene is dagaiel quet'staie ue) feselioie areas
Limelight; Chaplin and his cen-
sors. W. Murray; S .... 247; see
also C STE CS! axe iste
Vigilantism in Silver ¢ City, New Mex-
ico; H. Bloom; S, issue of May 9
Wilms of 1952. M. Farber; §
High noon; called by New York cri-
tics best film of 1952; E .....«..
Hollywood; gray eminences. G. En-
GORE ee Cle Diace aie ednka a tie at alety or etn oememae
Moulin rouge, by J. Ferrer; ban on;
FY ec cectrel cece vovaiewouscexansiearseeteons 132s arene
Ultra-realist, C. Zavattini. W. Murray ;
reraicacro tale ete \etone le hoteliatarawalie sonatas coteieee
For reviews, see Farber, M.
Moulin rouge. M. Farber; MP .......-
Banos a 5 oie 2 eisvetwcein) sels mse ore lala
Mourning dove, the. S. Yelen; P
Moynahan, Ted
Rehabilitation of communists; C issue
of April 18
Muller, Henry
Congress on the campus; comment on
article by A. Barth; C, issue of May
16; see also
Murie, Olaus J.
The doomed valley; C 296; see
PISO Me spat ecallenets vac cateneuay-cve\ioltenene) oleh oie totamemtel at =
Murray, William
Chaplin and his censors; S .... 247;
see also C BBS MC) Gas ooddl 4
Justice in Jersey City; S ...-..-.
Movie ultra-realist, C. Zavattini; S .
Spread of book censorship; S
Music; in Boston. R. W. Flint; C....
BEBE ARO alous wysis alnbereje! snake! Xca'oaetaseee
Prokofiev, the real. A. Werth; S ..
See Haggin, B. H., for reviews
piaic, recorded: See Garis, R. E.; Haggin,
B
Musmanno, Michael A. See Pittsburgh
Muste, A. a
Conscientious objectors ;
Lynd article
DA ey a yA (Oe Gd oonn6055 a
My three angels. H. Clurman; D ......
comment on
in issue of December
N
NATO. See North Atlantic
ganization
treaty or-
138
340
212
70
228
255
197
10
463
343
234
197
110
501
. 216
333
20
390
90
491
21
20
90
326
193
. 229
322
122
491
326
367
254
285
195
273
PAGE
Naiditch, Vladimir; A acta clete roreiel tre
Naked spur, the. M. Farber ; ; MP 274
Nation, The changes, editorial; E....4,
see also issue of January 17; C, 107;
letter by M. Marshall, 145
Format, new; additions to editorial
a ‘160; Crt. ablesenaiareie a wheters
Letters of praise .... 60; 165; 445;
491; also issue of April a Sune 6
Letters: ta; new polity” < sn... .sco. <6
Marshall, M., on her leaving; nee eoDis
see also 3 and issue of January ‘17
Praise for articles by N. Algren and
R. S. Lynd in issue of December 27,
1952; R. Johnson C .......
Praise for poems by A. Evans. S. ‘De
W200 so Cac cie cities atasetatere Moisi averse mais
Praise for B. H. Haggin; C .. 4
Verse chronicle; last by R. Humphries
letter by him Geyeneneweyeketens Sites ene
National book awards for 1953; 105
National bureau of standards, See Bur-
eau of Standards.
Natural Resources. See Resources, natural
Neblett, William H.
Business men into generals; S ..6;
Bee also HE osc vicina Siers (wiareualeia iets
Negroes
And medicine; new day. A. Maund;S .
Atlanta, Georgia; victory in elections;
S, issue of May 30
Black belt conditions; improvement in
forty years. H. Snyder; S, issue of
March 21; see also C, issue of
June 6
Discrimination against:
Challenge by Eisenhower, M. J. But-
CHER tS) cals ew ie.0.3 etartncnittelena a iete
Conference at Columbia. A. Maund;
In ar Lake City by Mormons; com-
Ment on article in issue of Decem-
ber:).6; 21962. MM. “Taylors? C..2 2's
Jim Crowism
See Negroes —
Segregation. See Negroes — Discrimina-
tion against
Teachers) OssC_.COx.S eee stains 347
Netherlands ; vote, favorable, on European
MEIGS Hi sin) o etniniavs alle erclovintesieiaic < a\eysie
New Mexico; vigilantism in Silver City.
H. Bloom; S, issue of May 9
New Year, happy: Happy days; S, issue
of January 10
New York City ; schools, public. See Edu-
cation.
Water front jungle. G. Horne; S . 163
New York city ballet. B. H. Hagein;
DB) dere ee ee fers BOG Sic aietasess 549
Newspapers ; freedom of. See Freedom
of the press
Niagara, Mi. Warbers Mb anc eieciasiee oheis 153
Nixon, Richard M.; art commissar. G. V.
Sherman; S, issue of January 10
NG_ GOmimienty ea sais oles states «ove pnlenciatatel sete 32
North Atlantic council ; meeting; Church-
ill the peacemaker? J. Alvarez del Vayo;
SST SSF oleic ar cie rs ‘ove ovolnvasaelelateielutelerepsiarata 389
North Atlantic treaty organization; arms
and politics. J. Alvarez del Vayo;S .. 25
Council meeting; E ........ ieielelerierem sO
Novels. See Books
oO
Oaths, loyalty. Sea Loyalty
Oatis, William N.; return of; B Sielere ALG:
Objectors, conscientious; comment on
Lynd article in issue of December at,
1952: A. J. Muste; © 7... 5... eel OD
Observer > >
Blunder in Korea; S ..6.20..0% aiejats) ODE.
Ochsner, Alton
Lung cancer and smoking; S 431;
see also C, issue of June 20
Off-shore land See Oil.
on Amelia. M. Farber; MP ........- 57
Oi
Arabian American oil company; and
Wi. AS Hddy3) Wiieeeannc. 179
Suit against companies; dropping of;
Evimareterere Sfeievohalal cxcketoletteneiaate erensiniate 44
Tideland:
And politics: “Wie sareterereieder=cere'= etoletem Olds
Campaign. J. M. Mason; Cie cL on
Give-away by JHisenhower. M. 5
Ss ie clon aac coon DD oece S16
Grab for. B. Catton ; Beer tai eheter. oierake 115
Apig blastp meme TIGW/R 2) Gage chy
Olds, Leland : ms
Grab for atomic power; S ....447;
Gis Ai Deel teadetertetrLoverete 496
On borrowed time. H. Clurman; D .... 192
Orme, Frank
TV commercials; Sic. sec.ss - «289
Orwell, George; homage to, and book | on
Spain ; comment by article by Matthews
256
177
156
60
445
157
111
396
100
47
20
Discrimination against
PAGE
in issue of December 27, 1952; let-
ters by Matthews and Tae Trilling é
Oxnam, Bishop G. Bromley; proposal for
peace; issue of January 17
ue
Parenthood, planned; E
Parity, price. See United States” — " Beo-
nomics
Partymiller, Walt
New format ot The Nation; C ......
Pastorale. T. Roethke; P .%. jee
Peace
Address by Eisenhower; E
Churchill,
Vayo;
Formula for.
peacemaker? J. Alvarez del
A, Bevin; 5S’. 3%... ame
Proposals for -- %, 28; issue of
January 17; 70, 124, 166, 189
Pennywhistle blues ; movie; disagreement
with Farber on. W. Hertti C, with
reply by) Narbers .o.. A ore
Pereira, Il. Rice. S. L. Faison, “or: Re a
Perkins, Frances; retirement from Civil
service commission; E oe cele mia oie
Perl, William. See Rosenberg case
Peron, Juan D. See Argentina
Perry, Edgar
Rio Grande
valley power project; S
122); “see “also? (GL 2. vere Wale
Petroleum. See Oil
Philippine islands; land reform. R, H.
Solleni;’ ‘Si -.8oeee 5
Phillips, Mary
Comment on Crawford article;
27; see also
Phonograph records.
Haggin, B, H.
Pickett, Clarence E.
Proposals for peace: {Sica ee
Pienic. H. Clurman; D
Pintar, Joseph
Praise for article by R. EB. Crawford;
Ci... TTS. see also. cera sees
Pittsburgh ; “communist hunt led by M.
Cvetic and M. A. Musmanno; T. Miller;
S, issue of April 4
Planned Parenthood; E .. he eheleete
Plays; Cherokee drama, the. "M. “Cole; s,
issue of March 7
Critics and reviewers. H. Clurman; D
In_ Israel. H: Clurmani; DBD) ).eeeeae
For reviews, see Clurman, H.; Hatch
J.; Eirenwer, f.; L. S.; Marshall,
Plea for heretics. A. Macbeath; S .....-
See Garis, ‘R) BL;
Poems
Airman, the. W. R. Rodgers .......
Carol. W.. R. Rodgers <.0l2...eeee ae
Fall, the. W. R. Rodgers; P
In defense of folly. P. Booth ....
Mourning dove, the. S. Yellen
Pastorale. "I. “Roethke san.» --teneerere
Societe anonyme. E. Morgan ........
Songs for a new America. C. G. Bell .
Teacher, the. M. B. Christian ........
There is a dark river. J. Garrigue .
To a snail. F. Golffing seal
Swallow poetry book award. A. Swal-
low; C, issue of May 16
Pohoryles, Egon
Aldrich; million-dollar diplomat; S .
Point four. See Economic aid for foreign
countries
Pomerance, Herbert
Cancer; X-rays versus smoking; C
issue of June 20; see also .....-..
Porgy and Bess. H. Clurman; D ..
Pousette-Dart, Nathaniel; A .........
Power, public. See Atomic power ; Water
power
Peale? phere it is due. a I. Symington ;
sewn eee
eee
sees
Presidency. “See “United States _- =
Government
Presidential election of 1952; errors by
Democrats. F. Zimmerman; C..... arte
President’s lady, the. M. Farber; MP ..
Press, the. See Newspapers
Prices and price control. See United
States — Economics
Prizes for courage, eeeroce by Hillman
foundation; E ... Sera
Prokofiev, Sergei; death ; ‘the Teal Pro-
kofiev. A. Werth; St aiateletiats celts
Proposals for peace. See Peace
Psychoanalysis. I. P. Glauber; C .. 465;
see also .
Public domain.
Domain, public
Public utilities. See Utilities, public
Purcell, Jean
Praise for The Nation and Wittenberg
article; C, with editorial comment,
issue of June 6; see also
Purges. Sea Communism
“See “United "States —_—
88
256
398
337
389
324
195
134
278
. 296
268
166
213
- 382
548
306
PAGE
Pusey, Merlo J.
Bricker amendment and the _ treaty-
' making power; S........ 2380; see
BRIBOM OLN wo ola pisla niaialmie le! sions 0 ave oleic. 318
Putnam, Wallace; A .....-.eeseees 335
Puzzles, crossword. See back ‘pages
Q
Quebec; textile strike; E ....... ; 22
R
Rabelais, Francois, 1483-1953. J. Alvarez
del VayO; S ..........-eseeeeeee 261
; Crosby, J., and radio. B. Hi. Hag-
in . 234; see also C .....- 296
well institute cooperative broadcast- rl
ing council. B. H. Sesaee Mi iinyere 20D
aelli, Michel; A E ohattcietereretere: “ADO
e’s Progress, ‘the. B. re Haggin ; M.. 294
SeeeNat so A... « Sinn ieee siesta. oD
awley, 1s Oe
On article on the fifth amednment; C,
issue of June 27; see also ........- 472
Rebellion versus revolution ; Sartre:
Camus debate, J.-M. Domenach; S. 202
Recession, business. See United States | _
| Economics
Reciprocal trade agreements act. Sce
United States — Foreign trade
Recorded music. See Garis, R. E.; Hag-
Se fin, B. HH.
Reddick L. D.
Victory in Atlanta; S, issue of May 30
-Redlich, Norman, and L. B. Frantz
Silence and guilt; S 471; cor-
rection, issue of June 23; C, issue of
. June 27
| Refregier, Anton. S L. Faison, Jr.; A . 233
| Refugees; treatment by Immigration ser-
jie vice. M. Maverick; C ....135; see
| | ETES So as Ar AS slesy snake 29
Reitman, Alan
Hays not counsel for American civil
liberties urion in iosenberg case;
bee comment on article in issue of
a| Noveniber 8, 1952; C ........ 60
pperenaud and Barrault company. M. Mar-
SEES EP eae oo De auetehetenoKs che, ohavava/ siete. 6 rio gts
Republican party:
| Machine, new. B. Catton; S .... 233;
1 ROME ISOU EE On ie.e cia: ieee’ eae Pe cemee us
Mink in W ashington. U. . Carter ; Ss . 503
ERR RI ane sie anveie sie eee eee 139
Resources, natural ; give-away by Elsen-
hower. M. W. Straues; » .....+.-. 416
Soil congeivation; lei-up in. H. H
BEEESCHMCLE SS sw ee eee cecnes 436
Revueltas, Rosaura; arrest on charges. of
illegal immigration. H. Bloom; §, issue
of May 93
Rhee, Syngman. See Korea, war in
Richberg, Donald R.
Immunity proposal; S 477; see
f SUS EMME IIE lelic.iciie (a, o co io 0 6. 00! olsen haze
_ Rigoletto. B. H. Haggin; M ..... 194
Rio Grande power project. EH. Perry;
; Paiste ae S€CQ BISO Canc. oi ciee 296
Risk, greater ; ffom address by L. Hand. 11
Robbins, Gertrude
On article on the fifth amendment ;
C, issue of June 27; see also .... 472
Roberts, C. Wesley ; censured as lobbyist.
W. G. Clugston; S, issue of April 25
Robin, Eva
Loyalty tests; C .... 135; see also .. 69
Robson, Arthur E., Jr.
Intolerance at hearings by Un-Ameri-
can activities committee; C, issue
of May 16
- Wik.
MMEIMITHEMENC ED Uele inlets clais olelecle vivivies - 09
MERON EE EN, o)c.01 so0 (oe a eleaie ie tie slates ecto
asm EAL eH AN E> Dh oye atolls, Civieis cis ateleielbislojevdian, 09
Roethke, Theodore
BERUMUALE sED irae c evel. svel's»latelslav oie le MOO
Rogow, Arnold A.
‘Defense or depression?; S ........ 455
Rolin, Henri
United nations
Z207,;.8e6. also ...\..
Roman catholic church
Catholics and the fifth amendment J.
Healy; C, issue of June 20
Influence of members in New York
city schools; E
Opposition to Planned Parenthood ; ms
Setback in Italian election results ;
J. Alvarez del Vayo; S ..... = fodehe
Rosenberg, James N.; A
Rosenberg case
Edelman advocacy of the Rosenbergs ;
Personnel policy; S$
er
E ; rR roioreietctsi ol ole et >» ‘ai'ey'shotate
Eisenhower ‘denial of clemency; E 179;
see also C, issue of March 21
Executions; E
:
'
t
r
ed
i
,
r
'
PE
\
197
445
62
542
295
533
Index
PAGE
Hays not counsel for American civil
liberties union ; comment on article in
issue of November 8, 1952. A.
Reitman; C Weems... s eee om 160.
Mercy for the Rosenbergs. F. Kirch-
WOYap Oy oe oslo elevelenenetete ints alalclatats|e: oe 24
Sentence by McCarthyism; E ..... . 513
Roth, Andrew
Asia; socialist bridge to; S ....... 74
Communism; purges, season of; Sees Sl
Dulles visit to Europe; S .... 147;
See. alsovH ... .5 <o dietetele slave cielo sie 137
Great Britain; effect of witch- hunting
in the United States; Bae eees COS
Yugoslavia; Tito visit to Great Britain ;
SHgiReN ch ch cpchekoh oj ire .ovtllckat a eeenaReMetap Telfer aio Tolle e 278
Roth, Gordon
Congressional election of 1954, and the
PAROLCK CS!) avevechanet rere meas ain elerennjelais 327
Rouault, Georges. S. L. Faison, Jr.; A
tsa tie olstfapel incre! loys abenatee tenes ayotoha siteireies 333
_ Russell, E. H.
Self-criticism of authors; C...... 445 ;
HEGM SISO... che ccchtheeteinie wiatel arate) <i 369
Russell, Rose
On article on the fifth amendment; C
issue of June 27; see also ...... 472
Russia, soviet. See Union of soviet socialist
republicg
Rutgers university; Jost fight for aca-
demic freedom. B. Mitchell; S........ 228
s
Sacco-Vanzetti; opinion of N. M. Butler.
CAG, Tig yhesieyens (0h <> ooo uorpooc oo 297
Saint Cloud, Minnesota; book censorship.
D. Schoelkopf and T. Wilson; S, issue
of January 24
Salt Lake City. See Utah
San Antonio. See Texas
San Ifrancisco. See California
Sanger, Margaret; in India. M. Gilman;
SPR crise leicbetaveue vis, a olacshoretetatogseia eisicicha tel’. 169
Sartre, Jean-Paul; debate with Camus on
rebellion. J.-M. Domenach; S........ 202
Schnabel, Arturo. B. H. Haggin ; M ... 194
Schneps, Maurice
New format of J’he Nation; C ...... 256
Schoelkopf, Dean and T. Wilson
Book censorship in Saint Cloud, Minne-
sota; S, issue of January 24
Schools. See Education; New York City
Schuman, Frederick L
Mndpoftsithercoldl Wwarisiis) jars. stereos som tally
Science fiction. See Books
Scientists in a mad world. M. B. Visscher ;
s PE BSCSTAIBONG te Mavs Oicisetwlajets ioe 135
Sciortino, Pasquale; treatment by Immi-
gra service. M. Maverick; C .... 135;
HOGI ALS OMIORS raiser, reheat ete aiet« caspehene 296
Sculpture at the Museum of modern art.
Scotia OBISON, ote. we AL Pebieits, cibi's s)elelelale 422
Sears, Roebuck ‘‘subverting’”’ Latin Amer-
GS apis, CLEATS © C90 ai eal aia alcnsiba) Sis ioiisthini's 483
Securities and exchange commission;
appointment of R. D. Demmler;
Himmarateteh ne ieneysticvecditckeveee mietaerate tatclaL aire - 338
Segard, Judith
Loyalty and housing; S, issue of February 7
Sell-out, the. M. Farber ; MP 57
Senate, the. See United States — Congress
Shapiro, Victor
No money for Jenner, et al.;
of June 27
Sherman, G. W.
Mexican Americans in the southwest;
S, issue of March 28
Sherman, George V.
C, issue
Nixon; art commissar; S, issue of
January 10
Sherman, Malcolm
Mile high hysteria in ‘‘comics’; C.. 196
Shubow, Lawrence D.
On article on fifth amendment; C, issue
Of sUNGEZ7/ si BEQRBISO! oe ale. «15: 016 s\erec0 . 471
Silone, Darina
Italy misrepresented? C ...... 297;
SEGRE ALSO Oi ole re) aetatstonetsietebenaheys aeiaielen Low
Silver, Alan
Deadlock iin! Koreas Ce yereicis «sce ese 40
Silver City, New Mexico. See New Mexico
SUMO Slay.) CAumereiisisis sicrllate etararenaiate 6 RTO
Sloane, Arnold T.
Retrogression in WHisenhower admin-
Astration; iSi .sjciss 359; see also
ih cerats SOS ee cite tel steleneiisteveies COL
Smear technique. See Loyalty
Smith, Frank E.
Chaplin in New Cee Cries 5
SOGMIAOM yieiade cls inte. sir cotatetotions isis eke iclalayer> 247
Smoking and lung cancer. “x.” Ochsner ; '
S .... 431; see also C, issue of June 20
Snyder, “Howard
Forty years in the black belt; S, issue
of March 21; see also issue of June 6
Social scientists, not hucksters, R. Good-
ManeSe eee 145/45) see, AlGO) «= etree 200
January-June, 1953)
PAGE
Social security; transformation; cam-
DRIRMEMOR Ts Wh Saagiste dscns «0 0 pe dtiaien ae
Socialism, Asian; militant; E.......... 89
Societe anonyme. E. Morgan; P 342
Soil aes let-up in. H, H. “ Ben-
nett; S$
Sollen, Robert H.
Philippine land reform; §
Songs for a new America C. G. Bell;
South, the
Future comes to the south. A, Maund;
South, the
Negroes in; improvement in status In
forty years. H. Snyder; S issue of
March 21; see also issue of June 6
South Africa. See Union of South Africa
South America; Peron visit to Chile; E .
Soviet Russia. See Union of soviet social-
ist republics
Spain
Army and falange friction;
Franco; E
Opposition’ to“Mranco; Hy... .s.ce5=
Orwell book on civil war; comment on
article by Matthews in issue of Dec-
ember 27, 1952; letters by Matthews
and She Trilling ..8.i.t6 esieitie Gao o
Treaty with the United States; aid for
Franco. J. Alvarez del Vayo; S ... 452
427
436
268
125
197
worry of
298
238
Speech, freedom of. See Freedom of speech
stafts, chiefs! of imew >) <1 «este
Stage, the. See Plays
Stalin, Joseph. See Union of soviet social-
ist republics
Stalnaker, Bill
McCarthyism; C, issue of June 20
Soliloquy on soliloquy ; (ear 315 ;
see also issue of February 28
Standards, bureau of. See Bureau of
standards
Stassen, Harold E.;
LODO TODO ca as y0,'xcsz4 ote cen cuvboba ta Snoneretere
State and church. See Church and state
State department ; employees; status of; E
Winconitiemetinement seek) cvreleyaas) ous ofayere
Yes-men wanted; cases of Kennan and
Bohlen; EB
Steinmetz, Harry C.
Congress on the campus; comment on
article by A. Barth; GC, issue of
Mare J6esee: ‘al snicrs auc aierera cues
Sternberg, Fritz
Depression, business;
batting; S 183; see also BE 178
Germany, western; topics of dis-
CAVBRIGINCIS,§ it widicter oteistens tet aleietenistarrinne 49
Stevenson, Adlai E.; ‘‘Dollars for sense,”
for dissemination of his views; com-
ment on letter in issue of December
20, 1952, by H. R. Wolfe; L. B.
Woodcock; C 197
Stijl, de. E. L. Faison, Tee Seve eee
Stock- market break on “peace talk” seneo a
Strange ones, the. M. Farber; MP ..... 57
Straus, Michael W.
Eisenhower give-away of natural
sources; S
Strikes. See Labor
Strong, Anna Louise
Stalinisy“heir’"s) C;
Students. See Loyalty
Styron, William
Prevalence of wonders; S
see alsoC .... 445;
Subversion. See Loyalty
Sudan. See Egypt
Surpluses of goods. See United States —
Economics
Swallow, Alan
Swallow poetry book award;
of May 16
Symington, Muriel I.
Praise where it is due; C
iz
eee
visit with Dulles,
137
198
218
237
322
means for com-
Te-
issue of April 18
are eet)
C, issue of June 20
C, issue
443
TV. See Television
Taft-Hartley act. See Labor — Union
Tapestries ; exhibition of. S. L. Faison,
DLs TAs ker tele cieaicioietevohenalor terete ele cahete 38
Tariff. See United States — Foreign trade
Taxation, federal. See United States —
Finances
Taxis Sar Der POG see ae aie xlounieiane's cali
Taylor, Margie
Comment on editorial in issue of Dec-
ember 6, 1952, on Mormons and the
INGERO Cire iens ocolekeye liste velnlouedeioitaliecieils 20
Taylor, Morris
Dismissal of M. Judd by university of
Colorado; comment on editorial in
issue of November 29, 1952; C .. 136
Taylor, Telford
Immunity proposal; S 447; see
ISOM EN wlueiicic tried ener stetier 9) siiensleter ada oun 428
Teacher, the. M. B. Christian; P ..... 414
|
a
a a
_ (ah FE EE 6 ne
I
(January-June, 1953
PAGE
Teachers. See Academic freedom; Edu-
cation
Television
Cabinet on the air; EB .....eeeeese
Commercials. F. Orme; S
Education by. S. Carson; S
Experiment, new, by Ford foundation.
S. Carson: S 0.5%. cca ctewnwewecuce
Temple university. See Academic freedom
Texas; San Antonio; book censorship;
Hk... DLS see: also .. ccc seecewte 525
Textile strike in Quebec; E ..... ies
Theater, the. See Plays
There is a dark river. J. Garrigue; P . 398
Thought, freedom of. See Freedom of thought
Tidlands oil. See Oil :
Time; on changes in The Nation .....- 107
Tito, Marshal. See Yugoslavia :
To a snail. F. Golffing; P ...-..+- see 168
Tomlin, Bradley Walker. S. L. Faison,
BV AG so) ceraie: oi”m(aahu ave ote 'eleloxe\eiele¥a\alels 334
Toohy, Elizabeth
Private school No. 1; Amish; at Geneva,
Indiana; S, issue of January ol -
Touster, Irwin; A_ ..--+eseeeees 295
Trade, foreign. See United States — ’ For-
eign trade
Treaty-making; Bricker amendment. M.
JemMEURey so . 280; see also E 318
Dulles and the Bricker amendment;
EL .... 3183 S€C ASO . 0 oc os cs weicae 280
Trilling, Lionel
Comment on Matthews article on Or-
well, in issue of December 27, 1952; a
C, with letter by Matthews ..-...- 85
Truman Harry S.; departure from the
presidency ; and record ; Rashes oteletern’e segue 61
Trusts; bonus for the duPonts ; E ..... 338
Suit against oil companies; dropping
OL MELT Gat cies akclentieicietme ts cleinis ere) sl ekoye 44
Tschacbasov ; eS aiwave \ev alata Ms teuaieye.ete ete ao 295
‘Turning point, the. M. Farber; APS. ciaveke 57
Tuttle, Anthony
I'reedom and McCarthyism; C ..491;
see also issue of June 28, 1952
U
UNESCO. See United nations — Economic
and social council
U.S.S.R. See Union of
republics
Un-American
Loyalty
Union of South Africa
Blection; Malan victory. J. Hatch; S .-
Malanites’ tactic; E
Racism in. B. Davidson ; Ss
Cause of riots. H. S. Warner; S .-
Repression policy of Malan’s party I .
Uranium from; E
Union of soviet socialist republics
And Communist China; axis, new, in
the making. A. Werth; S .....----
And eastern Germany ;
Soviet policy; E
Easing of soviet rule; revolt by Ger-
AVIAN Spee erate creloie’elele! slele «1 1<) -nelwte
And the United | ‘States; Stalin state-
ment on possible negotiations; EP ..
Anti-semitism. A. Werth; S .....-..-.
Anti-semitism in S.S.S.R. and satellite
countries and purges. M. Gayn;
...- 94; see aso 92; 117; C .
Anti-semitism in U.S.S.R. and satellites
F. Kirchwey; S .... 92; see also
94; 117; C, 135
Break with Israel, over bombing in
Tel Aviv; appeal to Bisenhower; E.
Doctors, accused ; collapse of case; E .
Foreign policy:
Card for Germany; unity plus re-
armament. M. Gayn; S ..----
Deeds and words; E
Peace bids by Malenkov; E
Peace moves or propaganda? E....
Stalin statement on possible negotia-
tions with United States; P .....-
Malenkov, G. M.; new head of state.
ni. Chaps Bb ooconcsoc sta olele
Military strength. a. "Alvarez ‘del “Vayo;
Ss
soviet socialist
activities committee. See
No “father” : ‘needed. : ‘B. at P. ; "Young;
Coe) Son) See) also)
Purges in U.S. §.R. and satellite coun-
tries, and anti-semitism. F. Kirch-
WEVA; LON ferers (ema 5u (SEC alse 94;
ees Cua tovaverstal-neterel=
Purges and anti- ‘semitism in au: S. ‘S.R.
satellite countries. M. Gayn; S....
94; see also 92; 117; C .....-..
Stalin; death of, and possible effects;
articles by E. Browder and A. Werth;
Siec2d see al sO Cum srraier.
Stalin, death of; caution needed in
considering consequences; E .....-..
Stalin’s “heir”. A. L. Strong; C, issue
of April 18
—
390
495
538
167
339
466
308
513
533
146
135
137
297
394
531
237
257
242
66
222
135
135
356
219
Index
PAGE
Unions, labor. See Labor
United automobile workers convention.
_A. Eggleston; S ...........
United nations
Assembly, general; debate on Korea.
J. Alvarezidel Vayolsy S)occie slo cislere
Session; Lodge action. J. Alvarez
del Vayo; S piciatera
Attack on, by Father Curran; E awiaie
Economic and social council; conflict
with state department and congress
over McCarthyism. A. Werth; s ..
Economic commission for Europe; oppo-
sition of Russians; E .......
Employees:
Acheson testimony; E ...
Canada not screening her nationals . .
Dismissal of R. E. Crawford. By
R. E. Crawford; S .. 76; see also
C 177; 217; C, issue of April
18 (reprints available)
Lie’s action on information on loyal-
CY75) Wace LOT BEGLAISO Mel. cine
Personnel policy of the United na-
tions H. Rolin; § 207; see
also E ....
Screening for loyalty; BE ..........
Formosa; Eisenhower decision. W. M.
Rallie imac ciectts ee
Help for the ‘handicapped.
del Vayo;
Key questions, J. Alvarez del Vayo; Ss) :
Opposition to United States member-
BIpis) Ey avete<.0
Removal from New "York suggested. ae
Berlitz; (S wi... (264%) (gee! ‘also -C;
issue of April 18
Secretariat general; retirement of Lie;
election of Hammarskjold; E
Secretary general, new? J. Alvarez del
Vayo; Si... 241.5) Geeralso) ilisielsteels
United States
And Soviet Russia. See Union of soviet
socialist republics
And Spain. See Spain
Cabinet; television talk; E ...
Congress:
And the judiciary; refusal of judge
to testify; E vee cetece etolaveleternte
Eighty-third ; prospects; Bo oiccesce
Election of 1954 and the carer
G. Roth; S.«... piaeletete
Investigations. RUaekee Hume; AG cere
Investigations. P. Wittenberg; 8
390; see also letter with editor-
ial comment; issue of June 6
Criticism of methods; E .....
Kisenhower stand on; E
Senate indifference to threat of
freedoms) WH) Veisiciele's\s) «010
Defense, national:
Budget versus arms. B. Catton; S .
Chiefs of staff, new; E
perense or depression? A. A. Rogow;
Domain, public;
Grab for. B. Catton; S
Economics:
Corn; and Secretary Benson B. Cat-
ton; ‘ oa
Dene or depression? a A Rogow ;
er
seeee
Ce
ee ee |
meer ivarez
eeteeee
Depression, business : means toe com-
batting. F. Sternberg ; Sieverenaor
ey UEC) Io) Gaeoacods
Price control on farm. products, and
congressional election of 1954. G.
Roth; S
Prices ; parity and
Greene sa C were cioleleleletalototsleltnieteyer=
Prices, farm; control; new pro-
grams. Catton); a Siartetstelalone etatal
Support of. J. M. Youngdale; C..
Profits; taxes into profits. B. Catton;
"ethics. : is ; B.
Sterling ‘and the “dollar: AIH So oe
Stock-market break on “peace talk” ; 6
mraistavetere ales elelsicisieldtelols clstetelal slates
Surpluses of goods; threat of; E ..
Employees; discrimination outside the
United States. T. R. Amlie; C ..
Finances:
Budget for 1953-54; E ........ aa
Budget versus arms. B. Catton; S .
Campaign to reduce taxes and ex-
penditures; E .
Excess-profits tax; ; ‘continuation op-
DOSECI ME Nerclevc clerstalaidetal-felaleiohelaicyane
Outlook. B. Catton; §S
see also E ......
Taxation; budget, and. ‘difficulties in
way of reduction; E
Taxation into profits,
eee ees eene
B. Catton;
ee eee enre seeee
Forces armed ; chiefs ‘of staff, “new; E.
Foreign policy
Seca in Eisenhower-Dulles policy
eee etre reese ee ees ereeeeeee
201
494
543
239
22
77
207
197
109
185°
140
329
465
300
239
493
494
21
327
443
237
217
428
430
427
455
115
246
455
178
- 327
216
165
175
304
217
297
258
60
44
430
446
445
178
258
304
427
239
Vol. 176)
PAGE
Definition; move toward, by Bisen-
hower administration ; EB ain’ sis keds
Eisenhower address on peace; condi-
tions for Asias) HB) ei ccecment
Henderson failure as a diplomat;
record in the middle cant EB ase
Ike's, or Taft'sp (Hi insu eee
Latin America and the new. United
States administration. J. Alvarez
del Vayo; S ..
Middle east; bungling in; a same
Resume: B. Catton) (Si se. ose
Trend of. F. Kirchwey ; Sa Geoceo..-
Foreign service:
Aldrich; million-dollar diplomat, E.
Pohoryles ; Siiwese = ocolelatetann
Impairment by Bohlen affair; Bisnis
Foreign trade:
Danger of retaliatory tariffs; E ..
Demand for more protection; E...
Eisenhower request for renewal of
Sa trade agreements act;
Policy ; outlined “in Hisenhower mes-
sage; aioletetelsivnens
Government:
Machine, new; built by G.O.P. By
B. Catton; S .... 223; see also B
Presidential succession. L. Wilmerd-
ing, Jr.; C .... 155; ‘seemalso
issue of December 20, 1952, page
Retrogression in Eisenhower admin-
istration. A. T. Sloane; S .. 359;
B. Catton; S 361; see alsoE .
See ao Eisenhower, President
Dwight D.
Tariff. See United States — Foreign
trade
Trade, foreign. See United States —
Foreign trade
Universities. See Education
Utah; Mormons and the Negro; comment
on editorial in issue of December 6,
1952; letter by M. Taylor ........
Utilities, public
are by private interests; cattrnt
eee weet eee eee enw men ww nee wens
eee eet www ee
Vassar, Howard. Longshoreman’s story ;
issue of January 3
Vayo, Julio Alvarez del. See Alvarez del
ayo, J.
Velde, Harold H.; on investigation of his
methods; BE
Vice presidency. See United States —
Government
Vincent, John Carter; doubt cast on
loyalty; testimony of Budenz; E ene
Retirement from state department; E .
Vishinsky, Andrei; return to United na-
tions. J. Alvarez del VayosuS' ic. ssc
Visscher, Maurice B.
Scientists in a mad world; S .... 69;
Bee B1S0: Co Siviese sicters'eleie isin che aOnenane
wage art. See International foundation,
Vittorini, Elio; comment on his article
in issue of December 6, 1952. H. Kop-
Persmiith);) WC Preeteteretereteletars oveltenniate
Voice of America? A fantasy ........
Ww
Wagener Robert F.; death; E ....... are
Wall street break on ‘‘peace talk’’;
War, causes of; article by R. S. Lynd, in
issue of December 27, 1952, praise for
letter by R. Johnson ......... eicirerees
Cold; end of. F. L. Schuman; § ...
See also Militarism
Warner, Harry S.
Riots in) (South, Africa 5S Viictervets ieee
Warner, Marjorie F.
Comment on article by R. Crawford; € .
Washington, District of Columbia
Christmas-tie club; E
Letters from. See Catton, B.
Society in; Republican mink. U. F.
Carter si St cieetarctoieteletetats sje teNoatereteneie
Water power
Central wales, project; struglle for
control. D. G. Farrelly ; er Bosc =
see aes oiele.e (a wie teiaie é
Chief Joseph dam; British ” bid ‘Te-
Jected!s)) 7H ive. 27. le latorcleteletteenlestreneenere
Give-away program number 2B
Catton Sh ciclo. ereietel<etatelens miele ctegeione
Hell’s canyon; retreat ate Wie- ices
Public ; attack on. B. Catton; SL hes deecta
Rio Grande valley project. E. Perry ; s.
Hoover proposal for lease to private
operatorsis “| wie ssejsrale tie ele elelelmivivyela
Watkins, Catherine
Praise for) BS Hy HageinisiC erste: q
Weeks, Sinclair; and dismissal of Astin.
B. Catton; S
eee me wwe e eee w ewww eee
177
337
317
138
277
579
358
20
115
237
23
218
283
135
176
244
406
297.
156
518
167
217
514
503
445
PAGH
Weiss, Peter
Point four; four years later; S .
eizmann, Chaim; passing of. N. Gola-
Wells, Katherine A.
Committee in defense of freedom urged ;
Werth, “Alexander
Communist China and U.S.S.R.; axis,
new, in the making; S
“Death of Stalin, and possible effects ;
me wea; see also C
Dulles visit to Europe;
see also E :
_Jews in U.S.S.R.; anti-semitism; S....
Morocco in turmoil ;
Prokofiev, the real;
UNESCO conflict with state department
- and congress over McCarthyism; §S .
_ ©, isse of March 21; see also ..
West Virginia; tax program, endorsement
by J. L. Lewis; E Pisce
Wexley, John
_ Corrects editorial on Rosenberg Case;
__C, isse of March 21; see also
Whitney, Alan
American association of university pro-
fessors ; meeting, and academic free-
dom ; S, issue of April 11; see anoy E
ort, John ; A
eir, Roy Ww.
Taft-Hartley freeze; S
figgins, J. R.; address on freedom of the
press
Williams, Emlyn; readings from Dickens.
. H. Clurman;
Wilmerding, Lucius, Jr.
Presidential succession; C .... ;
see also issue of December 20, 1952,
es page 579
Wilson, Charles E.; “sacrifice”
come secretary of defense; E
to be-
72
32
ilson, H. H.; new member of The Nation....
staff; E
McCarthy, report on, by senate subcom-
mittee ;
Wilson, Tom, and D. Schoelkopf
Book censorship in Saint Cloud, Min-
- nesota; S, issue of January 24
Witch hunts. Sce Loyalty
| Wittenberg, Philip, investigations, con-
gressional; S .... 390; see also let-
ters with editorial comment, issue of
; June 6
Wolf, Allen; A
Wolfe, Harold R.; letter ‘Dollars for
_ sense,” in issue of December 20, 1952;
. comment by L. B. Woodcock; C ..
Wonderful town. H. Clurman;
Woodcock, L. B.
Comment on letter by H. R. Wolfe, on
“Dollars for sense,” in issue of Dec-
, ember 20, 1952;
World action on a world task. S. Barr;
.-. 120; see also E
Vv iters. See Books
i.
-Rays versus smoking. H. Pomerance;
C, issue of June 20; see also
nye
Yarros, Victor
Ingersoll, Robert G.; C .... 277; see
also book review, issue of Decem-
ber 6, 1952, page 535
Praise for The Nation;
‘Yellen, Samuel
_ The mourning dove; P
Young, Edgar
c “father’’ needed by Soviet uno
SEES OG)? SCC AISOW wicre> os 0r0.0
_ Young, ‘Jefferson
t Wisdom of the child; S .... 372;
see also C, 445; C, issue of June 20
Youngdale, James M.
Farm prices; support;
Yugoslavia; Tito visit to Great Britain.
<A. Roth; §S ;
>
_Zavattini, Cesare;
Murray; S
immerman, Fred
Errors by Democrats in the presidential
election; C
movie ultra-realist.
BOOK REVIEWS
C, issue of June 6
229
222
. 326
Books are indexed under author and title
and in some cases under subject.
The following explanatory letters are
used in the index:
; B Book review
AN Brief annotation
R Reviewer
Index
A
Acton, Lord
Essays on church and state. Introduc-
tion by D. Woodruff; AN
Acton, Lord, a study in conscience and
politics. G. Himmelfarb; B
Acton’s political philosophy : An anal-
ysis. G. E. Fasnacht; AN
Adams, Mildred; R
African folktales and sculpture. Selected
Bay ciited by P. Radin a E. Bere:
The nature of gambling; AN
Always the young strangers.
burg; B
America and the ee "Partisan
Review series No. *
American-Russian
W. A. Williams; B
American socialist movement, the, 1897-
LOZ S90. Kipniss BS
American vanguard, 1953. Edited by C.
I. Glicksberg and B. Weber; AN ....
America’s way in church, state and so-
ciety. J. M. Dawson; AN
Amos Berry. A. Seager; AN
Anatomy of a satellite. D. A. Schmidt;
C, Sand-
A
Anderson, Sherwood
Letters; selected and edited with an
introduction and notes by H. M, Jones
and W. B. Rideout; B
Angry angel, the. L. Zilahy. Translated
by T. L. Harshner; AN
Anisimov, Oleg
The ultimate weapon; B
Annapurna, M Herzog. Translated by L.
Morin and J. A. Smith; B
Appreciation of Frederico Garcia Lorca,
with selected translations of his poetry.
R. Campbell; AN
Approach to dramatic criticism, the.
Brown, and others;
Arfelli, Dante
The fifth generation. Translated by A.
Foulke; AN
Asia; five books on
Attack, the, and other papers.
Tawney ; AN
Baldwin, James
Go tell it to the mountain; AN
Ball, W. Macmahon
Nationalism and communism in east
Asia; AN
Barea, Arturo
Unamuno; B
Barth, Alan;
Basseches, Nikolaus
Stalin, Translated by E. W. Dickes; B .
Bates, a glue
Love for Lydia; AN
Baudelaire on Poe. Critical papers. Trans-
lated and edited by L. and F. E. Hy-
slop, Jr.; AN
Bauer, John
Make the U. N. ereruse — for peace; i
B
Beauvoir, Simone de
The second sex. Translated and edited
by H. M. Parshley; B
Bellen Ta aR
Bentwich, Norman
Israel; AN
Berman, Harold J.
The Russians in focus; B
Blackmur, R. P.
Language as gesture; B
Blanket boy. A novel of South Africa.
P. Lanham and A. S. Mopeli-Paulus ; ;
AN
Bliven, Bruce
Preview of tomorrow The unfinished
business of science; AN
Blue trout and black truffles. J. Wechs- fs
berg; AN
Bodley, R. V. C.
The warrior saint;
Booth, Edwin ; biography. E. Ruggles ; AN
Borton, Eleanor
The women in Gandhi's life; AN
Boulding, Kenneth E
The organizational revolution; AN
Bowen, Howard A.
The social responsibility of the busi- :
N
nessman ;
Bradbury, Ray
The golden apples of the sun; AN ...
Brandt, Conrad, B. Schwartz, and J. K,
Fairbank
A documentary history of Chinese
communism ;
Brice, Fanny; biography. N. Katkov; AN
Bridge, Ann, ‘and S. Lowndes
The selective traveller in por eet
Bronte story, the. M. Lane; A
January-J une, 1953)
Brooks, Van Wyck
The writer in America; AN
Brown, Ivor, and others
The approach to dramatic criticism ;
Brown, W. Norman
The United States and India and Paki-
stan; B
Brown, W. Norman; R
pr ouene Robert. * portrait. B. Miller ;
Bruch, Hilde, M.D.
Don’t be afraid of your child; AN
Bryan, Helen
Inside; AN
Burnshaw, Stanley
Early and late testament; AN
Bush, Douglas
English poetry: Main curents from
Chaucer to the present; AN
Cc
Cairns, Huntington, and J. Walker
Great paintings from the National gal-
lery of art (reviewed in issue of
December 20, 1952); correction
Campbell, Roy
An appreciation of Federico Garcia, with
selected rreuslations of his poetry;
AN
Campbell- Johnson, Alan
Mission with Mountbatten ; B
Cardano. The gambling scholar. O. Ore.
With a translation from the Latin of
Cardano’s ‘“‘Book on games of chance”
by S. H. Gould; AN
Carruth, Hayden; R
Carter, Hodding
ee Main street meets the river;
Cecile, By B. Constant. Edited and anno-
tated by A. Roulin. Translated by N.
Cameron; AN
Celler, Emanuel
You never leave
biography; AN
Century of conflict, a. S. T. Possony; B .
Chapin, Henry, and F. G. Walton Smith
The ocean river. The story of the Gulf
stream; AN
Children are born on Sunday. J. Staf-
ford; AN
Chopin, in search of. A. Cortot. Translated
by C. and R. Clarke; AN
Christian democracy in Italy and France.
M. Einaudi and F. Goguel; B
Cicellis, Kay
No name in the street;
Clark, Charles E.; R
Classic art. H. Wolfflin.
P. and L. Murray; B
Claudel, Paul, and Andre Gide, the cor-
respondence of. Introduction and notes
by R. Mallet. Prefaced and translated
by J. Russell; B
Collected poems. Y. Winters; AN
Collected poems, 1917-1952. A. MacLeleny,
B .... 1038; see also editorial, "i
Collected poems 1921-1951. E. Muir; Bi.
Collected poems of Dylan Thomas, the; B
Constant, Benjamin
Cecile. Edited and annotated by A. R.
Boe Translated by N. Cameron;
Brooklyn ; auto-
Correspondence between Paul Claudel and
Andre Gide the. Introduction and notes
by R. Mallet. Prefaced by J. Rus-
sell; B
Cortot, Alfred
and R. Clarke; AN
and R. Clarke; A N
Cossery, Albert
he laze ones. Translated by W. Goyen;
Cotton kingdom, the. F. L. Olmsted.
Edited, with an introduction, by A. M.
Schlesinger; AN
Count d’Orgel. R. Radiguet.
by V. Schiff; B
Course of empire, the. B. DeVoto; edi-
torial
Cousins, Norman
Who ‘speaks for man; AN
Cramer, C. H:
Royal Bob; biography of R. G. Inger-
soll; issue of December 6, 1952,
page 535; letter, issue of March
28, 1953, page 277
Crane, Hart
Letters of, 1916-1932. Edited by B.
Weber ;
Crankshaw, Edward;
Creative intuition in art and poetry. J.
Maritain; B Mpebenstat store
Translated
Ne * nh OE Pa aS. oe a ga ere lee sr my aa r on
(January-June, 1953 . Index UI i a Vole
PAGE PAGE PAGE
3 Fasnacht, G. E. 7
Croce, Benedetto: 1866-1952. F. Keene . 14 Acton’s political philosophy: An analy- war. Translated by A. de Milly; B. 15
Crosskey, William Winslow sis(;" AN: > soho. crs cannes ania: 272 Herzog, Maurice :
Politics and the constitution in the Fay, Eliot Annapurna. Transated by L. Morin ~—
history of the United States; B -. 505 Lorenzo in search of the sun. D. H. and J. A. Smith; AN’ .). 2. .wemianee
Gurti, > Merles Ro sc. sce ce ne re ene 330 Lawrence in Italy, Mexico, and the Himmelfarb, Gertrude
American southwest; AN ...... 401 Lord Acton, a study in conscience and '
Feeling and form. S. K. Langer; AN . 486 politics ; B.. . hee 57
D Feibleman, James K, Hillman, Sidney, biography of. M. Joseph-
Trembling prairie; AN ............ 152 SOD; Boo... e sve ee seve eeecenacs 102
Darwin, Charles Galton Fiala, Martin History of Engish drama, 1660- 1900. :
The next million years; B.....-.... 83 9:15 to freedoms, vANi <i. crete apecsratel oie 401 Volume I: Restoration drama, Volume ~
David to Delacroix. W. Friedlander. Trans- Fifth generation, the. D. Arfelli. Trans- II: Early eighteenth-century drama
lated by R. Goldwater; B .....-.- --. 16 lated ‘by “AC amoulke pe ANG Ste cia wc crst= 272 Volume III: Late eighteenth cen- ‘
Dawson, Joseph Martin First poems. M. Solomon; AN ......... 152 tury drama. A. Nicoll; AN .. 460
America’s way in church, state and Fisher, William Hoelderlin. His poems translated by M.
society; AN .....+--++se-seceecs 420 Mhekwaltens AN meester iat aaeciaatciee 212 Hamburger with a critical study; B .. 376
Dean, Vera Micheles GALLEY SIXTEEN Hoellering, Franz; R_ .......- oo Neier
Foreign policy without fear; AN . 459 ive gentemen of Japan. F. Gibney; B . 545 Holmes-Laski letters. The correspondence
Democracy in France: The third and Flaherty, Robert, the world of. R. Grif- = of Mr. Justice Holmes and Harold J. .
fourth republics. D. Thomson; B ... 80 fits gub eee eee eee 400 Laski, _ioié- 1935. Edited by M. D.
de Vigny Alfred . Foreign policy without fear. V. M. Dean; Howe's; Bi wisi: osha ene 249
The military necessity; AN .-...-.- 488 IRIN onan Ph ache hii ee ee 459 Hopkins, Gerard Manley ; a Hopkins read-
DeVoto, Bernard f aut Forging of American socialism. H. H. er. Selected and with an introduction
The course of empire; National book Quint ;VAN) disc. «ci ee eee 508 by Js cPick: AN S.2 ae san ee
-_. award for; editorial ..... Steer ; 111 Yorlorn ‘demon, the. Didactic and criti- Horowitz, David
Diplomats, the, 1919-1939. Edited by G. Gal) ‘essays, vA.> Dates (AN acces 420 State in the making. Translated by
A. Craig and F. Gilbert; AN ....... 486 France under the fourth republic. F. J. ‘Meltzer; AN /...%). 0:00 os cae
Divine horsemen. The living gods of Gogiel 7B 5235.03 2c ee oe ee 80 House by the medlar tree. G. Verga.
Haiti. M. Deren; AN ...... eee e ee eee 460 Franklin, Sidney Translated by E. Mosbacher; AN .. 380
Documentary history of Chinese com- Bullfighter from Brooklyn; AN...... 130 Hughes, H. Stuart; R ........ «obese
munism, a. C. Brandt, a Schwartz, Free India in Asia. W. Levi; B ...... 15 Hughes, Langston
and J. K. Fairbank; B ........--. 150 Freedom and the tragic life. A study in Simple takes a wife; AN ...... ce ae
Dog’s head, a. J. Dutourd. Tica ined by Dostoevsky. V. Ivanov. Translated by Hull, Helen
R. Chancellor; AN ....... onaooor 231 S;: “Konovalov ). Bias aaa. 129 Landfalls AN. \jccttcletarerterents
Pom Casmurro. Machado de Assis. Trans- Friedlander, Walter Humphries, Rolfe; last Verse chronicle
lated by H. Caldwell; AN.......... 440 David to Delacroix. Translated by R. by him; letter by Humphries .......
Don’t be afraid of your child. H. Bruch, | _ Goldwaters/ Bs aa. homies sonnets 16 Humphries, Rolfe; R .......... ,
M.D:; AN... 220 eee sence ee eees 252 Frontier, the great. W. P. Webb; B..... 34 Hutchison, Bruce
Dostoevsky, a study in. (Freedom and Fry, Christopher The incredible. Canadian; AN Bae
the tragic life.) I. Ivanov. Translated An experience of critics; B ..... 382 Hiutchison, Keith- ios ose Son eae eee
by S. Konovalov; B 2% ..%5..0..+--. 129 Hutchins, Maude
Dragon and the unicorn, the. K. Rex- G My hero's «AN 44\.«.< <9. ohne eee ane
PEE 8 WAIN Ale oici clio , nin erejaie ne sytyapeie sie.o.s 36 Huxley, Julian
du Gard, Roger Martin : Gandhi: The women in Gandhi's life. E. Evolution in action ;. BY i... .1camen ages
Recollections of Andre Gide; AN ... 460 Bortonys: SA Niewsc vcs wkenlere halen erat 469
Dunham, Batons AN 311 Gay, (Petets .-.,.ccaceecccmes re rarhermare 36 I
Giant _in_ chains; AN ....--+-+e++0+- Gaynie Marks Reo) ok sete 150, 290, 545 mpa c
Duteil, H.-J. ; Geismar, Maxwell; R .... 230, ...... 374 z re silence ere enter a the: ae
The great American parade. Trans- 547 Genzmer, George; R ....+..+20s--ree- 128 Impatient crusader. J. Goldmark: AN .
lated by F. Pratt; AN .......-.- Giant business — threat to democracy. In search of Chopin. A. Cortot, Trans-
Dutourd, Jean R. Ch T), Ke Quinns Bie cies scons letctaci cite 350 lated by C. and R. Clarke: AN......
A dog’s head. Translated by a) 231 Giant in chains. B. Dunham; AN .... 311 In the nazi era. Sir L. Namier; B ....
CULT 5 PN oral "3 « aioinie) oti 2) NS Ra Gibney, Frank In those days: Before the first world war.
ui Five gentlemen cf Japan; B ...... 545 E. Herriot. Translated by A. de Milly; B
Gide, Andre; recollections of. R. M. du Incredible Canadian, the. B. Hutceiee
aoe aenehaw Gard; AN ......00.- esse sees weenes 460 AN?’ o 325.0 sete, eee
Barly ane late testament. S. a on Gide, ZOE: ana Paul Claudel the cor- Ingersoll, Robert G., biography. ‘G a
IN ico fete nie tel ae ott wiceti otic soeiet © hep apie aeratronicrionmaniiena tes & igeta GED EL: 6, 1952, page
Economic change. S. Kuznets; AN . 351 responsence2 ramer, issue 0 ember pag
Economic stability in a changing world. DT A oe and ‘Wensietes 149 Se et issue of March 28, 1953,
J. H. Williams; AN Mea ana 212 Go tell it on the mountain. J. Baldwin Inside. H. Bryan; AN ........ ne
Ex onoriics in) the public service, 8, * 378 AN nese ect cette eee teen nett eens 488 Invisible man. R. Ellison; editorial ... 11
Wann Legh ee ee ee Goals on economne (ier ates, ae ‘449 ‘Israel. N. Bentwich; AN ot. ce
, mied Cana ALG © Buti cieiteervcad s natee nhs ees Ivanov, Vyacheslav
Memg3-1810; Bs ws ts cesses 2, B74 Goguel, Francote Freedom and the tragic life. A study in
France under the fourth republic; B . 80
Einaudi, Mario, and F. Goguel Geguel, Francois and M. Einaudi
Dostoevsky. Translated by S. Kono-
Christian democracy in Italy and 80 Christian democracy in Italy and France ValOy i Goa 0; Sa”
Ue B sekedchenoie=iascksie aurisi-)- cla BA. hie oe ee 80 J
Ellison, Ralph ‘ Golden apples of the sun, the. R. Brad- James, C. L. R.
Tnvisible torial National book award 111 PUPA niciiachiaabnt rican 312 Mariners, renegades, and castaways;
for; euioxe iG ihe, Oe Beomibenes Goldmark, Josephine editorial |... aelsy 7. cee =
and of a revolution, the. F. ’ 990 A imavatient Crusader: “AN! <.400.02eee 401 James, Henry ; book on, and book by wares
sect e eet teste eter tse cess tease Silancre “Wiletos Jameameietry
English ee ete Se oN Chau 131 My dear Timothy ‘ANI aos cree 173 Sacred fount, the. With an introductory
cers tonihe presen erred aie ha es © Good man, a. J. Young; AN ......... 231 essay by li. Edel; Biv. css.
Ernst, Morris L. and D. Loth fae Graham, W. 8. Jameson, Storm
Report on ne ee emeae commun E- 487 The white threshold; AN ........-.- 37 The green man; AN ....... {oe
ee Oo oh a atate: By Lord Great American parade, the. H.-J. Du- Jeans, Sir James. A biography by the
STS CaGn be iD. Waedautt: teil. Translated by F. Pratt; AN . 547 late E. A. Milne; AN .......
aa ET EO ae 271 + Great paintings from the National gallery Ee Thomas) papers a Yolume V ‘VI:
SUS Eo RNS SS oe aN a bo Samad a ok ney of art. H. Cairns and J. Walker, (re- 1 May, 1871, to 1 Marc 4 ois
eeopa end) she ee Bad jOtber (Per: 376 viewed in issue of December 20, Jefferson reader: A treasury of writings
Europe and the United States in world 1952); correction ......-...--.. 134 about Thomas Jefferson. Edited with an
wove: an R Ma jolin: AN 420 Greeks, the. H. D. F. Kitto; AN ........ 17 introduction by F. C. Rosenberger ;
CC ODOT tee ee Se i190 Green man, the.. §. Jameson; AN .... 312 AN Neher Seale Dee = islets ogres
ee eont Soa J. Huxley; B ...- Griffith, Richard Johnson, Eyvind
"primar = lecHions in the south. A The world of Robert Flaherty; B .. 400 Return to Ithaca; AN ........-.++0-
Ya & sea TANG 152 Guerard, Albert R. .......... 16, 104, 149 Johnston, Alva
study in uniparty politics; AN .. 15 The legendary Mizners AN
Ex-prodigy. N. Wiener; B .....-..--- 270 H Joricad Wieneatea , : ae
Experience of critics, an. C. Fry; B 382; aa Tones Howard’ Anuntocd a:¢ 0 ¢'se.o «aaa
eaten, ‘Warren ne a Se, nae . ae THOMAS eo s/ise ERM sretotere vey serous me i The purcult of. happiness; B ......
y Pe ae andlin: \OSCAT esha isl delcddadedakstalelolevetatons ones, 5
Far from the customary skies; AN .. 381 Hannah More. M. G. Jones; AN ...... 130 Hannah) More; AN: « ow cis vce oe tesneienene
F Harold Laski (1893-1950): A biograph- Josephson, Matthew :
ical memoir. K. Martin; B........ 418 Sidney Hillman, statesman of Ameri-
Fabulous Fanny, the. The story of Fanny Hatch: (R6bDerts “Rams coscitie o shaeien ola corereRe 400 can) “laborsB) fie = cc eee eer eerane
Brice: IN; Katkov:;) (AN) foe eh... beers 211 Hawkins, Sir John; DICERADNS., PAS Katkov, Norman
Fairbank, John K., C. Brandt, and B. Scholes) (AING= «61 elikcsietererepeleiceleiwl «is tele ang The fabuous Fanny. The story of Peney
Schwartz Henrey, Mrs. Robert Brice's AN) oss (6/5, sve Scepeee teatehe ha teen ne
4 documentary history of Chinese The little Madeleine: The autobiography Kazantzakis, Nikos
Omyhip iis My Sagsmocanacves 150 of a young French girl; B ..... 104 Zorba, the Greek. Translated and with
Faison, S. Lane, Jr.; R .... 16; see also Henry James. The untried years: 1843- notes by C. Wildman; AN .......
efi AML Dill inik Hahecoi oveteslanat hlelverena ‘eben ts levers 310 TSO. Task Wd eli BR) <oBeteie ses lo areuoeerrae 374 Keene, Frances
Far from the customary skies. W. By Herriot, Eouard Benedetto Croce: 1866-1952 .......
RUSTE TAIN, ateichetetateleveteiote cteernictine eters 381 In those days: Before the first world Keene, Frances; R......438, ......--e8
y; ‘Jay Richard
Bart;
“Mackenzie ; biograph. Bi
AN sicveiblelaie
deere
‘Hutchi-
192
Greeks ; “AN
a ans ; R
, , Walter
a and her colonies; B .
J R
"Joseph Wood; R
Simon
momic change; AN ....-.-.
L
a
fe Hull; AN ...
argaret
Bronte BLOry 3 CAIN ie rat ale state! ==
er, Susanne Kk.
ing and form; AN .. 486
e as gesture. R. P. “Blackmur ; Bb 34
m, Peter and A. S. Mopeli-Paulus
nket boy. A novel of South Africa;
wee eee wees .
Bary eres 5 biography. R. Post-
A
erohelar ied
: aroid ; "biography. kK. Martin; B . 418
<i-Holmes letters, the. Correspondence
‘Mr. Justice Holmes and Harold J
aski, 1916-1935. Edited by M. D.
Howe ; Birete.. 249
phing matter, the. “W. Saroyan; B . 332
rence, D. H. ‘Lorenzo in search of the
n in Italy, Mexico, and the Ameri-
can southwest. E. Fay; AN
ones, the. A. Cossery. Translated
W. Goyen; AN
401
mon, R. S.
amazing birds;
el, Emil
d without end; AN
‘'s of Hart Crane 1916- 1932,
ted by B. Weber;
of Sherwood Anderson. Selected
edited with an introduction and
otes by H. M. Jones and W. B. Ride-
GE See : 526
Werner
e India in
Sinclair,
the.
Asia; B se) 2D
: reader. Edited “by “H. h.
ule and M. H. Cane: Assisted by
. A. Friedman; AN ...... 211
: ind activities of Sir John Hawkins.
usician, magistrate and friend of
Johnson. P. A. Scholes; AN .. 313
and death of a newspaper, the. oi ‘W.
. Scott; AN Ble cre ten EO
of George Lansbury, “the. R. Post-
te; AN MR cS BS ANS
of the past. G. G. Simpson; AN .. 460
in the forest, the. C. Richter; AN . 488
enthal, David
‘business : A new era; B ........ 210
P. Randall; Bibiavol ele cial s aNe ora 232
e Madeleine, "the: The autobiography
of a young French girl. aire. R. rene
SUMEEEME Di oc cle ce sic acees 104
union, the. L. R. “Sayles: ‘and G.
2UuSS ; eee eericcaicbiniclesniaen oro
Federico “Garcia; an apprecia-
of, with selected translations of
is poetry ; AN eieretel alates
Acton, a study in conscience and
olitics. G. Himmelfarb; B
Lorenzo in search of the sun. D. H. Law-
rence in Italy, Mexico, oe re Ameri-
can southwest. E. Fay
of her neighbors, the. on Medtiilion :
’ David, and M. inn Ernst
port on the American communist; B . 103
for Lydia. H. BE. Bates; AN ..... 173
yndes, Susan, and A. Bridg e
he selective traveller in Pectucal: AN 84
, Robert S.; 418
401
re
M
fachado de Assis
m Casmurro. Translated by H. Cald-
Meewell; AN: ..:...... Fe eas)
eLeish, Archibald
Collected poems, 1917-1952; B 103;
editorial ..........seeeeeeeeeees 1
PAGE
Make the U.N.
Bauer; B
Man from Main street, "the. ah" Sinclair
Lewis reader. Edited by H. EB. Maule
and M. H. Caine. Assisted by P. A.
Friedman; AN .. ereiniwintetevaa’e
Man Whistler the. H, Pearson ; ASIN es te
Man without qualities, the. R. Musil.
Translated by E. Wilkins and E. Kai-
ser; AN -.. 528
Mariners, renegades, and castaways. Cc,
Ta dames;, editorial eieialecistscls ei visle? 2D U
310
effective — for peere: J.
129
211
312
Maritain, Jacques
Creative intuition in art and poetry; B.
Marjolin, Robert
Europe and the United States in the
world economy; AN
Marshall, S. L. A.
The river and the gauntlet;
Mary Lincoln biography of a marriage.
Reieutandalles CAN sc 232
Maugham, W. Somerset
The vagrant mood, Six essays; AN .. 351
McCracken, Harold
Portrait of the old west; AN 17
McElwee, William
Pie uunier of Sir Thomas Overbury ;
420
545
we eee eet
17
MeMillion, Bonner
The lot of her neighbors; AN ..
Melville, Herman; essay on ‘Mariners,
renegades, and castaways.” R.
James; _ editorial
Menhert, Klaus
Stalin versus Marx; B
Michelangelo: His life and his era. 1G:
Papini. Translated by L. Murnane; AN.
Military necessity, the. A. de Vigny; AN .
Miller, Betty
Rebert Browning. A Pomel AN ..-.-
Miller, Perry; R ats araral etn
Milne, HAS AG
Year in year out; AN
Milne, E. A. (the late)
Sir James Jeans. A biography; AN ..
Minerals. A key to ave power. D. B.
Shimkin; B
Mirror for Americans a. Three volumes.
Compiled and edited by Nip S. Tryon;
A
eee ewww ee
N
Mission with | Mountbatten. A. Campbell-
Johnson ;
Mitchell, Lucy Sprague
Two lives;
Mizner, Addison and Wilson;
A. Johnston; AN
Montagu, Ashley
The natural superiority of women; B .
Mopeli-Paulus. A. S., and P. Lanham
Blanket boy. A novel of South Africa:
AN
“biography.
Moraes, Frank —
Report on Mao’s China; B
More, Hannah, biography. M. G. Jones;
N
A
Moravia, Alberto
Time of indifference;
Morrison, Theodore
The stones of the houses; AN
Mott, Frank Luther
The news in America;
Muir, Edwin
Collected poems 1921-1951; B ..
Mullahy, Patrick; R
Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury,
W. McElwee; AN
Musil, Robert
The man without qualities. Translated
by E. Wilkins and E. Kaiser; AN .
My dear Timothy. V. Gollanez; AN ..
My hero. M. Hutchins; AN ...
My host the world. G. Santayana; AN.
My uncle Joseph Stalin. B. Svanidze.
Translated by W. Root; B
Myths and realities: Societies of the
colonial south. C. Bridenbaugh; AN .
the,
N
Namier, Sir Lewis
In) ithe= nazi eras (Bi we. ieee 35
National health service in Great Britain,
tioned se) Rossi; (ANG is ctemere 460
Nationalism and communism in east Asia.
W. M. Ball; A Aetenvorev oun a ae
Natural superiority of women, oe A.
Montagu; B » 485
Nature of gambling, the. ss
AN
Neblett, William H.
Pentagon politics; AN piorerale 292
Nevins, Allan
Study in power: John D. Rockefeller,
industrialist and philanthropist; B. 458
New science of politics, the. E Voegelin; B 57
News in America, the. F. L. Mott; AN . 37
Next million years, the. C. G. Darwin; B 83
January June, 1958)
7
Nicoll, Allardyce
A history of English drama, 1660-1900.
Volume I: Restoration drama, Volume
II: Early eighteenth-century drama.
Volume III: Late elelteen -cen-
tury drama; AN
9:15 to freedom. M. Fiala;
Nine stories. J. D. Salinger;
No name in the street. K. Cicellis; AN..
Nourse, Edwin G.
Economics in the public service; B
Oo
Ocean river, the. The story of the gulf
stream. H. Chapin and F. G. Walton
Smith; AN
Old pines and other stories. J. Boyd; AN ;
Olmsted, Frederick Law
The cotton kingdom. Edited, with an
Foerosction, De A ME Schlesinger ;
Ore, Oystein
Cardano. The gambling scholar. With
a translation from the Latin of Car-
dano’s “Book on games of chance”
by S. H. Gould; AN
Organizational revolution,
Boulding ;
Orwell, George
Such, such were the joys; AN fea
Our amazing birds. R. S. Lemmon; AN .
Out of red China, L. Shaw-tong. Trans-
lated by J. Chia and H. Walter; N .
Outsider, the. R. Wright; B
Overbury, Sir Thomas, the murder of.
W. McElwee; AN .. eee
P
Papers of Thomas Jefferson, the. Volume
VI. 21 May, 1781, to 1 March, 1784; B
Partisan Review Series No. 4; America
and the intellectuals; B
Pearce, Roy Harvey
The savages of America; AN
Pearson, Hesketh
The man Whistler; AN
Pentagon politics. W. H. Neblett;
Perkins, Frances; R
Picture. A story about Hollywood. L.
Ross; AN
Pilgrim reader, the. G. F. Willison; AN .
Poe, Baudelaire on. Critical papers. ‘Trans-
lated and edited by L. and F. E.
Hyslop, Jr.; AN
Poetry; five books
Poetry, books of (Verse chronicle), 36,
Last Verse chronicle by R. Humph-
ries; letter by Humphries
Politics and the constitution in the hist-
ory ne aad United States. W. W. CEES:
Postgate, Raymond
The life of George Lansbury; AN
Pound, Ezra
The spirit of romance;
Powell, Thomas Reed;
Preview for tomorrow. The unfinished
business of science, B. Bliven; AN .
Primary elections in the south. iN study
in uniparty politics. C.A.M. Bwing; AN
Primitive world and its transformations.
R. Redfield; AN ere
Prince Bart. J. R. Kennedy; B
Prince of players, Edwin Booth. BE. Rug-
gles; AN
Pirate of happiness, the, Ee ‘Jones ;
Quennell, Peter a
The singular preference; AN
Quinn, T. K.
Giant business — threat to democracy ;
B
Quinn, T. K.; R
Quint, Howard H.
EN forging of American socialism ;
i ee ee er err
R
Radiguet, Raymond
Coun d’Orgel. Juaneleted My Vi. Ronit
Randall, Ruth Painter
Mary ‘Lincoln, biography of a marriage;
Recollactions of Andre Gide. "RLM. “du
Redfield, Robert
The primitive world ona its trans-
formations; AN ... <i ope
Report on Mao’s China. F. ‘Moraes; Bie
Report on the American commune: mM
L. Ernst and D. Loth; B Soins
Return to Ithaca. E. Johnson ; AN . Eocatarntn
PAGH
(January-June, 1953
Rexroth, Kenneth
The dragon and the unicorn; AN
Rhys-Williams, Lady
Taxation and incentive; AN ..----
Richter, Conrad
The light in the forest; AN ...----
Riggs, Thomas Jr.; R .-eeeeeeeereses
Ritchie, Andrew Carnduff
Sculpture of the twentieth century;
FSM Fi cise: claves, c)ejeie o10\ein 00 > aloes si ecale
Rodgers, W. R. ‘
erone and the bull and other poems,
B
Romanus, Charles F.,
Stilwell’s mission to China; B
Ross, James Stirling
The national health service
Britain; AN
ss, Lillian
Se eitture. A story about Hollywood; AN
Rounds, Frank, Jr.
A window on Red square; AN a
Royal Bob; biography of R. G. Ingerso
¢.H. Cramer, issue of December 6, 1952,
letter, issue of March 28,
in Great
page 535;
eo onre
uggles, eanor
e Prince of players, Edwin Booth; AN
Russell, Bertrand
The impact of science on society ;
Russia, soviet; ten books on; B
Russia and her colonies. W. Kolarz; B
Russians in focus, the. H. J. Berman; B .
s
ered fount, the. H. James. With an
Bea cpauctory essay by L Edel; B
Salinger, J. D.
Nine stories; B
Sandburg, Carl
Always the young strangers; B
ntayana George
Baty host, the world; AN
Saroyan, William
The laughing matter; B :
Savages of America, the. R. H. Pearce ;
AN
Sayles, Leonard R., and G. Strauss. The
local union; AN Weck, Meretare eseteoierernte vate
Schmidt, Dana Adams
Anatomy of a Satellite; AN ....----
Scholes, Percy A.
The life and activities of Sir John Haw-
kins. Musician, magistrate and friend
of Johnson; AN
Schulberg, B.
Some faces in the crowd; AN
Schwartz, Benjamin, C. Brandt, and J.
IK. Fairbank
A documentary history of Chinese
communism; B_ ....e-eeeseeevess
Scott, J. W.
R.
The life and death of a newspaper;
AN
Ritchie; AN
Seager, Allan
Amos Berry ; AN
Second sex, the. S. de Beauvoir. Trans-
lated and edited by H. M. Parshley; B .
Selected prose of Bernard Shaw, the.
Selected by D. Russell; AN.......---
Selective traveller in Portugal, the. A.
Bridge and S. Lowndes; AN
Shakespearian plays and performances.
A. C. Sprague; AN
Shame and glory of ‘the intellectuals :
Babbitt, Jr. vs. the rediscovery of val-
ues. P. Wiereck's| Bo ui. ce - as Shales
Shaw, Bernard
Selected prose of. Selected by D. Rus-
BBN OAIN: Uolaveierraslsiela slciele sveiclellele (ele eievonene
Shaw- -ting, Liu
Out of red China. Translated by J.
Chia and H. Walter; AN .
Shen-chi Liu and Tsung-lien Shen
Tibet and the Tibetans; B.........-
Shimkin, Demitri B.
Minerals. A key to soviet power; B ..
Sidney Hillman, statesman of American
labor. M. Josephson ; Be.
Simple takes a wife. L. Hughes: AN
Simpson, George Gaylord
Life of the past; AN ...
Singular preference, the.
A
Pe ee eee eee nee e tere eee
eeeeee
THE NATION ASOCIATES, Inc.
PAGE
376
545
460
85
420
277
192
487
290
290
474
332
82
311
332
530
528
313
313
487
487
461
272
171
17
84
400
484
17
253
545
290
102
- 488
460
I na gy,
Index
PAGE
Sinnott, Edmund W.
Two roads to truth; AN....172; see
also') letters cicw<cloemieicestecieietntsteleve 317
Sir James Jeans. A ogi by the late :
E. A. Milne;
Smith, F. G. Walton, and H, Chapin
The ocean river. The story of the Gulf
BUTEA Sh GAIN) oeloverel stale cinteiafalelave lop eetale
Social responsibility of the businessman.
He ACS Boavent;) AN) Wictemnie ate eect inie lai
Solomon, Marvin
First POSSE OAN! #a axe inceieronereietaleiti<texamte
Some faces in the crowd. = Schulberg ;
IN: Sietact vere vie ocnielel ol siojntatareietnatetetare re tarste
Soviet Russia ; “ten ‘books on. Saetadateh fs. etsraeae
Spirit of romance, the. E. Pound; AN .
Sprague, Arthur Colby
Shakespearian plays and performances;
AN cietars ani sin) oc) aviulelaletelahe,sjelevelefalaretele
Spring birth and other poems, M. Van
Doren Bers. ee me ayevererayeiwiel«
Stafford, Jean
Children are born on Sunday; AN ...
Stalin, Joseph; three books on..........
Stalin. N. Basseches; translated by E. W.
DICKOS sks Maveleioisielers ee ete sWakare rate wicye
Stalin. A self portralt ; ‘Bi ccc. aisles tenete
Stalin versus Marx. K, Menhert; B...
State in the making. D. Horowitz. Trans-
lated. by J. Meltzeris: GAN) (ntsc. es ctes
Stendhal
Selected letters of: “To the happy
few.’’ Introduced by E. Boudot-La-
MOLte Fin BB ve jcye velalatetalayete ial eleiers ‘
Sternberg, Fritz
The end of a revolution; B ........
Stewart, George R.
Us Se LONANT | craravete eiattal lls) etal della retelete
Stilwell’s mission to China. C. F. Ro-
manus and R. Sunderland; B........
Stoddard, Whitney S.
The west portals of Saint-Denis and
Chartres); AUN) s/cic;0.0 see <)sisteisia nie lene
Stones of the house, the. T. Morrison;
BING © Sisahevals ciclapdiote on Henge day ene betciora ers
Strauss, George, and L. R. navies
The local union; AN ..... wtalaeth nmin '
Strausz-Hupe, Robert
The zone of indifference; B ........
Study in power: John D. Rockefeller,
industrialist and BEBE BtnreD se A.
Nevins 's Bi) cis0's:eiwial nid ptatwia die bin eie wimatte
Such, such were the joys. G. Orwell;
TAING Mn oicteevullelclaraotetehaie alelar ats lo tala atetntatsiie
Sunderland, Riley, and C. F. Romanus
Stilwell’s mission to China; B ......
Svanidze, Budu
My uncle Joseph Stalin. Translated
by W. Root; B ....scscee. aerate
Sword and swastika. T. Taylor; B pievaisiie
iT
Tate, Allan
The forlorn demon. Didactic and cri-
LICR EASA S50 AUN a alalelaicval<laleletalatalenets
Taxation and incentive. Lady Rhys- is
Mia we rrAN an. + ote etetere Piatetatutehnlataelalic
Taylor, Telford.
Sword and swastika; B ...........-
B
These your children. na bys He U.
Ribalowis Ani hj. lecletetateteisteleletotayoletoie
They learn what they live. H. G. Trager
MG OMe LATIOW/ CAIN malavelataietelatialciele
Thomas, Dylan
Collected poems; B srelere rele
Thomson, David
Democracy in France: The third and
fourth republics; B .....
Thorp, Willard: FH...
Tibet and the Tibetans. Tsung- ‘lien
and Shen-chi Liu; B ...
Time of indifference. A. Moravia; Becta
To the happy few. Selected letters of
Stendhal. Introduced by E. Boudot-
Lamotte; B
Tourville, Anne de
Wedding dance. Translated by M. Sa-
WALLS AUN] Weve eis
Toynbee, Arnold
The world and the west; AN ........
Trager, Helen G. and M. R. Yarrow
They learn what they live; AN
Tsung-lien Shen and Shen-chi Liu
ee
seen eens
cece . aoe
ee ee eee wne .
eee w eee eres es eeene
Tibet and the Tibetans; B..........
Two lives. L. S. Mitchell; AN..........
Two roads to truth. BE. W. piety: aN
1725. see also letter Goes.
Trembling prairie. J. K. Feibleman; ‘AN.
U
U. S. 40. G. R. Stewart; AN .......0.0.
Ultimate weapon, the. O. Anisimov; B..
Unamuno. A. Barea; B
i
400
376
“488
290
290
290
379
56
290
252
545
152
191
528
126
458
352
545
290
55
420
400
55
130
84
376
80
526
545
438
56
380
312
84
545
380
317
152
252
290
127
333 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 14
PAG
United States and India a 1
the. W. N Brown; eee
Vagrant mood, the, Six essays
Maugham; AN , "=
Van Doren, Mark
Spring birth and other poems; B
Vercors
You shall know them. Translated by R.
Barisse; AN
Verga, Giovanni
The house by the medlar tree, Trans-
=; lated By ae qrontachen: AN
erse chronicle. See Poet
Viereck, Peter ro
Shame and glory of the intellectuals:
Babbitt, Jr., vs the rediscovery of
i a ry
ee eee reece eee cents
values ; B
Vigny, Alfred de
The military necessity; AN ........
Voegelin, Eric
The new science of politics; B
Ww
Waiters, the. W. Fisher; AN
Walker, John, and H. Cairns
Great paintings from the National gal- ~
lery of art (reviewed in issue of
December 20, 1802 conte
=, Topo Wis R 5
arrior saint, the. R. ‘Vv. C. od .
Water, T. King ; AN B ley; AN
Webb, Walter Prescott
The great frontier; B . » «ers lererana
Wechsberg, Joseph
Blue trout and black truffles; AN.
Wedding dance. A. de Tourville, Translated
by M. Savill; AN .... aw late
West portals of Saint- Denis ‘and Chartres,
the. W. S. Stoddard; AN ..J.05 ame
Where main street meets the nines Fo
Carters, -AN) j.:5<.eonieee eee
Whistler, James Abbott ” McNeill ; _ dio-
graphy.. H. Pearson; AN “psceeme
White threshold, the. W. S. Graham ; AN.
Who speaks for man. N. Cousins ;' AN .
Wiener, Norbert
Ex-prodigy ; IB? 2 a avevefoncconate avesaldial
Williams, John H.
Benes stability in a changing world;
o 0 6 «clam
we eee
Williams, William “Appleton
American- ae relations, 1781-1947;
eee ee ects eee eee wwe wee twee
Willison, George F.
The pilgrim reader; AN ...
Wilson, abn ch aReeee
be Sree on Red square, ‘a. F Rounds, ‘Ire: ,
Winters, Yvor
Collected poems; AN
Wolffiin, Heinrich
Classic art. Translated by P. and L.
Murray ; sceloven ale ee cen we
women in Gandhi's: life, the.” E. "Borton j
see eee e wee
Women today. Edited by . “Bragdon ; .
World and ‘the “West. ‘A. ; Toynbee; “AN ‘ ve
Wee oh Robert Blaherei the. R. Grif-
it eoeececere
World without end. b Lengyel ; ANiwercz
Wright, Richard
The cutsider; B......
Writer in ‘America, the. Van Wyck
Brooks; AN ©. 5 .\s« +s «sclsielcei=mmnne
Writers for tomorrow. Second series. Edit-
one B. Hathaway and J, A. Sessions ;
Wynne diaries, the, 1789- 1820. * ‘Passages
selected and edited by A. Fremantle;
eee eee mew wee weet eee
Re
Yarrow, Marian Radke, and H, G. Trager
They learn what they live; oarene
Year in, year out. A. A. Milne; AN...
You never leave Brooklyn. The autobio-
graphy of E. Celler; AN %.<.. «see
You shall know them. Vercors. Trans-
lated by R. Barisse; AN ......5 sem
Young, Jefferson
A good man; AN .....+-00..- «clelaiaee
Z
Zilahy, Lajos
The angry angel Translated by T. L.
Harshner; AN .....0.-eeeeeecues §
Zone of indifference, the. R. Strausz-Hupe ; .
Zorba ‘the Greek. N. Kazantzakis. Trans-
le and with notes by C. Wildman;
eee e eect ec eeetererreneeee 38
coe DR a PS a eat ae” on ele y ve "ys
wes nye! eee Sr Bea oe
‘arran’s Christmas Carol—an Editorial
en |
WAS 59
January 3, 1953
SEES caf pe Eo a i A E :
4 PENTAGON POLITICS
( Senerals ; into Business Men
BY COLONEL WILLIAM H. NEBLETT
_
+
A Plea for Heretics
BY ALEXANDER MACBEATH
20
; PGs
i.
a
iit 5
‘ e
| - > a —- ow
= oe,
+
| Californiz s Central Valley Project
: The New Struggle for Control
BY DAVID G. FARRELLY
ES
ete.
“0 CENTS A COPY - EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865 - 7 DOLLARS A YEAR
rs .
~
vis
Longshoreman’s Story
AM one of the longshoremen who
wortk on the water front in the port
of New York. Everybody from the gov-
etnor down to the man on the street has
had something to say about me. I think
it’s about time you heard the longshore-
man’s story from a longshoreman. It’s a
pretty grim story, but I think you may
understand us better after you have
read it.
The best way to show you the condi-
tions I work under is to take you along
with me as I do my day’s work. At
7:50 a.m. the hiring boss blows his
whistle for the morning “shape-up.”
I've been working on this pier for six-
teen years, but that does not mean I'm
going to work today, Every day of my
life I must answer the shape-up whistle,
for on the docks you are hired by the
day. When the five o'clock whistle
blows you ate out of a job and must be
rehired the next day. Would you office
and factory workers like that? Would
you like to stand in the street in front of
your office or factory every day of your
life and wait for a hiring boss to come
out and tell the crowd who was going
_ to work and who wasn’t?
TODAY I'M LUCKY. The stevedore
boss needs three gangs to load cargo,
and I’m assigned to one. According to
the union contract a normal gang con-
sists of twenty-two men—four deckmen,
eight holdmen, six dockmen, two string-
piece men, and two chauffeurs. Work-
ing as a unit, the group can handle an
amazing amount of cargo in eight hours.
The dockmen load the slings and nets.
The chauffeurs, driving diesel trucks,
keep them supplied with cargo. The
holdmen stow it as it is lowered into
the ship’s hatch. The deckmen give the
winch opetator his signals, and the
sttingpiece men handle the lines.
The gang I’m in is assigned to
wotk the No. 2 hatch. As we walk down
, _ the pier to board the ship I look my
companions over. Most of the faces are
familiar, but there are thzee men that I
immediately recognize as “jumpers.” As
the word implies, jumpers are aliens
who have jumped ship and are in the
AROUND THE U.S. ee ,
United States illegally. What burns us
longshoremen up is the fact that these
foreigners compete with us for work
and that the people who bring them in
make a highly profitable business of it.
I believe, though I have no proof, that a
powerful underground organization
handles the arrangements for these men.
It gets them off the ship and houses
them in tenements near the piers. Then
it sends them out to the shape-up to
compete with us regulars for work.
A COUPLE of months ago the United
States immigration men, looking for
aliens, raided some of the piers just as
the shape-up was about to start. They
picked up over a hundred, one of whom
had been in the country only three days.
Of the eleven hundred men shaping up
on five piers that day, one hundred were
aliens here illegally.
Each “jumper” kicks back $25 a
week out of his pay. For a hundred
jumpers that comes to $2,500 a week.
Also the organization usually owns the
tenements the men are housed in, and it
collects $5 a week in rent from each
man. In addition it collects for the cost
of getting him into the country and for
all incidentals. Since there are more than
seven hundred piers in the port of
New York, you can see that bringing
in jumpers is pretty lucrative.
When we arrive at No. 2 hatch, the
hatch boss, who is there waiting for us,
tells us we are to load scrap iron. This
is hard and dangerous work. If you
have never loaded sctap from a wallow-
ing lighter moored to the offshore side
of a ship in 25° temperature you don’t
know what work is. The three “jump-
ers,’ with four other men and myself,
ate ordered to go down on the lighter
and put the scrap into a big bucket low-
ered to us from one of the ship’s booms.
Since it is scrap, we will do it by hand.
If it were what is called heavy stuff, a
huge magnet would pick it up and
lower it into the hold, where the rest of
the gang would stow it. I know I'am -
assigned to this job as punishment be-
cause the hiring boss and the hatch boss
suspect me of having been attive in the -
recent strike.
At noon I hurry to one of the restau-
and a couple of cups of coffee.
head down the street to the i 7
row $100 from him in order t
some bills that I ran up while I ¥
strike. For that $100 I borrow
pay $10 a week, and I intend to rep:
the principal at the rate of $25 a w
The first week I pay him $10 inte e
and $25 on the principal. The seco nd
week $7.50 interest and $25 on the
principal, and so on. So the mo
lender in the end has made $25 ona ,
$100 loan that existed for only one
month, ere :
A couple of minutes after 1 p.
go over the side of the ship and 5
down to the lighter. For four more —
hours I tug and haul scrap to the buc
and then the day is done. Wea
shreds, my overalls and pea-jacket t
The next morning at 7:50 1 must
swer the shape-up whistle again
hope for work. The jumpers wi
there too, and the money lender
in his office down the street.
THOSE ARE just a few of the di
working conditions I must put up w
There are others, such as staying ¢
il be a tremendous step in ne
direction if the investigation does o
tuted a hiring hall with rotatic
work among the men, and a
the East Coast longshoremen hh
same system? We are rea
lems.
NEW YORK + SATURDAY + JANUARY 3, 1953
¢ Shape of T ee
in’s Statement
though surely aware that no decision on new nego-
tions with Russia would be made until after President-
ec - Eisenhower was inaugurated, Prime Minister Stalin
rently decided to take advantage of the interregnum
aise again the question of bilateral negotiations. The
ng was excellent. Since Russia’s rejection of the In-
resolution on Korea in the General Assembly, the
pect for peace has been darker than ever and public
inion has been the more eager for some new approach.
ose who believe the interview can be dismissed as the
e old propaganda should note the space the New
York Times gave it the following day—fourteen col-
s on different pages, The statement’s emphasis on bi-
al negotiations between the United States and Russia
ld not obscure the fact that on several occasions dur-
the last two years Moscow has proposed a Big Four
erence, Stalin can therefore reasonably expect that
his suggestion of a talk with Eisenhower will increase
hi aor of London and Paris to be included in any con-
ersations, One is reminded again of the possibilities
en 1 to Russian diplomacy if Moscow should finally de-
le to give up its habit of one day encouraging the West-
n world and public opinion by a conciliatory gesture
lin’s offer to meet with Eisenhower ‘is to arrange
h a meeting. What better way is there of finding out
t the Russians really want than by sitting down with
n around the conference table. It can be safely as-
ed that the American negotiators would protect
erican interests.
hose who dismiss the offer by saying that if Stalin
ed peace he had ample opportunity to bring it nearer
accepting the Indian proposal on Korea may have
mped to the wrong conclusion. What the Russians may
ing is an opportunity to get a number of issues
«
led using a eee Korean agreement as bait. To
NUMBER I
this end they want equality of bargaining power. In the
U.N. they are outnumbered ten to one—a fact that can-
not be ignored, even though their own tactics are largely
responsible.
Since Russia, like the rest of the world, has nothing to
- gain by war, we can assume it wants peace—on certain
terms. Are these terms and ours reconcilable? Can a
bridge be built between them? This is the basic ques-
tion. A direct inquiry is the surest method of producing
a satisfactory answer. Past efforts having obtained no
result; the incoming Administration would be well
advised to examine this invitation with great care. A
meeting held neither in Moscow nor in Washington
might improve the chances for reaching a negotiated set-
tlement. Even a meeting which did not achieve this
end could hardly fail to clarify the situation in a way
that would make it possible to relate American policy
more directly to the intentions of the Soviet Union,
Business Men into Generals _
President-elect Eisenhower's selection of four top busi-
ness leaders for major Pentagon appointments suggests
that just as generals can easily be restyled nowadays as
business men (see page 6 of this issue), so business men
feel very much at home in the swivel chairs of the
Pentagon. Robert M. Kyes, the new Deputy Secretary of
Defense (No. 2 spot), is vice-president of General
Motors; Robert Ten Broeck Stevens, who will be Sec-
retary of the Army, heads one of the nation’s greatest
textile firms; Robert Bernerd Anderson, Secretary of the
Navy, is general manager of the W. T. Waggoner estate,
a fabulous half-million-acre Texas ranch and oil empire;
and Harold E. Talbot, Secretary of the Air Force, has
been chairman of the board of North American Avia-
tion, Outside the Pentagon, Marion B. Folsom, who
is to be Under Secretary of the Treasury, is the treasurer
of Eastman Kodak Company, while Randolph Burgess,
appointed special assistant to the Secretary of the ©
Treasury, is chairman of the executive committee of the
National City Bank and director of several giant cor-
porations.
The new team is so patently of, by, and for big busi-
ness that General Eisenhower's daring in selecting it —
has startled even Wall Street. “This is not just business,”
5 aha oe a a NRE
Modan OA ages eae a Sie
pe IN THIS ISSer
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 1
McCarran’s Christmas Carol 4
ARTICLES
Thunder in the Air by J. Alvarez del Vayo 5
Generals into Business Men
by William H. Neblett 6
Proposals for Peace—II by Oskar Lange 7
Indonesia: Camping in No Man’s Land
by Hans Konigsberger 8
A Plea for Heretics by Alexander Macheath 10
C. V. P.—Struggle for Control
by David G. Farrelly 12
BOOKS AND THE ARTS
Benedetto Croce: 1866-1952 by Frances Keene 14
India’s Independent Policy by W. Norman Brown 15
The Mayor of Lyons by Albert Guerard 15
“Classic” and “Romantic” by §. Lane Faison, Jr. 16
Books in Brief 17
Drama by Margaret Marshall 18
Records Sy B. H. Haggin 19
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS 20
AROUND THE JU. S. A.
Longshoreman’s Story
by Howard Vassar opposite 1
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 497
by Frank W. Lewis opposite 20
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor and Publisher : Freda Kirchwey
Editorial Director Director, Nation Associates
Carey McWilliams Lillie Shultz
Managing Editor: Victor H, Bernstein
Foreign Editor Literary Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Margaret Marshall
Drama: Joseph Wood Krutch Music: B. H. Haggin
Copy Editor: Gladys Whiteside
Assistant Literary Editor: Caroline Whiting
Contributing Editors
Andrew Roth, Alexander Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus,
H.H. Wi!son, W. Macmahon Ball
Business Manager: Hugo Van Arx
Advertising Manager: Maty Simon
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A.
by The Nation Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, N. ¥.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Offica
oi New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising
and Circulation Representative for Continental Europe: Publicitas,
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12: Three
years $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $1.
Chamge of Address: Three weeks’ notice is required for change
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é new,
Information to Libraries: The Nation is indexed In Readers’ Guide
to Periodical Literature, Book Review Digest, Index to Labor
Articles, Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index,
SE TR RN AE A A TERE
industrialists out of the top drawer. .
had anything quite like this before.” It is
rather frightening to realize that the “fron
departing and that the real bosses of American busi
are now moving into undisputed and unconcealed control
of things in Washington. “It can be terrific,” one Wa
Street financier remarked to Miss Porter, “or it ca
the worst calamity ever to befall the conservative con
of private enterprise. Right now, I’m not saying,
just praying.” And, she adds, ‘he didn't smile as
spoke,”
«
The People Pace the Politicians
Huge majorities in the pottery-making city of De
and the Frisian market town of Bolsward voted fot
United Europe in the poll sponsored by the Netherlan
Council of the European Movement on December 1
In Delft 75 per cent of 39,000 eligible voters cast th
ballots and of these 93 per cent voted “yes” to the prop
sition favoring “‘a United Europe under a Europ
“ie
weet
ALI eit
political cross-section of the Netherlands, All political
parties except the Communists indorsed the poll. —
The Netherlands is now the second country to make —
such a test, the West German towns of Castrop-Rauxel —
and Breisach having voted about 96 per cent’ in f
of a similar proposition. The next poll will be held in
France. The pre-election campaign in the Netherlands
took on the flavor of an American campaign. One chees
dealer displayed a window sign stating that a Unitec
Europe would be more successful than the Nether]
alone in bargaining with the United States over che
import restrictions. Another merchant posted a sign c
paring the number of hours required to produce cer
articles in the United States and in Europe, to show the
advantage of a wider market. The people seem to be wel
ahead of their statesmen not only in the degree of the mn
enthusiasm for a united Europe but in their desire |
pool their resources, achieve an integrated market,
bargain collectively with the United States,
The Attack on Public Power
The movement ‘under way in California to have
issue) is only one of sevefal similar schemes for weak
ing the public-power and river-valley policies o
naming t the ‘directors. In recent talk about the
rence Seaway it has been frequently suggested
at a ate agency should be used to distribute the power.
a each instance the effect if not the purpose of such
als would be to create new opportunities for the
power interests to undercut the policies of Frank-
osevelt and Harold Ickes. Last June, Senator Paul
as warned that “the Central Valley of California
ecome the burial ground for reclamation policy.”
‘is a fact that the Department of the Interior has
yielding more and mote to the pressures of the
landowners and private power interests concerned
‘ . The power rates on the basis of which the state
neer made a finding that it would be “feasible” —he
ng to “preference customers” —that is, public agen-
at around 5 mills. The Bureau of Reclamation has
~
low current rates, of about 17 per cent to Sacramento
users. State acquisition would almost certainly be
10 scuttle the 160-acre limitation on land owner-
Municipal Utility District which will permit reductions,
he proposal is such an obvious
2 its indorsement by the state Chamber of Commerce
and 1 the Farm Bureau, neither Governor Earl Warren
yr Senator William Knowland has shown much en-
usiasm for it. The real intentions behind the scheme
“phony” that de-
44, laying out in detail the future delaying tactics
h would be used 4 the interests secking to repeal
ae wwe J.
eer i
Me porenan of hie states i
Bie on many practical as well as policy ene
Vee ire AAT be
| pp Madrid Buenos Aires Axis
The Nazis enter the New Year in high spirits. In West
Daisy they have revised their tactics and instead of
aiming at a premature reorganization on a grand scale
- have decided to infiltrate the parties of the right. The re-
sults are impressive. Encouraged by the strength of the
new nationalism, men who until now have worn a demo-
cratic mask are throwing it away. On November 21, at
Bad Ems, a speaker electrified an audience with the
words: “The day will come when Prussia in a reconsti-
tuted Reich will fulfil its duty of saving the civilization
of Western Europe!” This new defender of the Prussian
state was no less a person than Minister of Justice Dehler
of the Adenauer government. In Verden, Lower Saxony,
General of Aviation Ramcke accepted the salute of 5,000
former S. S. members with the remark: “I am proud of
having been on the list of war criminals.”
In Madrid one of the many officers of the Gestapo
welcomed by Franco at the end of the war presided over
a reunion of Nazis living in Spain. He developed the
following line of thought: The United States is now
only interested in the mobilization of all available men
against Russia. It is our hour. Let us close ranks behind
Generalissimo Franco and General Eisenhower. The
Caudillo was always our friend; Eisenhower was our
enemy, but the alliance between them is the best thing
that could happen to the Fatherland.
In Buenos Aires, Colonel Rudel, another officer of
Hitler's army, has created a Nazi group that includes the
notorious S, S, leader Colonel Skorzeny. There is an in-
timate and constant association between the Nazis of the
three capitals, and on New Yeat’s Eve they doubtless
drank an identical toast: Heil Hitler! Prosit Neujahr!
Among Ourselves
With the beginning of this year Keith Hutchison,
long The Nation’s financial editor, retires from that post
and from the editorial board, to spend the greater part
of his time in independent writing. He is now at work
on a book on Anglo-American.relations.
Fortunately Mr. Hutchison will continue his connec-
tion with The Nation as a staff contributor, writing
editorials and signed articles on subjects within his wide
and important field. He is at present preparing two
articles on Canada which will appear in early issues.
We are happy to announce at the same time the addi-
tion of two names to the list of contributing editors:
H. H. Wilson, a member of the Department of Politics
of Princeton University and author of “Congress: Cor-
ruption and Compromise, ” and W. Macmahon Ball,
professor of political science at the University of Mel-
bourne, formerly British Commonwealth member of the
Allied Council for Japan, and author of “Japan—Enemy
or Ally?”
T/A aa le
3 AEC C bris mas C
NCE upon a time children used to be told that,
if they were bad, Santa would fill their stockings
_ with ashes. To 269 naughty French sailors,denied per-
_ Mm4ssion to go on shore and spend Christmas with their
_ friends while their ship, the Liberté, was in dock, the
“Christian” Senator from Nevada, Pat McCarran, must
seem an equally unnatural Saint Nick. For it is to this
tight unjolly old elf, and the act conceived in spite
and botn in infamy named after him, that they owe
their detention.
The Immigration Service had no alternative under the
act, which came into effect most unseasonably on Christ-
mas Eve. Two of the sailors admitted Communist Patty
membetship and were barred automatically. One had a
“criminal record”; he had stolen bread from the Nazis
_ during the occupation. He too was excluded until frantic
calls to Washington secured his admission, The remain-
_ ing 266, interviewed while the liner was crossing the
_ Atlantic offended, as one of their union representatives
put it, by standing “on their rights as free men not to
reply to the questions.”
These are rights of a kind that once seemed of vital
importance to Americans. Indeed, at almost any time
in our history the passage by a foreign country of legisla-
tion which subjected the crews of American vessels
to similar treatment would have aroused impassioned
protests in Congress. Until we became “top nation”
we were the foremost champions of freedom of the
seas, the preeminent defenders of the traditional rights of
seamen, which include the right of liberty on shore
while in port.
Arriving in New York after a visit to South American
_ ports, where, we imagine, he was treated with every
courtesy, Senator McCarran gave out a statement at-
tacking all critics of his act, the sole principle of
which; he claimed, was “the best interests of the
United States.” If properly enforced, he said, the act
would “screen out the subversives and undesirables
who would constitute threats to our national security.”
That is extremely unlikely: any really determined and
intelligent spy should be able to evade the screen by
- equipping himself with papers showing an impeccable
anti-Communist record. But in any case, whatever ad-
ditional security the act may give, this benefit is likely
to be far outweighed by the ill-will it is creating
abroad. i
So far, official foreign protests have been relatively
mild, although they are growing stronger. Press com-
ments in responsible European papers, however, reveal
that in many countries bitter resentment has been
aroused, The great voice of British liberalism, the
Manchester Guardian, a strongly anti-Communist paper
and one normally extremely friendly to the United States,
4
that of any other Western European country will 1 move BY
hasuily toward retaliation. The unatttactive ree aes
of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”’ is seldi
a good principle of policy; moreover, for economic 2
other reasons Western Europe is reluctant to ‘
tough” with the United States. Yet if the McCarran 4
tion Service sek on it prove as administratively com
plicated and irritating as we expect, i if incidents 1
who has publicly criticized this legislation, does not ti
early steps to revise it, then the pressure of public opin
may force European governments to move from prot st
to action. '
EW Americans realize the indignities and in
conveniences to which persons intending to \
Procurement of an American visa frequently depends
satisfactory responses to an elaborate Bea co
alien excluded, probably a dozen or more persons
good character are insulted.
Americans visiting Europe seldom have similar
periences. If they did, if they were told by British
French officials that the regulations of which they —
complained exactly followed American practice, if just
a few were held incomunicado on some European E Ellis
Island while leisurely bureaucrats examined their cases, ;
enough indignation might be aroused to force rec
sideration of our visa and immigration policies,
forbidden land, almost in the same class with
and the U.S. S. R. rs
DEL VvAYO.
PH f first session of the General Assembly ended as
‘it had begun, with an acid debate on Korea, In the
enty-four hours, working uninterruptedly through
c and Sunday until five o'clock Monday ame
a to nationalize their industries and natural re-
es without specific guaranty of compensation to
investors, In this space last week I stressed the
tional importance of that move as a sign of the in-
g determination on the part of less developed
ties to control their economy and national destiny.
ae
ndian recommendation that states exploit their natu-
wealth * ‘with due regard to maintaining the flow of
al in conditions of security” was accepted in an ef-
t to soften American opposition. But it did not suc-
¢ United States delegation, which had been alone
ting against the resolution in the Second Commit-
on three allies in the final balloting—Great Britain,
ww Zealand, and South Africa. But that did not
lence criticism of American intransigence among the
"delegates. It was even increased by the revelation
> in that session by the Costa Rican delegate: he
red that the president of a big company—unnamed
d cabled directly to Latin American delegates who
favored the resolution in the Economic Committee
ing them that their countries would receive no
business if they persisted in their attitude and the
ution was finally adopted. (The company official
have ‘dreamed he was prime minister of a world
nment! )
en came the debate on prisoners of war. The at-
here had been supercharged by a speech by Sena-
\lexander Wiley on December 16. Discussing the
sion of new members, the Senator, already con-
ous because of his vociferous demands for a still
radical purge of the United Nations personnel, de-
d the most violent anti-Russian speech heard at
_N. in years. He accused the Soviet Union of trying
_the United Nations and practically identified him-
ith those who believe the United Nations would be
off if the Russians quit it. A Western European
ate observed: “This speech by Senator Wiley was
vic lent one, but we are used to strong language in this
€ ably. Certainly Mr. Vishinsky has not been exactly
of diplomacy, but with all his abusive language,
t in a position to do to the United States what
_—
United Nations
d States can, with its usual majority, do to
Mes
ia: ‘creating the Little Assembly, diluting the power
of the Security Council, and at will defeating all Russian
proposals, good or bad. Sometimes it looks as if they
would like to drive Russia out. But Russia realizes the
mistake it made in quitting the Security Council at the
beginning of the Korean war and will not repeat it.”
- The idea of ousting the Soviet Union was directly advo-
cated by Senator Tobey, Republican and member of the
Foreign Relations Committee, on his return from Europe
just the other day.
Senator Wiley is reported as convinced that the policy
of “strength” is winning the cold war and that the only
thing required is to get still tougher. He would profit
from reading Walter Lippmann in the New York Herald
Tribune of December 23: “The Eisenhower Administra-
tion is now facing the hard fact that the cold war is
going badly, perhaps worse than the Eisenhower head-
quarters realized last summer.”
It was in this already heated atmosphere that Andrei
Gromkyo demanded before adjournment that the United
States be condemned for the “mass murder” of Com-
munist prisoners. The emotion aroused some days earlier
by the news that eighty-four prisoners had been killed.
in a riot did not win Mr, Gromyko any votes outside
his own bloc. The Soviet demand was rejected forty-
five to five. Ten Asian-Arab states which abstained
would undoubtedly have supported a resolution ex-
pressed and defended in more moderate terms. Thus
the Russians were again isolated on an issue which,
strictly on its merits, might have won strong minority
support.
The heat of the discussion left the air full of thunder.
The period between now and the convening of the As-
sembly’s second session on February 24 will probably
be occupied with news and rumors about a new Ameti-
can offensive in Korea. Bombing of the mainland, block-
ade of the coast, use of Chiang Kai-shek’s forces may in-
flict great damage upon China but will hardly bring about
a dependable truce. Even if the Chinese and North Ko-
reans were driven beyond the Yalu River they could wait
there for six months or for one or two years, and then —
strike again. The assistance promised them by Russia
under the terms of the Sino-Russian treaty of 1950
would help them resist any ultimatum.
In the prevailing uneasiness the effect of Stalin's inter-
view, published in the New York Times of December 25,
could not but be profound, despite its dismissal in official
circles as just another “propaganda trick.” Two things
are important in Stalin’s statement: first, its indication of
his preference for discussion at the “highest level”; and,
second, its reaffirmation of the Russian view that Korea
is not an isolated issue but one phase of the problem
of ending the cold war, The demand for a Big Four con-
ference will now come again to the fore.
a? Ta
eed =
Eee es a
eee ; Is
ani . 32
F § Ye
5 at
is
~ Generals into Bust
HE old five-percenter may be fading away, but a
new type of influence man has appeared in his
place—the ‘retired general or admiral who has been
promoted from four stars to a six-digit income. These
men quit the service, with full retirement pay, at the peak
of their usefulness to Uncle Sam to take high posts in
key defense industries, What makes them so valuable to
the companies now employing them is that they not only
know on whom to put the finger in getting government
- contracts but often themselves selected the man for the
_ job. Ex-General A, now hired by a munitions maker to
handle his “interests” at the Pentagon, does not have
much difficulty in convincing General B what he should
buy when General B is a former subordinate or friend,
_ of even just an acquaintance who owes his job to him.
Perhaps the most-publicized general-turned-business-
man is Douglas MacArthur, General MacArthur is still
the most influential man in the army, and as long as he
can sign his name or lift a phone, Remington Rand will
be in defense business in a big way. MacArthur's salary
is said to be $100,000—this in addition to the $19,-
531.84 the taxpayer gives him every year in retirement
pay. A whole bevy of MacArthur's retired colleagues,
though not so adept at public relations as the old master,
have done even better than this. For example, Brehon
B. Somervell, ex-head of the Army Service Forces, who
acted during the war as chief purchasing agent for the
army and air force, is now president of Koppers Com-
pany and a director of the Carborundum Corporation and
several other big concerns, All these companies are muni-
tions manufacturers. They made fat profits during the
war and with Somervell’s “connections” in the Pentagon
should be doing even better today. The $125,000 that
Koppers is said to pay him is probably well spent.
Nor should International Harvester, the Metropolitan
Body Company, American Steel Foundries, Universal Oil .
Products, or the International Harvester Company of
Canada find it hard to. get contracts in Washington.
During the war these companies sold the Ordnance De-
partment well over three billion dollars’ worth of war
material in one form or another. At present they are
COLONEL WILLIAM H. NEBLETT, air-force reserve
(ret.), for many years a law associate of the late Senator Wil-
tram Gibbs McAdoo, resumed the practice of law in Los
Angeles after six years’ service in World War II as air-base
commander, member of General MacArthur's staff, and staff
Officer in the Pentagon. This article is based on a chapter of
his forthcoming book “Pentagon Politics.”
6
~ one of the biggest of them hired Groves away from the
all using the services of Levin H. Campbell, war-tim
Chief of Ordnance.
One of the most interesting switches from olive dr
to pin stripe was made by Leslie R. Groves, a three-star
general who headed the Atomic Bomb Project from its
inception until 1946. During that period he frequently
testified before Congressional committees that atomic
weapons made conventional weapons as useless as :
crossbow. Understandably, the small-arms manufactur
did not take this kind of talk too kindly. To put a stop
to it and to keep their orders from being cance
wee tyy
Ky
e
army. He is now vice-president of Remington Rand, s
ing the government the type of equipment he brand
several years ago as obsolete in an atomic age. ‘tai
The air lines, which are heavily subsidized by the
government because of the vital role they play in na-
tional defense, and the airplane manufacturers, whose
livelihood depends largely on government orders, hav
Marshall is a director of Pan-American Airways; Pan-
American also has John Towers, ex-head of the nav
ing up the navy’s air arm during the wat from 2,
to 39,000 planes. Towers receives $20,000 as P
$16,000 in retirement pay. Ira C. Eaker, former com- —
mandet of the Eighth Air Force in Europe and Deputy —
: AE dhree-stat general.
eneral Joseph T. McNarney is president of Con-
ed Vultee Aircraft Corporation; according to the
ber, 1952, issue of Fortune, McNarney “knows
t's best customer, the Pentagon, as few others do.”
at his record bears this out. On his return from
in 1946—he had succeeded Eisenhower as
ne Commander of American Forces in Europe—
ney did a stint of duty at Wright Field as head of
2 Air Force Materiel Command. He then went to
ash shington as chairman of the National Defense Man-
yement Committee, a post he held until he became
| military assistant to the Secretary of Defense. This
one of the most important jobs in Washington: he
ld approve or turn down any recommendation sent
he department by any branch of the service;
piece of legislation dealing with military affairs
d across his desk; allocation of the money ap-
priated by Congress for weapons and equipment was
his hands. A man who has wielded such power is
Ww vorth his weight in contracts to any munitions maker.
aes
in
CNARNEY happens to be one of the men who
won “the battle of the B-36” in 1949. Before the
an war the services were engaged in a bitter con-
etsy over the claim of the air force that its strategic
bers, without resorting to the A-bomb, could destroy
nation that might attack us. As a result Congress
ched what became known as the “B-36 investiga-
” In the end the air force convinced Congress and
eae s aid pushed through its program,
is said authoritatively that the strategic-bombing
y championed by McNary and General Hoyt Van-
c erg, chief of the air force—who assured President
Truman that the Far Eastern air force could bomb North
Korea off the map in a matter of weeks— greatly influ-
€ d Truman's decision to intervene in Korea, Unhap-
pily, it was their prediction, not the North Korean
gression, that was blown sky high. Advances in anti-
craft weapons during th2 last decade have made long-
e bombing a costly way of fighting. There are no
lished figures for how many air-force planes have
lost in Korea through ground fire, but there are for
' planes. On March 28, 1952, testifying before the
se Appropriations Committee on the 1953 navy
get, Vice-Admiral John H. Cassidy said that during
first nineteen months of the Korean conflict 99.7 per
f the navy’s planes that were destroyed were shot
by anti-aircraft batteries. Some of these, according
Company, Another cor- = Pursuing its target at a speed of up to 2,500 miles an
ee from the sevice of a man who
t hed reports, + 3 were equipped to fire the trailing
cket, the deadliest anti-aircraft weapon yet developed.
hour and piloted by an electric eye and gyroscope, the
trailing rocket has been 100 per cent effective against
bombers of the B-36 type. Russia learned about it from
the Germans as we did and has put it into mass produc-
tion; we have not. Although McNarney is now retired, he
still has great influence, which he can use to sell the air-
plane his company manufactures—the B-36.
An easy shift from one swivel chair to another has
been made by Ben Moreell, organizer of the navy’s Sea-
bees. He is nov’ on the pay roll of the Turner Construc-
tion Company of New York and the Jones & Laughlin
Steel Company, two concerns which got a large slice of
the ten billion dollars’ worth of contracts awarded by
him between 1941 and 1946,
Many other ranking military and naval men have
made the switch from buyer to seller, but the examples
cited give the picture of the new breed of lobbyist who
does not have to hang on to a Congressman’s coat tails
to get what he wants since he has a direct pipe line to
the heaviest spender in the world—the Defense Depart-
ment. The most obvious danger offered by the generals
turned: lobbyists is much like that caused by the activi-
ties of the five-percenters—increased military costs due
to the lack of competitive bids. Perhaps the American
taxpayer can afford these sums. But what will be the cost
of having a military man in the White House? Can
there be any doubt that the Defense Depastment will
get whatever it demands in the way of appropriations?
Since 1941 industry—in fact, the whole economy—has
become more and more dependent upon government
orders, When the Republicans nominated General Hisen-
hower for President they knew he could be counted upon
to keep their arms factories working. His victory may
insure prosperity for the munitions makers, but for the
country as a whole the price may be staggering.
Proposals for Peace-I1
OSKAR LANGE
N MY opinion the priorities for peace are as fol-
lows:
1. Immediate cessation of all wars,now going on:
immediate cease-fire in Korea, with all questions under
dispute, including that of repatriation of war prisoners,
to be settled afterward by special international commis-
sion—any further loss of lives in that unnecessary war is
entirely unjustified; cessation of military operations in _
Viet Nam and Malaya and negotiation based on the prin-
ciple that all peoples have the right to national inde-
pendence.
2. End of the cold war and restoration of mutual
7
ae ee! MS =
Stine
confidence and cooperation: ‘immediate cessation |
arms race, in particular, abandonment of the - reatmament |
of Germany and the remilitarization of Japan; general
reduction of armaments and prohibition of atomic arms
under effective international control; ratification by all -
countries of the Geneva protocol prohibiting bacterio-
logical warfare; a peace pact between the five great pow-
ets to help reestablish the confidence of the peoples of
the world in the future and restore the effective naam
tion of the United Nations.
3. Speedy solution of the outstanding international
problems causing tension, in particular, conclusion of a
peace treaty with Germany and withdrawal of the occu-
pation forces; admission of China to the United Nations
as the first prerequisite of a solution of the problems of
Asia; recognition of the aspirations of the peoples of
North Africa and of other colonial territories for national
freedom.
4. Restoration and expansion of normal trade rela-
tions between all countries irrespective of their economic
_ and social system, particularly, restoration and develop-
_ ment of East-West trade. Experience has shown that
countries with a capitalist economy and countries with
a Socialist economy can cooperate to their mutual advan-
tage. Such cooperation, moreover, may help to relieve
the fear current among business men in some countries
that depression and mass unemployment are the only
alternative to the arms race, The International Economic
Conference in Moscow showed that economic coopera-
tion among all countries, whatever their economic and
HE new Republic of Indonesia—three thousand
miles of islands stretching from Singapore to
Manila, with one-fourth the area and one-half the popu-
lation of the United States—has for two months now
been the scene of political disturbances. They began on
October 17 when a mob broke into the Parliament build-
ing in Jakarta. During the next days tension mounted,
and finally Parliament was sent into recess. Then came
_ several bloodless military ‘‘coups’’ in which junior of-
ficets seized command of divisions in the outlying
islands. Parliament has now reconvened with the primary
intention of passing a bill for general elections, the first
_ to be held in the country, Also the Cabinet has been re-
shuffled and several high army and defense officials have
HANS KONIGSBERGER is a Dutch journalist now living
in the United States. He recently spent a year in Indonesia
studying the islands’ culture.
8
make the evolution from a colonial past as ae
literature, att, music, etc, This would beg Soo ie ge
tual understanding among nations. f
from “‘opinion-molders” in many countries, offering sp
cific proposals for bringing peace to the world. Oskar Lan
Honorary Vice-President of the World Federation of Unit.
Nations Associations, former Polish ambassador to the Unit,
Siates, and former head of the Polish delegation at- Mm Bit
United Nations.} ei
concerned about the stability of the stats and See
leaders. Parliament, however, takes a different view. 2
regarding the pressing political and economic problems,
its members are determined to complete the revolution
see colonialism immediately, at ay cost. A similar
aloofness of the new, academy-trained officers.
Too many Americans and other Western obs
look for the same basic division in the East that th
aleolae nature of ae conflict. Indonesia can-
inti-American, for these categories are too Western
the native political currents. The only thing in
sia which is sharply divided into red and white
flag. Efforts to picture the country in such simple
s can do little justice to the complex reality.
paraphernalia of modern government have been
icated in the Western world and are eagerly
ed by a country which finds itself newly inde-
dent amid highly developed competing powers.
rhe ey are office furniture and nothing more. Yester-
donesia was a colony whose only raison d’étre
| provide wealth for another nation, From this
itical non-existence it is a long climb to a position of
onsibility in the warring world. Indonesian statesmen
ngle generation must face the problems of Wash-
_ Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman, They
ist direct the course of a country which has endured
feats of war and occupation, which has a population
is 90 per cent illiterate, and which still has to fight
local famines, epidemics, and rebel guerrillas.
e office furniture is the latest model, but the business
is thoroughly un-Western.
DONESIA is surpassed only by the United States
and Russia i in natural resources. It made Holland rich
ee centuries. The Japanese knew the value of its
oil, tin, sugar, tea, and coffee and quickly over-
he islands after the fall of Singapore. The inter-
m between the Japanese capitulation and the return
» Dutch gave the nationalist movement its long-
ted chance, and on August 17, 1945, the independent
lic was proclaimed. Four more years of fighting
and negotiating were to pass before the last Dutch news-
a per omitted the quotation marks from “Indonesian re-
public.”” Sovereignty was formally transferred in De-
ber, 1949.
} Not long afterward a well-informed executive of the
tc ch Shell interests in Indonesia said to me, "his
unt try ‘is headed for complete chaos within the year.”
ha d Epumnessed the economic confusion and incom-
aD
between different agencies ae authority prevented
lure of one from oak down the others. A
called progressive, or revolutionary, or communis-
f hi ye Th fe Was: ‘room: and to spare for mistakes,
Oe al to Indonesia that the process of national crys-
| ~ tallization go on unhindered by external affairs. The pres-
- ent government knows better than its predecessors that
preoccupation with domestic affairs must be almost abso-
lute; this conviction brought it to power. The Sukiman
Cabinet fell on February 23 last after publication of
an agreement between Foreign Minister Subardjo and
Ambassador Cochran that Indonesia would receive Amer-
ican dollars in accordance with the provisions of the
Mutual Security Agency. The agency rephrased its
usual terms and demanded that Indonesia promise simply —
to “contribute to the strength of independent and sov-
ereign nations,” not to “the defensive strength of the
free world.” But the condition was still not mild enough.
The Foreign Minister's “good piece of business” harmed
interests which were more vital than solvency. Subardjo
had to resign, and although the other ministers dis-
sociated themselves from his action, the Cabinet fell with
him. The new Prime Minister, Mr. Wilopo, and his
seventeen colleagues are all men who have come out for
what President Sukarno calls “occupying the no man’s
land between the opposing camps.’ Parliament passed a
vote of confidence on this policy by an overwhelming
majority, which included the Moslem, the Nationalist,
and the Communist parties.
A policy of neutrality is not inspired by necessity alone.
Indonesia views the world more objectively than do
most countries of Western Europe. The politicians of the
West, like those of the Communist world, feel they must
paint the world in two colors only, The Indonesian poli-
tician rejects such a picture and the choice it invites.
Nothing illustrates the position of the Indonesian gov-
ernment better than its view of the Korean question.
Although Indonesia is a member of the United Nations,
the government sees no moral issue at stake. “Two power
blocs,” it says, ‘‘are testing their strength in Korea.”
Indonesia recognized Mao Tse-tung as a matter of
course—a vast majority of its two million Chinese in-
habitants are pro-Mao and often of dual nationality. An
unofficial American suggestion that Indonesian observers
inspect the PW camps was ignored because, among other
reasons, North Korea had not joined in making it.
When President Quirino of the Philippines recently
visited Indonesia, he was the first head of state to” set
foot in the republic. Many words of friendship were
spoken, but there was silence on Quirino’s pet project, a
Pacific pact. The Indonesian newspapers, both left and
right, had made it clear before his arrival that the coun-
try’s entry into such a pact was unthinkable, Camping
in no man’s land suits the Indonesians’ mentality. Nor
are they lonesome there, for India is with them.
The principle of Rakan, compromise, is a vital point
of Moslem law. Indonesia tries to make it a political
reality in the struggle between East and West.
OR three centuries the English-speaking peoples have
prized and, with occasional lapses, practiced ~what
Milton called “the liberty to know, to, utter, and to
argue.” This freedom has seemed so thoroughly estab-
lished that people have tended to take it as the natural
order of things, but today it is threatened from many
quarters, Wherever we look—East or West or South—
we see symptoms of a reaction against it that may engulf
the spirit of free inquiry in such disaster that mankind
will need another thousand years to rescue it.
Science began and continued its triumphant career
within the framework of a particular way of life, a
framework that we are apt to take for granted, forgetting
how much it may have been responsible for the qualities
of mind that made the great scientists. But the applica-
tions of science have modified and are modifying this
way of life, and there are tendencies in our society which
-threaten to destroy the conditions necessary for science.
The modern age is characterized above all by the prog-
ress of science and democracy. The two movements
spring from a common root—respect for the dignity of
man as an intelligent being—and have two features in
common. Both represent what Plato called the victory of
persuasion over force, of discussion over dictation, and
- both are tentative and experimental, rejecting all claim to
dogmatic authority or certainty. From the democratic
point of view, man should submit to no control which he.
has not himself created and cannot modify to suit his
purposes; and the scientist regards every conclusion at
which he arrives as provisional, a step toward, not the
attainment of, final truth.
During the present century the presuppositions of both
science and democracy have been challenged and are
called on to defend themselves. The reasons for this,
however, are not to be found in either science or democ-
racy but in two other developments which have character-
ized the modern age since the application of scientific
knowledge—technology and industrialism. These de-
velopments have produced a state of affairs that could
destroy the scientific spitit to which they owe their
origin. The results of pure science are wholly good, but
we should not distinguish too sharply between pure and
applied science or between the roles which intellectual
curiosity and practical interest in the well-being of man-
ALEXANDER MACBEATH is professor of logic and
metaphysics at the Queen's University, Belfast. This article is
a somewhat abridged version of an address he delivered be-
fore the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
10
_ knowledge, regarding it not as something to be conten
kind have played in the development of modern sci on
The modern age opened with a new attitude toward |
plated and enjoyed but as power to be used for the wel-
fare of men, And it is to the power over his environm«
which it placed at man's disposal that science main
owes its present prestige. The miracles of the mod le
of science were used wisely, and if steps were sien
painfully conscious during the twentieth century. In point” | i
of fact, the knowledge that science brings and the power —
that its application gives to man ate morally neutra
they can be used either for good or for evil. But aft
wisely, men have reacted not only against the freedom
to misuse them but against freedom in general. fe
This reaction is in part at least the result of a two-
fold confusion. First, there is a confusion between ney
undoing of men. Second, there is the confusion between
what science does and does not profess to do. Men b a
power i buk Oia yeisdeas 9 rightly, But science is
concerned with facts not with values; and so it pis
well as of the physical and biolapeal sciences, If» we at
conceive of or achieve a coherent and desirable Ww:
our ignorance of facts.
The ordinary man desires certainty and mental s
Much in his environment leads him to believe that thet e
exists somewhere a body of fixed truth to be ae
requires that the units of economic and industrial
ation become ever larger and more complex. As a
e individual to whom science and democracy
a greater mastery over his environment finds
f dependent and powerless, and it is hard for
w men have the opportunity to exercise initiative,
esponsible decisions, or control much even of their
behavior, Planning on a large scale, involving the
1 a of men, becomes essential; the experience of
on ate means, not ends in themselves, that every plan
ts price and that the price may be too high. One of
: as disloyalty.
There is another major difficulty, Even if a plan is
1 and its administration wise, it takes time and
and experiment to adjust our habits of thinking
elit g to it. The rapidity of change which is so
racteristic of recent times makes adaptability and in-
ve more necessary but more difficult than at any
ious period, Flexibility, open-mindedness, responsive-
© new ideas are needed more than they ever were
. The man of fixed’ ideas and habits is today a
nic danger.
u ie result of the tensions, disharmonies, and in-
erences in our way of life is a sense of frustration
utility. The scientist is deeply disturbed by the use
is made of his discoveries, by the failure to deal
| their unforeseen consequences, by the secrecy which
es with his work. The ordinary man is made un-
by the contradiction between the mastery of his
ynment promised by science and democracy and
4
Cialism and the universality of science and indus-
nization. The mind of modern man seeks unity
1erence, But there is little unity or coherence in
oe is ie to forget that all plans and all forms of organi--
| helplessness, between his emotional and social
God knows, deve? is risk in iets to act till the
facts are all in; but is there not greater risk in
abandoning the conditions of all rational inquiry?
Risk for risk, for myself I had rather take my chance
that some ttaitors will escape detection than spread
abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust which |
accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed |
and unintimidated inquiry. I believe that that com-
munity is already in process of dissolution where each
man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy,
where non-conformity with the accepted creed, politi-
cal as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where
denunciation, without specification or backing, takes
the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom
of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of
reason has become so timid that we dare not enter
our convictions in the open lists to win or lose. Such
fears as these are a solvent which can eat out the
cement that binds the stones together; they may in
the end subject us to a despotism as evil as any that
we dread; and they can be allayed only in so far as
we refuse to proceed on suspicion, and trust one an-
other until we have tangible ground for misgiving,
The mutual confidence on which all else depends can
be maintained only by an open mind and a brave
reliance upon free discussion. I do not say that these
will suffice; who knows but we may be on a slope
which leads down to aboriginal savagery. But of this
I am sure: if we are to escape, we must sot yield a
foot in demanding a fair field, and an honest race,
for all ideas.—From an address by Judge Learned
Hand before the eighty-sixth convention of the Uni-
versity of the State of New York, Albany, October
24, 1952.
his life. His different interests conflict, his allegiance is
divided, he is not at peace with himself or his enviroa-
ment, He is therefore uneasy and afraid.
Symptomatic of this condition is the tendency toward
authoritarianism, the revolt against reason, the distrust
of the intelligence. Since the heretic, the non-conformist,
the man who demands reasons is uncomfortable about
this state of affairs and makes other people uncomfortable
too, those who prefer ease to liberty are apt to regard him
as revolutionary, a disturber of the peace, and to turn
on him with impatience and resentment. Yet the critic,
the dissenter, the man who fearlessly seeks and speaks
the truth should be not only tolerated but encouraged.
Toleration should not be regarded as indulgence of error
but as a method of arriving at truth and a safeguard
against mistakes, Our fathers applied this principle in
many spheres and found that it worked. In our par-
liamentary form of government we have a ministry and
an opposition; in our legal system, we have a counsel
for the prosecution and a counsel for the defense; and
Ut
ee ~~
oy i
s0 on. In authoritarian systems, on the other hand, we
get one-party government, and if there is a counsel for
the defense in the courts he does not play much of a
part. Of course not all nonconformists are men of insight
and vision; often they are unmindful that they have duties
as well as*rights. But even if ninety-nine of them be
fools, or worse, it is worth while putting up with them
for the sake of the hundredth.
And what is the alternative to tolerating the heretic?
It is to silence or suppress him, He can be suppressed
by putting him in a den of lions or a concentration camp
or a gas chamber, but that may not destroy his’ ideas. The
only effective way of dealing with him is to persuade him
that he is wrong; it is to answer not silence him, And if
we cannot answer him because there is no answer to give,
then we must accept his criticism even if it hurts. Fail-
ure in tolerance is evidence of an ultimate lack of
faith in the soundness of our beliefs, in the value of our
CV. P—Strugele for Control
“way of life, and
ee Tee
who are intolerant of cism seem he
men who first promulgated the ideas to. hich they” de- |
mand conformity today were once innovators, critics,
heretics, and that today’s nonconformists may be their |
real followers, while those who turn their doctrines into |
dogmas and seek to impose them by totalitarian methods
betray their spirit, ; ie
The function of the heretic and critic, then, is to force
us to keep examining and testing, revising and perfecting 3
our beliefs and ideals. His attitude is the attitude of
science, whose conclusions are always on trial. And this —
is the only sure safeguard against error and degeneration, i
It has performed an indispensable part in the slow
progress of mankind toward civilization; and the day it is
no longer allowed to perform that function stagnation —
will set in, and freedom and science and all they stand
for will decay and die.
Los Angeles
UNIQUE development is under way in California.
The state is proceeding with plans to buy the
Central Valley Project from the federal government. This
idea of states’ rights being achieved by direct purchase
is something new. The scheme also adds a new twist
to the continuing controversy over public power.
Most of the major hydroelectric-power projects in the
country have been undertaken by the federal government
rather than by the states chiefly because our large river
basins comprise more than one state. Some of them
even touch foreign countries, as the St. Lawrence and
the Rio Grande, Thus several states must act in concert
or the federal government must carry the ball alone.
California's Central Valley, however, lies entirely
within the state. It contains one-third of the state’s area—
a territory equal in size to Illinois. From the high ranges
of the Sierra Nevada some fifteen rivers flow westward
into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. These two
‘river valleys make up the Great Central Valley.
Twenty years ago the voters of California authorized
a bond issue of $170,000,000 for the Central Valley
Project, which was to conserve the abundant water supply
of the north and divert it to the San Joaquin Valley in the
central part of the state. When money became scatce dur-
ing the depression, California turned to the federal gov-
ernment for help. Since 1937 the Bureau of Reclamation
DAVID G. FARRELLY is assistant professor of political
science at the University of California in Los Angeles.
12
cally favored family-size farms and having set a 160- |
BY DAVID G. FARRELLY
of the Department of the Interior has had the Central —
Valley Project under its wing. At a cost of some $750,-
000,000, borne by the United States Treasury, dams, —
reservoirs, pumping plants, canals, channels, and power:
generating units have been constructed in an integrated
pattern. Even now the project is only partially completed, —
but California’s critical problems of water and power |
shortage have been greatly alleviated by the largess of —
the federal government. 4
From the beginning there have been serious aif. :
ferences of opinion about various features of the project. %
Not everyone has approved its multiplicity of purpose— _
irrigation, water supply, flood control, navigation, elec- —
tricity, fish hatcheries, bird refuges, recreation facilities. —
There has been sectional conflict—between the northern 4
and southern parts of the valley over equitable distribu-
tion of the water. Individual landowners have resented |
encroachments by the Bureau of Reclamation. Federal —
agencies have competed for development funds:-the —
Reclamation Bureau and the Army Corps of Engineers —
fought for seven years over which was to build a reservoir 1
at Pine Flats on the Kings River. ;
The necessary amount of federal control has been a
constant source of controversy. Federal policy has histori- -
acre limitation qn holdings has restricted an unmarried a
farmer to the purchase of sufficient water to irrigate a |
holding of that size. This 160-acre limitation has been —
frequently challenged. In August, 1952, a Californi
court held that it could not be applied in the state. Public .
nn largest priv
as “decided to buy ae eosnlt the
e far southern counties, below the Tehachapi
, This brought a third party into the contest
the Bureau of Reclamation and Pacific Gas for
SSuplication of effort now saw triplication in
More serious, of course, was the ea of
: the Scchase but wanted proof that the ee
not hamper the orderly completion of other
power projects and that the state would deliver
> farmers at a price as low as that charged by the
prs
government. California’s proposal to purchase
ivated apparently fy a reluctant preference for
¢ than federal control,
rember a state-wide organization known as the
ttee for California Ownership of the Central Val-
pject was formed to further the purchase plan.
rime movers were tepfesentatives of six farm,
_and trade associations. One of these six is the
s An ageles Chamber of Commerce, which twenty years
opposed the project when it came before the elec-
for approval. Now, together with the California
© of Commerce, it favors state ownership. The
ommittee is urging that the purchase be financed by
s of revenue bonds which would be repaid from
ect’s future earnings.
a2 atters stand today, the California Water Project
y, a state agency, is studying the proposal that
28 the Central Valley Project. It has already
use some of its initial $10,000,000 fund to pay
4 certain fea are met, ig tie Pion wants
"agurance that the vast project will be completed and
_ Some guaranty that the benefits now provided under
federal control would be retained under state ownership.
The state Water Power Authority has already consulted
the incoming Secretary of the Interior, Douglas McKay,
who is quoted as saying that he must have all the facts
before making a decision. McKay is regarded, however,
_ as a states’ righter, having been extremely outspoken
against federal administration of watet-power projects.
So after January 20 the purchase plan may shift into high
gear.
The decision to buy the Central Valley Pavieed will
eventually be made by the legislature or the voters.
Many problems must first be solved. Is it better to
finance the purchase by issuing bonds or by direct con-
tract with the federal government? Is the state able fis-
cally to take over Central Valley and at the same time
ptoceed with the construction of the billion-dollar
Feather River project? Will Congress slow down or cease
entirely its allocation of reclamation funds to California?
Friends of public water and power developments are
alert to the worst possibilities, State governmental ma-
chinety is usually more open to pressure than federal.
Low-priced water and power may be at stake, Joe C.
Lewis, former assemblyman of Kern County, has warned
that state acquisition would increase the cost of elec-
tricity by 59 per cent. Another critic has pointed out
that the state would sell power to Pacific Gas and Elec-
tric, which would then seek permission to raise its rates.
It is significant that the California Central Valley
Flood Control Association recently objected to power
contracts then being negotiated by the Bureau of Recla-
mation with private agencies on the ground that Central
Valley electricity was being offered for sale at too low
rates. According to this group, low-priced-power con-
tracts would make it more difficult to pay off any revenue
bonds issued to finance the pees purchase by the
state.
California's belated imterest in acquiring the Central
Valley Project has come at the tag end of the Democrats’
twenty-year control of the national government. Both
Michael Straus and Richard Boke of the Reclamation
Bureau have been controversial figures, painted by their
enemies as high-handed bureaucrats, Certainly Straus —
will be replaced as commissioner, and possibly Boke will
be eased out as regional director—although he is under
civil service. It may be that a Republican Administration
at Washington will provide a political climate in which
local pressures will have more force and different ideas
of public policy will flourish. If this is true, it may not
be necessaty for the pressure groups to have the state
buy the Central Valley Project after all.
ye
BENEDETTO CROCE: 1866-1952
ROCE’S life spanned almost a cen-
tury, and his name, known to
hundreds of thousands throughout the
world who have never read his
works, is synonymous with contemporary
thought. For he raised the burning issue
of our age—the essential nature of
human freedom.
When he first started to publish, gen-
tility, understood as remoteness from
mundane concerns, was part of the bar-
rage of mystification with which most
“thinkers” were surrounded. Croce
brought philosophy out into the open,
humanized it, loosed it in the arena of
everyday reality, introduced it into his-
torical judgment, political morality, lit-
etary criticism. He was convinced that
man could no longer afford to remain
voluntarily out of contact with that im-
mense creative vitality of the spirit
which, in the nineteenth century, for-
malism and positivism were doing their
best to throttle.
From the start he had no patience
with rhetoric, theological absolutes, or
the expedient hypocrisy of materialism
—his trail-blazing critique of historical
materialism and economic Marxism
dates from 1900. In fact, impatience
with things as they are was always a
distinguishing characteristic. Croce felt
instinctively, and often expressed the
conviction, that spiritual impatience in-
sures man’s freedom: without a demand
for clarity there will be double-talk,
confusion of ideas, conventional ‘‘free-
doms” but never liberty.
Soon Croce added studies of Hegel
and Vico to his evolving history of the
human spirit. He took whatever healthy,
living elements he found in Hegel’s
philosophy and filtered them through
the luminous windows of Vico’s histori-
cal thought. Philosophy .came alive: he
forced it to seek identity with imme-
diate issues as no other thinker had done
before.
With the publication of the ‘Aes-
thetics” in 1910, a new era in criticism,
14
Ae eee tee
‘the
BY FRANCES KEENE
appreciation, and, above all, creative ac-
tivity was to begin: Croce had kicked
open the door, held shut by sentimental
naturalism and romanticism, on the re-
vealed world. The so-called laws which
until then had bolstered and confined
art did not resist his new concept of the
unity of all created things. He had
Benedetto Croce
stated a clear philosophy in extremely
plain language and had opened the way
for an understanding of the relationship
of art to the rest of life. Further, he had
given criticism the means to interpret
this relationship.
Croce’s system culminated in his iden-
tification of philosophy with history. All
his Jater work amplified one aspect or
another of this basic theorem. He gave
us a new concept of history just because
he had given us first a new concept of
philosophy. Philosophy was no longer
a static form resolving problems in an
arbitrary, final way. Instead, philosophy
was history itself, ever-changing, new.
“All true history is contemporary his-
tory.”
The ethical fervor which pervades
Croce’s work made him one of the
giants in education in our time. He per-
sonified the warning and revolt against
those doctrines which tend, overlie or
tacitly, to enslave man to a formula,
yoke him to a system, depersonalize h
in the mass. In this sense, though he cat-
ried within him a ‘strong sense of coun-
try, he rejected the voluntary imprison-
ment of nationalism, which he regarded
as a breeding ground for hatred. He was
anti-absolutist, anti-totalitarian. He lit.
erally taught modern man to formulate
his own concept of spiritual freedom.
The political position he occupied for
two generations in his own country is
attributable to this fact, for even the dic-
tatorship was constrained by world-wide:
moral pressure to recognize his inviola-
bility and to accord his person respect
(although Fascist thugs did sack. a
library). =]
Croce was indefatigable. His operd
omnia are vast, and he found countless
points in the cultural field where his
job of breaking ground and sowing new
ideas could be effective. For nearly half
a century his publication, La Critica,
represented the outpost of informed
thinking. And for over twenty years,
spite the vexations of the regime, he «
not give an inch in carrying out the
task he felt he must perform. Tireless,
clear, and firm, he blasted that bitter ye E
ludicrous period of Italian political life’
with his ruthless sarcasm. The too busy |
empire builders sought to “ignore” h
if you can use the word to describe th
fear they always felt of him (the
tator was once pushed, in an—offi
speech, to utter the clamorous exotci
that he had never read so much as a
page of Croce, but exorcism by “ignor-
ing’ was not enough). For those ‘Ttal-
ians who managed to defend theig intel- |
ligence, if not their liberty, his
struggle as man and philosopher w:
in vain. 4
In the midst of conflict Croce’s :
force remained unshaken. Man's
was his concern, and this anxiety
dent on every page. In one of th
tively recently issues of La Cri
echoe hin’ me: ioe some-
‘so I go tenaciously doing
do, doing what my capacities
ation I have given myself
ed me to do. And I am com-
d encouraged by that act. “Do
the advice I give, or rather
cause while one is doing, one
7
keeps alive the flame of life
d which we feel, in our mo-
hopelessness and despair, is
ard ruin, But it will not, nor
9 to ruin, and it demands and
5 that we do something of our~
) it whole.
NDIA IN ASIA. By Werner
fo many Americans, including at
fic ers of the State Department,
cipal issues on which India and
| States have disagreed have
1: the independence of Indo-
ich we did not support. until
hate i in the discussion; the ad-
Dai in Indo-China, which
viewed with disquiet though
oment has taken no stand on
; the Japanese peace treaty
“up in San Francisco, which In-
fused to sign—instead, it made a
ate treaty; Israel, about which
ng disagreed with us; and final-
most important, India’s refusal
in the cold war.
et Levi in a small but well-docu-
and well-considered book dis-
ia’s Asian relations in order
vy the environment in which they
) existence and their present
foreign affairs is in’ itself
for the Indian public, which
with or against the United ~
1 of change. He finds that an ~
tion to Western ois has not
been enough to produce an Asian union
or even a Southern Asian political
‘regionalism. Certain international issues,
especially those involving tacism or
infringement upon Asian tights and
prestige, have led to common Asian-
Arab action in the United Nations; but
others, such as the quarrel between
India and Pakistan over Kashmir or the
Indian mistrust of China’s forward pol-
icy in Tibet, have kept Asian nations
apart.
About half the book is devoted to
India’s position respecting communism,
Communist moves in Asia, and the cold
war. Mr. Levi shows that up to the
present the fear of Western imperialism
has had more influence on Indians than
the fear of Communist imperialism, but
he feels that the balance is now rapidly
shifting. He says:
In consideration of India’s policy to-
ward Communist and Western imperial-
ism, two points stand out. The first is
that India is taking steps to protect her-
self against Communist expansionism,
fear of which is a factor in all her policy.
The second is that Indians are becoming
more lenient in their interpretations of
Western imperialism and are realizing
that Asian freedoms are better served in
the long run by cautious procedures
which will not provide openings for Com-
munist intervention. Communist im-
perialism appears to be considered the
more immediate and greater threat.
The final chapter of the book is en-
titled India, Communism, and Democ-
racy. Mr. Levi thinks that - democracy
will win and cites facts and the utter-
ances of Indians to support his belief.
It will win, he contends, on moral as
well as economic grounds, and the West
can help. He remarks that “Indians .. .
require spiritual as well as material
nourishment. The major share in fulfill-
ing democracy’s promise must be the re-
sponsibility of the Indian people them-
selves. But the West can tactfully and
humbly assist and encourage.” Mr. Levi
does not-present an analysis of the many
hard domestic problems in India which
democracy must solve if India is to ac-
cept it and reject communism, .but he
at least names them. His preoccupation
is with the containment of communism;
Beare mAh Ais 9 Be ihe
to this end he sees India as the most
_ important area of struggle in Asia, and
in his exposition of this theme he has
made a contribution to American under-
standing of Asian politics.
W. NORMAN BROWN
The Mayor of Lyons
IN THOSE DAYS: BEFORE THE
FIRST WORLD WAR. Memoits of
Edouard Herriot. Translated by
Adolphe de Milly. Old and New
World Publishing Company. $3.75.
Eee men have won the same meas-
ute of respect and affection as
Edouard Herriot. Grand old man of
French politics, perennial chairman of
the Assembly and Mayor of Lyons,
member of the Academy, he is the pet-
fect example of the French petite
bourgeoisie, But there is no taint of
bourgeois stodginess in him, as there
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In yer — 542 pp. — $1.25
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15.
was In Poincaré; he is generous to a
fault—America will remember that he ~
alone opposed the repudiation of the
war debts—and a delicate man of let-
ters. Less vital than Clemenceau, he is
saner and kindlier.
His Memoirs, in three volumes, will
undoubtedly deserve a large and sym-
pathetic audience. I deeply regret that
the start is not more auspicious. This
first volume deals almost entirely with
Herriot’s education and with his aca-
demic career. It contains innumerable al-
lusions to traditions and practices wholly
unfamiliar to the average American
seader. Herriot’s nostalgic references to
the literary world of sixty years ago are
wilted flowers strewn on crumbling
tombstones. Who in America cares
about Xavier Roux, Gabriel Vicaire,
Georges d’Esparbés, Edmond Harau-
court, or even Uncle Sarcey? And who
even in France remembers them, except
my fellow-fossils? The translator should
have been guided by a poem which
Herriot quotes:
Y aurait aussi du danger
A parler tout l’temps d’not’ vie;
nous aurons des étrangers:
Sauraient pas c’que ¢a signifie. .-. .
There are many other poems in this
book, all in French: none but thorough
French scholars could enjoy these pages.
—_- = owe ey
And ee who ‘cos re and the
Ow 40
Sbe
French langauge will be ‘irritated by the ©
translation. M. de Milly has verve, and
even style; but his text is strewn with
boners, of the “Fractured French’ type,
not invariably amusing. The next two
volumes ought to be important: the
American version should be checked
by a rigorous and competent critic.
; ALBERT GUERARD
“Classic” and “Romantic”
DAVID TO DELACROIX. By Walter
Friedlander. Translated by Robert
oo Harvard University Préss.
rs original German edition of this
book, which was written in 1930,
has gained a strong following, and its
reputation has steadily grown, Most
studies of French painting from the
Revolution to the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury follow the culture of the period in
terms of two opposing tendencies, classi-
cism and romanticism. “Such terms,”’
says Dr. Friedlander, “‘are unsuitable
to contrasts of style or technique,
whether in painting or in literature,
because they refer to different levels of
aesthetic experience; the one implies
an ideal of form directly or indirectly
dependent upon the antique, while the
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a =OITY. ZONE__.- STATES
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te yy my
other desc ‘se
we rh +t . ae r ses
the medi of his ork.”
art-historical oe He eae or :
sources in the painting of the eighteenth: 4
and seventeenth centuries, especially |
in the rival camps of Poussin and
Rubens enthusiasts, Observing trends : of
style, he finds interesting parallels with
the evolution of baroque out of |
Renaissance art, including the interven-
ing mannerist and proto-baroque stages.
Ingres, compared to Bronzino, and Prud
hon, compared to Correggio, are re- Bh.
lated to the latter two phases of style; |
whereas Delacroix reestablished th
baroque of Rubens as the prime vehi
cle of romantic expression in art. Esti- f.
mate of the many-sided work of Géri- 9
cault is left unresolved, as Géricault,
himself considered it to be, but the.
emphasis is properly placed on realism*
and Caravaggio as source, for Géri-_
cault leads more to Courbet than he —
does to Delacroix and the baroque. |
Without arguing against Friedlander’s, Je
thesis, it may be urged that “classic” —
and “romantic” do not necessarily refer i
to different levels of aesthetic experi- 4
ence. Each defined a basic attitude to- ,
ward life, and the conflict between 4
these attitudes is perhaps the major ‘
source of conflict in early nineteenth- _
century styles, even when they occur
within the same artist, as they do in
Ingres and Delacroix. In this sense -
classic implies something more funda- | ;
mental than recollection of antiquity. It”
implies a yearning for stability and
clarity; Cézanne exemplifies it as well —
as Poussin, and better than David’s =
pseudo-classicism. Romanticism adum- |
brates the strange, the long ago and
far away, the mysterious and the irra- —
tional—whether in violent or in senti-
mental vein. David's revival of the
antique is therefore more romantic than
classic in spirit. It is atune to Delacroix’s —
revival of Dante and the Middle Ages.
Indeed, David himself revived Dante
a generation before Delacroix did, in
the Death of Ugolino (1796), a little.
known work which Friedlander cites.
In a text which runs to only 136 pages’
treatment of the major artists is neces-
sarily summary, and some of the most 3
interesting observations concern lesser
figures. Trends of style, often com-
pressed into polysyllabics, someti nes
Sexy
eal y reeks a sometimes
as “Gothic,” constantly af-
announced attempt to as-
Xaphael and the forms of
y his passion for Raphael—
e may add, Mozart. As theorist
jant.
S. LANE FAISON, JR.
1.
eep into the complex and curi-
ntrigues that centered ea
“the wisest fool in Europe,”
s when the king’s favor was is
cut to power.
GREEKS. By H. D. F. Kitto.
» 30 cents. This is a charming
, lucid, informative, nicely
| and arranged, written with
clarity, and a humor which has
its donnish and somewhat sharper
the scholarship is thorough with-
g obtrusive. Not a few miscon-
are, courteously, cleared away;
| TO ITHACA, By Eyvind
Thames and Hudson. $4.
dy knows that the Odyssey is a
ry, sO great that it can endure
g retold as a modern novel.
n Doren, translated from the
y M. A. Michael, is a tour de
cular, Chapter V, The Polis, is .
ohnson’s vetsion, introduced by
i
-s Te ne 4
Neeca ie apie | at
‘hun the original aterial, a certain
repetitiousness, and er dawdle-
some tendency toward ‘iis close of the
narrative. Mr. Johnson does not assume
a superior, sophisticated, or condescend- ,
ing attitude toward Homer; his addi-
tions, subtractions, interpretations, and
even evasions have some dignity, and
his account is credible and readable.
AFRICAN FOLKTALES AND
SCULPTURE. Folktales Selected and
Edited by Paul Radin in Collaboration
with Elinore Marvel. Sculpture Selected
by James Johnson Sweeney. Published
for Bollingen Foundation by Pantheon
Books. $8.50. The labors of anthro-
pologist and art critic are here combined
in a magnificent publication, The 165
plates are much the finest available in
-any book on African Negro sculpture.
Like the sculpture the eighty-one folk-
tales, ranging from high myth to
humorous anecdote, indicate an impres-
sive degree of cultural sophistication
and keen observation of human _ be-
havior. Despite the increase of knowl-
edge and understanding of African art
in recent yeats, the bronze and terra
cotta heads from Ife (Nigeria) still
stand out as artistic miracles rivaling the
best in Greek, Gothic, and Cambodian
sculpture.
PORTRAIT OF THE OLD WEST. By
Harold McCracken. McGraw-Hill. $10.
A generous collection of examples, in
color plates, black and white, and line
cuts, of the record in art of life on the
Great Plains and in the Rockies from
the first known picture of a buffalo—a
woodcut of 1553—to Frederic Reming-
ton’s last painting before he died in
1909. The illustrations are supplemented
by brief but informed and intelligent
biographical accounts of the thirty-odd
artists whose work is reproduced and by
an inclusive check-list of other artists
who worked in the West. From the first
half of the nineteenth century the Indian
work of Catlin, Bodmer, and Wimar
stands out; later Bierstadt and Moran de-
velop the possibilities of romantic land-
scape; and the Old West goes off the
scene in the action and genre pieces of
Russell, Schreyvogel, and Remington.
These artists and their fellows produced
work of impressive documentary value,
and some of them work of considerable
R OG es at ye oa
G ‘the one > original genius of the Western
scene was the visionary Blakelock, whose
obscure wanderings in the West led—
how or why eludes Mt. McCracken’s re+
search as it has eluded that of others—to
the remarkable metamorphosis of styla
that set him in a class by himself, At any
rate Blakelock’s haunted West of the
inner eye seems the most lasting memo-
rial in art of the great national episode
whose iconography Mr, McCracken’s
book so admirably illustrates.
THE SELECTED PROSE OF BER-
NARD SHAW, Selected by Diarmuid
Russell, Dodd, Mead. $6.50. Consider-
ably more than half of Shaw’s published
wotk is non-dramatic prose, and the
thousand pages of it in this volume pro-
vide a mere sample. Another anthologist
might have wanted to give more speci-
mens of his author’s sheer comic
exuberance and delightfully ingenious
unreason, but there are solid sections
from the early novels, the critical writ-
ings, and the sociological treatises. Be-
sides being good reading in themselves,
many are indispensable to an understand-
ing of the paradoxes of Shaw’s thought.
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both of them
had polio
Your dimes and dollars made
this picture possible, Today,
these March of Dimes poster
girls—Pam and Pat O’Neil—are
fully recovered. One reason is
that March of Dimes financial
help was on hand from the mo-
‘ment they came down with polio.
It always is.
Four out of every five polio vic-
tims need and receive this help.
Last year was the worst polio
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epic gains by March of Dimes
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This year, there will be new
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Only you...
Nowhere in the negli
|clearly exposed those rationalizations
Swill you find so”
which made a lover of Mozart take up
the cudgels for Wagner and the hater of
all cruelties defend the ruthlessness of
dictators. Sarastro’s speeches are set to
“the only music yet written which
would not sound out of place in the
mouth of God,” but Wagner exposes
capitalism whether he knew it or not.
“Men must be killed and animals must
be killed; nay, whole species of animals
and of man must be exterminated before
the earth can become a tolerable place
of habitation for decent folk. But among
the men who will have to be wiped
out stands the sportsman: the man with-
out fellow feeling.”
MARGARET
MARSHALL
Drama
I MISSED the first presentation of
Moliére by the company of Mme
Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault and had
to wait for the second. So it came about
that I had my last sight of the troupe in
what is, all things considered, its piéce
de résistance. 1 would not have had it
otherwise, for the performance was a
fitting climax to a display of the arts
of the theater whose like we shall prob-
ably not see again until the company
comes for another visit.
It is a commentary on the state of our
own theater and on the “greatest” city
in the world that I have seen practically
no performances of Moliére (which is as
if my Parisian counterpart had seen
scarcely any of Shakespeare). I can’t
therefore make comparisons. I can only
say that these performances of “Am-
phitryon” and “Les Fourberies de
Scapin” seemed to. me authentic in spirit,
that they were beautiful to see and to
hear, that. they were utterly free of the
stale air, the breath of condescension,
that suffuses most revivals and yet were
admirable as the period pieces they must,
to a point, be. Period pieces. Yet what
could be more “topical” than the
jealousy of Amphitryon, the puzzle-
ment confounded of the lovely Alcmene -
as portrayed by Mme Renaud, the prac-
tical fatalism with which the simple
Sosie resigns himself even to the “fact”
that somebody else is himself? As for
the stupid Argante, the greedy Géronte,
their ns, and
s, and the wil}
corrigible im nipulator Scapin
Fourberies,” you know t them: all-
here they appeared not in business
but in costumes and ‘postutes molded
with the fixative exaggeration of art,
their motives and behavior. ah
I was afraid-that Barrault as Scapil
might exaggerate too much—the temp
tation is great. To my taste he did no
and once more his dancer's control and
use of his body had much to do wi
the force and beauty of his characteriza.
tion. Knute Rockne used to make I ui
football players go to the ballet. Bz
instruction should be part of evel
actor’s training. (The effect it might
have on opera singers is once
dream about.) 4
The décor of both plays was ‘hand
some, functional, and simple—and agai
patently inexpensive. As for the aa
tumes, Mme Renaud’s as Alcmene was
properly glamorous and chic, the two
Amphitryons were dressed to the nine:
in elegance, Jupiter appeared as a blaze
of gold. In “Les Fourberics” Argante
(Stupidity) was padded to be gross and
was grossly dressed, Géronte (Greed)
was a carefully shaped grotesque, tightly
fitted—the better to display the legs
bowed as if from the weight of money
bags. Scapin was all lightness —white
stripes on gray, white cap and shoes.
There was a touch of the cirens in the
two acrobats who came on briefly now!
and then, but this note was not insistent.
The servant Sylvestre was very much,
perhaps too much, the lout and clov
Nérine, nurse of one of the girls, be
double and copiously weeping each ti
she appeared, was another farcical fig-
ure. The two gitls looked pretty but
had little to do. Zerbinette (Simone|
Valére) had her scene with Géronte e|
and did it beautifully. Hyacinthe’s scene
with her lover, in which the innocent!
young girl displays a high ee of
practicality, was missing. ;
“The Children’s Hour” Gorse
Theater), which I did not see when |
was first produced, struck me as”
case study this examination ef the
as monster has its fascination; it is al
ster’s Lctina tei is tes pos-
the child, the grown-ups, and
That is unlikely is that the mon-
course would be so consistently
mented and furthered by the re-
every other human being she
enters in very early, and once
in one watches the proceedings
lorfor—as Miss Hellman intended
‘it is the horror that might be in-
‘not by human tragedy but by a
-guignol.
e part of the child is well played
Mann. Katherine Emmett as the
nother, Mary Finney as the flighty
-making aunt, Janet Parker as
child slave of the monster, and
icia Neal as the tortured Martha
obie are all excellent. Kim Hunter has
ne defensive and rather static role of
p | Wright. She is not very effective,
ut neither is the role.
The sets are good. So is the direction
E third group of Columbia record-
A ings of the 1951 Perpignan Festi-
al is the moSt exciting of all, offering
does performances of Beethoven
et works with Casals playing the
Outstanding among these is the
of the Trio Opus 97 (‘‘Arch-
), which inevitably one compares
he historic recorded performance
“a sals, Thibaud, and Cortot. Listen-
10 that performance again one is
by the dissimilarity of the three
and by how wonderfully they
e together in a performance in
Casals’s powerful tone and phras-
minate the more delicate playing
baud and Cortot. Listening then
‘new recording one hears playing
Alexander Schneider and Eugene
fo than ees and Cortot’s, and
care
which has less grace and more
nd phrasing; but one tars 9 again a
is wonderful working together of the
three artists in a performance in which
the first movement is more majestic, the
great slow movement more profoundly
reflective, the finale more brilliantly en-
ergetic,
After this it is astounding to hear on
another record the delicacy of Casals’s
playing in an enchanting performance of
the engaging Trio Opus 1 No. 2; and
on_a third record the similar reduced
scale of his playing in beautiful per-
formances of the uninteresting Trio
Opus 11 and the infrequently heard
Trio Opus 70 No. 2, one of Beethoven's
occasional pieces in a less usual style,
and quite charming.
On one side of the fourth record is
the Sonata Opus 5 No, 2, with its im-
pressive slow introduction to the engag-
ing but excessively long first movement,
and an engaging finale; on the other
side are the two sets of variations on
themes from “The Magic Flute.” In the
sonata Casals’s magnificent playing is
heard with pallid, characterless playing
by Serkin; but the variations stimulate
Serkin to a more satisfying degree of
energy.
And the bonus record for those who
buy the entire group offers a few min-
utes of a rehearsal of the Bach A minor
Violin Concerto, in which one hears
Casals achieve by vocal demonstration
the kind of phrasing that is so exciting
in the playing of the orchestral part—
phrasing in accordance with his ex-
planation to the orchestra: “, . . Every
note is variety—this is what gives life
—otherwise it’s something dry...”
Surfaces, I regret to say, are gritty.
Another notable Columbia release is
Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets and
Great Fugue played by the Budapest
Quartet. The recording was done not in
Columbia's New York studio but in the
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium
of the Library of Congress in Washing-
ton; and this made it possible for the
musicians to use the Stradivarius in-
struments of the Gertrude Clarke Whit-
tall Foundation. I wish I could report
the hundted per cent success that the
company’s effort and the performances’
excellence deserved; but actually, al-
though the recorded sound doesn’t have
the ear-lacerating sharpness of the Buda-
pest uae Pending ae recent years,
the cello sounds dry and hard (even
with the necessary stepped-tp bass),
the violins sound edged and not agree-
able, and the over-all sound is the worse
for the terrific echo of the empty audi-
torium,
Comparing some of the performances
with the ones of the same works on
Victor records of fifteen years or more
back, I have been struck first by the
more beautiful recorded sound of the old
performances—the warmth and richness
_of the lower strings, the sweetness of
the violins. That sweetness is a repro-
duction of the sweetness which Rois-
man’s tone actually had in those years,
and which it hasn't had in recent per-
formances at the Y. M. H. A. This is a
deterioration in the performances that
I have been aware of and written about;
but now, comparing the old and new
recorded performances, I have been
astonished to hear with how much more
fluidity, refinement of phrasing, and en-
semble integration the Budapest Quar-
tet plays today than it did fifteen years
ago.
As it happens, London has issued
Beethoven’s Quartet Opus 59 No, 1
played by the Quartetto Italiano, The
playing is fabulously beautiful;
treatment of the first movement is ex-
cessively nuanced to the point of affecta-
tion and distortion, and wrong for this
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5150 150: $960 t0 1-20, Sat, Mat, $420 to 120.
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-
music. The low strings are reproduced
with voluminous richness and warmth; |
the violins without the radiance and
luster they should have.
And London has issued a perform-
ance of Beethoven’s Trio Opus 97 by
the Trio di Trieste that is unimpressive
after the Casals performance, and some-
what insensitive even considered by it-
self.
CONTRIBUTORS
FRANCES KEENE, who lived in Italy
for many years, edited “Neither Liberty
nor Bread,” a documented history of
Fascism as told by the opposition.
W. NORMAN BROWN is the editor
of “India, Pakistan, Ceylon.”
ALBERT GUERARD, professor emer-
itus of comparative and general litera-
ture at Stanford University, is the au-
thor of “The France of Tomorrow,”
“France, a Short History,” and other
books.
S. LANE FAISON, JR., chairman of
the Art Department at Williams Col-
lege, is The Nation’s art critic.
Coming Soon
THE PAPERS OF
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Reviewed by George Genzmer
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MAY RICHARDSON
ept. TN, tht West 72 Street
jew York City EN 2-2033
20
Is Salt Lake City Like
Atlanta, Georgia?
Dear Sirs: 1 would like to question The
Nation’s comment in its issue of De-
cember 6, 1952, regarding the appoint-
ment of Ezra T. Benson. You say Mr.
Benson “would seem to represent the
best in the social tradition of the Mor-
mon church, which is of course high
commendation.” I would like to ask if
you include in this highly commended
“social tradition” the flagrant race dis-
crimination that exists in Salt Lake
City?
‘The National Young Republican
Federation held their 1949 national
convention in Salt Lake City, and one
would have thought it was held in At-
lanta, Georgia, rather than in a “North-
ern state.” The Oregon delegation con-
tained one Negro, and two or three other
states had Negro delegates. The con-
vention was held in the biggest hotel in
Salt Lake City, which by the way is
owned by the Mormon church.
The Negro delegates were refused ac-
commodations in the hotel and were
‘forced to rent rooms at $10 a day in a
shabby apartment house in which five
persons shared one bathroom, Negroes
had to ride in the freight elevators and
were not allowed to eat in any restau-
rant in the city except the one in the
Union Station. Finally, we managed to
“persuade” the management of the
hotel, by threatening to withdraw the
convention, to allow the Negro dele-
gates to attend the convention sessions
and the official banquets in the hotel,
but on no other occasion could they eat
in the regular hotel dining-rooms. It is
my understanding that the city also en-
forced segregation on the city buses.
Just to add a further ironic note. The
Oregon delegation decided after one of
the sessions to go to a Chinese restau-
rant. The management of the restaurant
refused to admit the Negroes who were
with us. Only after our Chinese dele-
gate—he had himself had to use a sub-
terfuge to get accommodations in the
hotel—who happened to be a wealthy
importer, threatened to put the restau-
rant out of business were our Negro
delegates admitted.
It is a known fact that Salt Lake City
is governed by the Mormon church and
that Mr. Benson is a member of the
governing body of this church. Does he
represent this particular “tradition” ?
- those not yet blacklisted but living -in
Needless to say, prior to this cipal
I had a high regard for the “social tra
dition” of the Mormon church, but rm
future trips across the country I wil
avoid Utah until it establishes a “tra
tion” of equality in its treatment of oa |
sons not born with white skins.
Portland, Ore. MARGIE TAYLOR 3
{Mrs. Taylor's letter sheds further
light on the treatment of Negroes b
the Mormons, which was fist described
to Nation readers by Lowry Nelson i in
the May 24, 1952, ssue.— EDITORS) THE
NATION. } 4
7
Gray Eminences
Dear Sirs: Delay in publishing my article
on the Hollywood black list [The Ne-
tion, December 20} makes necessary
this note of political clarification. The
Gray Eminences of present-day Americ
have no reason to fear communism.)
Their nightmare is Rooseveltism,
broad and unbeatable coalition of pro-
gressive forces of every coloration. At
the time I wrote my article it seemed]
reasonable to hope that under so intel-
ligent a man as Governor Stevenson, we!
might revive the era of F. D. R. But the
philosophy of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
which was behind the Governor, was to
fight McCarthy by accepting a limited
McCarthy (the black list—but only for!
Communists), and to fight MacArthur
by accepting a limited MacArthur (the
action in Korea—but not the World
War III crusade against Peking and
Moscow). But with the right to black- |
list Communists granted, the Gray|
Eminences have a weapon with which,
they can coerce every jury, bring law-|
yers and judges to their knees, line |
up editors and teachers, jail Hisses and
Lattimores, and bring the Rosenbergs to.
the electric chair. And it is by defending
the action in Korea that the country is.
handed over to the biggest demagogue,
the loudest-mouthed jingoist, the ctazi-
est crier of “spy”; in short, thrown to the 1e
flying-saucer mountebanks who have
never brought anything but disaster i
their train. Yes, the blacklisted men and |
women of America, and particularly:
Se es
mel — 1
eres kay ele as
ws
ee ae Bales AR aoe
=<"
daily fear of it, do indeed need a Gov-
ernor Stevenson, but Governor Steventl
son, though he may not know it, needs |
them worse than they need him. a
Los Angeles
7 Crossword Puzzle No. 497
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
eee Pl
BEBE E EH
ACROSS 6 18 is confused without a person of
property. (5)
Et How they make a farewell speech 7 A recess, naturally? Not always. (6)
down in the valley? (11) 8 and 20 down Dark room? (6, 7)
| 9 Little brother gets a form of colic 43 Sort of drunk? Far from ip with
; at dinner, perhaps. (8) x those of Dutch extraction! (5)
10 Vehicle mentioned in “Travel” and 146 After dinner this is steamed—to
“Automobiling.” (6) make it strong, perhaps? (9)
‘11 This cheese is not back on the sort 418 One war which might be expected to
|__ of list well-known in England. (7) bring out character. (6)
/12 Lamb or horse might be. (7) 19 Being as this is out of place, it
© 14 Time for,a French-English version shouldn’t be hard to find in the
) of Mrs. Roosevelt’s column? (6) Atlas. (7)
| 15 Descriptive of the charmer’s stock in 909 See 8 down.
trade. (It’s little work with a Scot 21 Acquires information, with directions
hid between.) (8) to follow the king, perha s. (6
)17 Tennyson hoped to, with irritable 23 Vessel which sounds Ge aes it
i counsel, perhaps. (8) could be put away. (5)
(0 20 Gilded metal. (6) 25 The amount of land captured in the
jing | 22 Stealing a stroke? (7) Third Crusade? (4)
| 4 Suitable spot for a fag end? (7)
7 Sy 96 Eddie Cantor has, at least, a tribe in %
cot New York. (6)
ne 2 3 ; :
a 27 Pais speed is practically acceptable. SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 496
(ae | 28 erything repeated—with an ex. ACROSS:—1 STAGE BUSINESS; 10 GUM-
a BO; 11 WOODCHUCK; 12 PITCH PINH;
_-ample especially evident. (11) 13 REGAL; 14 AMBIDWXTROUS; 19 HD:
WARD GERMAN; 22 SUN-UP: 24 DEHIS-
CENT; 25 GLISSANDO; 26 ORGAN: 27
DOWN GENERAL MOTORS. :
2 Shoulder raps? (9) DOWN:—2 TEMPTS: 3 GOOD HUMOR; 4
‘3 Savifig a little company money, ina BEWAILING; 5 SHORE; 6 NICER:' 7
way? (7) STURGEON; 8 gy, 9 SKYLESS; 15
f HARTHWORM; 16 TRANSPORT: 17 MES-
4and5 Painful with a cracked lip? SAGH: 18 SWAN Divi 20 VERGER ; 31
Such skepticism! (2, 2, 2, 5) ATONE; 23 PASTH; 24 DONN
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr, Lewis's “ground rules." Address
requests to Puzzle Dept., The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, New York,
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How Pathfinder Magatine says: : eee
CAN DISCOVER THE SECRET OF LOW-COST TRAVE!
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HE LITTLE Tyrhennia Line
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ly antiquity—for just $478 in fares. That
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Last year, 52 million Americans spent
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JUST REMEMBER
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to reach—but more rewarding.
e ¢ Chromed ocean liners and interna-
tional hotels are America transplanted.
For fun at budget prices, go by freighter
and stay at pensions.
© © Make your longest hop from Eu-
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vates can save up to 50%.
e © Don't go unless youre ready to
plan well ahead and to shop for travel
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CARIBBEAN There are still undiscovered
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which, as a native described it: ‘Dis islan’,
suh, is t'ing Gahd mek from rainbo'." There,
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Here’s a sampling of dream trips
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tenes in — you can make
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for $319. Go to the lotus-covered moun-
tain lakes of Kashmir, where a furnished
houseboat with four turbanned servants
rents for $70 a month. Total costs for a
couple run around $175 a month—in the
most beautiful spot on earth.
South Seas. You can still live the life
of a Tahitian beachcomber—but not in
Tahiti, which has found out about the
Yankee dollar. Instead, drowse on bril-
liant Sigatoka Beach at Suva or watch
Pacific eombers crash on reef-grit Nor-
folk or Lord Howe Islands. (You can
reach the South Seas by freighter from
the U. S.)
Africa. Perhaps the biggest travel bar-
gain today is an 80-day luxury cruise
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score of colorful ports like Dar-es-Sa-
laam, for $700, round trip from Amster-
dam, (You can reach Holland for $165
from the U. S.)
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starts as low as $92, round trip from
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lush valleys of Mount Olympus on Cyp-
rus, where a couple can live comfortably
for $1,400 a year; on Aegean islands
that hide remnants of a 5,000-year-old
civilization among olive and cork groves;
or with the fisherfolk of rocky Sardinia,
where hotel rates are 24¢ a day or $1.12
with three good meals.
Atlantic Islands. Green cones. stand-
ing out of the sparkling waters of the
South Atlantic—thése are the Azores
and the Canaries. Tropical flowers
sandy beaches, and the charm of old
Spain are combined here—with rents of
about $20 a month, groceries for a
couple at $10 a week and servants $5 a
month each.
~
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:
6
January 10, 1953
| MIRACLE OR MIRAGE?
. | J nion for Western Europe
ai r BY KARL LOEWENSTEIN
| *
| ~=—SW Dick ~ Nexon: Art Commissar
J Who Tried to Kill This Story?
7% BY GEORGE V. SHERMAN
" ce
AE. +
The Crisis in Indian Policy
Open Letter to General Eisenhoner
BY JOHN COLLIER
CENTS A COPY ~- EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865 - 7 DOLLARS A YEAR
Dick Nixon: Art Commissar
San Francisco
HE business of rooting out the Com-
munists and Communist sympathiz-
ets who infest the federal government
should be fairly difficult—there are so
many of them, according to the Repub-
lican press. But it should not be difficult
at all to rid our.federal buildings of
Communist art. For one thing, no trial
is necessary. And for another, no less a
person than Vice-President-elect Nixon
himself has already labeled much of
that art as Communist.
As long ago as July 18, 1949, Mr.
Nixon, then a member of the House,
wrote to C. E. Plant, past commander of
an American Legion post, regarding the
paintings by Anton Refregier in the
Rincon Annex of the San Francisco post
office:
I wish to thank you for your letter as
to whether anything can be done about
removal of Communist art in your Fed-
eral Building. . . . I realize that some very
objectionable art, of a subversive nature,
has been allowed to go into federal build-
ings in many parts of the country. ... At
such time as we may have a change in
the Administration and in the majority of
Congress, I believe a committee of Con-
gress should make .a thorough investiga-
tion of this type of art in government
buildings with a view to obtaining fe-
moval of all that is found to be incon-
sistent with American ideals and prin-
ciples.
In the matter of the Refregier murals
Mr. Nixon’s stand has powerful back-
ing. Gordon A. Lyons, department adju-
tant of the California American Legion,
in a letter to California Congressmen
dated August 6, 1951, declared that the
same view had been expressed by the
American Legion, the Veterans of For-
eign Wars, the Associated Farmers of
California, the Sons of the American
Revolution, the Republican Women’s
Council, the San Francisco Chamber of
Commerce, the Society of Western Art-
ists, and various other- groups,
There is one thing, however, which
may slow up the elimination of Com-
-munist art, That is the fact that the
major part of the Republican press,
which has complained for so many
AROUND THE U.S.A.
years about Communist art in federal
buildings, is now generally silent on the
subject. For example, after the Nixon
letter quoted above was published by
the Argonaut, a San Francisco weekly
magazine, on November 14, a staff
worker in one of the three major wire
services, each of which received a copy,
wrote a story about the letter and con-
troversy which was air-mailed to the
New York office of the wire service.
This story, however, never appeared.
Even the four San Francisco daily
papers, all strong supporters of the
Eisenhower-Nixon ticket, let the subject
severely alone, though earlier they had
eagerly taken part in the Refregier-
murals controversy. They continued to
let it alone, as did the wire services,
when the Argonaut on November 28
published the Lyons letter under the
heading “Support Grows for Nixon in
Ousting Red Art.” And they also re-
served comment after the staunchly Re-
publican Argonaut took them to task on
December 19 in a lead editorial entitled
“The S. F. Daily Press and the Refregier
Murals.”
THE REASON for this evident conspir-
acy of silence is an interesting specula-
tion. It could scarcely be unwillingness
to offend Refregier, for though he won
the Hallmark Greeting Card Company's
annual $2,000 prize for a Christmas-
scene painting last month, he is still the _
subject of a seven-page dossier in the
files of the House Committee on Un-
American Activities and thus. by Con-
gressional standards fair game, at
least as a “‘fellow-traveler.” It certainly
could not be that the Republican press,
surfeited with denunciations and view-
ings-with-alarm, feels that with the Re-
publicans in power communism is no
longer a danger and Tew act no longer
appealing.
Could it be fear of offending Mr.
Nixon? Presumably the main office of
the wire service queried Mr. Nixon
about the story. Presumably also it
would have used it if he had not ob-
jected. But to suppose that Mr. Nixon
was opposed to publication of the story
is to suppose that he has changed his
mind about the murals, which implies
either that he can no longer disting
red so clearly as in the days of the
trial or that his vision was cloudy
and is improving as he finds h
one heartbeat from the Presi
Whatever the cause, his change of
would be news, worth at least a st
type in any paper or wire service that
was not chiefly interested in sparing
embarrassment and thus sparing Eisen-
hower, who has already been sufficiently
embarrassed by his teammate. =
Perhaps the most plausible explan -
tion for the silence imposed on the press
is that Mr. Nixon’s flat statement about
Communist art in federal buildings =a
made solely for campaign purposes, i
the interest not of the country but of
his own advancement, and that being
now safely in office, he does not wish to
have the matter brought up again. e §
GEORGE V. SHERMAN
[George V. Sherman is the pen pains ;
of a San Francisco journalist. |
Happy New Year: .
Happy Days!
“The new era is here—for society, An
era of lavish parties, with millionais es
no longer afraid to release money oper
ly for fun on the home front. Satur
night settled any lingering doubts as to”
the social safety of the splurge. Two
enormous, extravagant debutante parti
set thousands of dollars in motion
around town.”’—Nancy Randolph in t
New York Daily News, December 2:
1952.
millionaire Texan.
Tevis F. Morrow, spent. more
$30,000 on the shindig to honoz two:
his Texas millionaire pals. He took ov
the swank Mocambo, with its two |
chestras and three bars. Movie stars oe
among the 350 guests who dance
sidenuy |
he Shape of Ibings
a
= | pe Eighty-thied Congress
The atmosphere of jolly good-fellowship in which the
“third Congress met on January 3 should deceive
ody. It wasn’t very real to begin with and it won't
There is tension just under the surface among the
: publicans, and conflicts are in early prospect between
1 > parties, between factions cutting across party lines,
nd between Congress and the new Administration.
2 _ One of the first fights will be over the recommenda-
ions made by the President’s Commission.on Immi-
gz gration and Naturalization. The commission’s excellent
report laid down a blue-print of specific proposals which
will certainly be used as the basis for an early attempt to
rewrite the McCarran-Walter law. Just as certainly it
e 1 not be accepted by the Eighty-third Congress, but
ince General Eisenhower is on record as favoring tre-
vision there is at least a chance that modest changes can
be forced through.
It is perhaps symbolic of Republican intentions. that
Representative Joseph W. Martin, Jr., the new Speaker,
should have designated a bill to slash income taxes as
H.R. 1. How a big tax cut is to be combined with a big
d Jefense budget and a possibly bigger Korean war will
doubtless be revealed when the time comes. But one has
only to read Speaker Martin’s welcoming speech to real-
ize that strange ideas are moving through the heads of
ou new Congressional leaders. Bracketing communism
and socialism as “twin evils” spawned by Marxism, the
Speaker denounced both as a threat to representative
government, peace, and liberty. “Here in the United
States the drift to socialism has been steady,” he re-
marked with a straight face.
G een Light for Investigations
To check this and other subversive drifts a whole new
round of investigations is promised. Joseph R. McCarthy,
chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Investigating Com-
mittee, will start a new hunt for subversives in govern-
‘ment and the educational system. Representative Harold
Velde, chairman of the House Committee on Un-Ameri-
can Activities, will do the same. Senator Homer Fergu-
son, probably assuming Senator McCarran’s place as
of the Internal-Security subcommittee, will carry
NEW YORK +» SATURDAY +* JANUARY 10, 1953°
NUMBER 2
on in the spirit of his Democratic predecessor. These
three will engage in “loyalty” inquiries ranging from the ©
government departments and the U. N. to school and
college faculties, civic organizations, publishing houses;
in fact, the range is likely to be as wide as the ambitions
of the gentlemen in charge. According to William S.
White, writing in the New York Times last Sunday,
Senator McCarthy will probably “dominate this whole
scene.” His committee “has a mandate and jurisdiction
that, for all ordinary purposes, are limitless.” As the ses-
sion opened, it did not look as if any effective resistance
to this mania could be expected either in Congress or in
the Administration.
Darkness at High Noon
The New York Film Critics made an excellent choice
in selecting “High Noon’ as the best motion picture of
the year. It is the story, to quote the man who wrote it,
“of a town that died because it lacked the moral fiber to
withstand aggression.” In addition to “High Noon,”
Carl Foreman has written the scripts for such fine films as
“Champion,” “Home of the Brave,” “The Men,”
“Cyrano de Bergerac,” and ‘Young Man with a Horn.”
In a way it is a pity that the announcement of the award
could not have included excerpts from Mr. Foreman’s
dramatic and often moving testimony before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities in Hollywood on
September 24, 1951, in which he refused to answer ques-
tions about possible Communist Party membership al-
though he had taken a voluntary oath that he was not a
~ member of that or any party “dedicated to the overthrowal
of the United States government by force and violence.”
For the fact is that despite this testimony—the record also
included commendations from his commanding officers
in the army and an award from the Paralyzed War Vet-
erans of America for his film ‘The Men,” which deals
with paraplegic veterans—Mr. Foreman is blacklisted in
the motion-picture industry today. Although many pro-
ducers would doubtless like to avail themselves of his
services as a writer—'‘High Noon” has been a great box-
office success—none dares run the risks that might
attach to any producing bearing his name.
The hero of “High Noon” finds himself alone as,
one by one, the fellow-townsmen to whom he desperately
appeals for help in corralling a notorious killer and gun-
man put him off with excuses, each more feeble than the
i. Z
Be deat ees a
3 i 52 a3 7) a nt,
>
° IN THIS ISSUE
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 21
Mercy for the Rosenbergs by Freda Kirchwey 24
fee! ARTICLES
Nato: Arms and Politics by J. Alvarez del Vayo 25
European Union: Miracle or Mirage?
by Karl Loewenstein 26
‘ Proposals for Peace—III by Joyce Cary 28
4 Letter to General Eisenhower by John Collier 29
Ms A Season of Purges by Andrew Roth 31
Chaim Weizmann by Nahum Goldmann 32
Pag: BOOKS AND THE ARTS
aot The Frontier Formula by Oscar Handlin 34
et Critic and Craftsman by Hayden Carruth 34
ae Men Who Served Hitler by Franz Hoellering 35
A Socialism in America by Peter Gay 36
Wa Verse Chronicle by Rolfe Humphries 36
pa Books in Brief 37
ne , Art by S. Lane Faison, Jr. 38
aie Music by B. H. Haggin 39
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS 40
AROUND THE U. S. A.
Dick Nixon: Art Commissar
by George V. Sherman opposite 21
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 498
by Frank W. Lewis opposite 40
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor and Publisher: Freda Kirchwey
Editorial Director
Director, Nation Associates
Carey McWilliams Lillie Shultz
Managing Editor: Victor H. Bernstein
Foreign Editor Literary Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Margaret Marshall
Drama: Joseph Wood Krutch Masic: B. H. Haggia
Copy Editor: Gladys Whiteside
Assistant Literary Editor: Caroline Whiting
Contributing Editors
. Andrew Roth, Alexander Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus,
H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball
Business Manager: Hugo Van Arx
Advertising Manager: Mary Simon
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1958, in the U. S, A.
by The Nation Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at-the Post Office
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising
and Circulation Representative for Continental Europe: Publicitas,
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12 ; Three
years $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $1.
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Information to Libraries: The Nation is indexed in Readers’ Guide
to Periodical Literature, Book Review Digest, Index to Labor
Articles, Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index,
a a a a RC A
22
~ in the employment of American citizens by the United
Hollywoced.
Snowballs Are Not Weapons
The president of the Canadian Catholic Federatio on of
Labor, with 90,000 members in Quebec, has announced
that if the provincial police are not withdrawn fro om
Louiseville and the strike against Associated Textiles set-"
tled, there will be a general strike. A walkout of the
unions would not affect Montreal severely, but it would
hit hard at American-owned aluminum and paper mills
and at textile plants. The C. I. O. steelworkers promise”
support. The unions affiliated with the A. F. of L.
not likely to do anything to offend Premier Duplessis.
This strike of 900 French Canadians against an Amer- |
ican firm in a little town seventy miles down the St.
Lawrence from Montreal has been going on since March. »
A few days ago it erupted into violence, after Paul
Benoit, head of the Montreal anti-subversive squad, in-,
voked the Riot Act. The police shot one man through thes
jaw, beat up several, arrested twenty-six and carne e
them off to Montreal. a
The union went through all the lengthy negotiations ,
and arbitration required by Quebec law before calling |
the strike, The issue then was wages and union security. —
Now, since the mill has been opened with 300 strike- |
breakers, some drawn from farms around the village, a
the main demand is for the dismissal of the strike-break
ers and the rehiring of the old employees, including
those arrested, who were mostly officers of the union.
The bishop of Three Rivers has spoken for the strikers,
and the local priest defends them, saying snowballs are
not weapons against revolvers, and that the a
seems determined to break the union.
The spokesmen for the union appeal to labor pes
Quebec for help, a new attitude on their part. The Riot
Act has now been lifted, and negotiations are going on.
But there can hardly be a French Canadian who does not
know by now that nos gars have been beaten up by |
Premier Duplessis’ provincial police in order to break
strike against an American company. .
Mr. Acheson’s Knotted Cord ~
‘In his testimony before the House judiciary subcom- «|
mittee on the role that the State Department has played
Nations, Secretary Acheson, quoting William McF
said he did not intend “to snatch the knotted cord from
the hand of God and deal out murderous blows”
associates, We applaud the sentiment but wish th
| State Seen officials who “evaluated”
ial furnished them by the F, B. I. about American
el at the U. N. But what about the thirty-eight
can citizens working at the U. N. who have been
blicly branded by the State Department as Communists
f persons “believed to be Communists” on the basis of
ta which the F. B, I. has gathered but not evaluated?
The list of thirty-eight names was marked “secret”
hen it was first submitted to the McCarran committee,
at by a little pressure the State Department was induced
change the rating to “restricted.” The list might now
e better labeled “notorious,” since after being invested
ith immunity by inclusion in the committee’s record, it
nas bccn put on the air and published in newspapers
throughout the country. In submitting it John Hicker-
son, Assistant Secretary of State, mildly ‘‘cautioned” the
E nittee that the department “might have erred” in
naming these individuals. And well it might! None of
the SE cersed had. been given a hearing, nor did the de-
I partment act on the basis of sworn testimony, nor have the
accused any appeal from the conclusions of the “evalua-
tors,” who remain nameless! In damaging, perhaps ir-
reparably, the reputation of thirty-eight citizens without a
semblance of due process, the State Department has in-
deed snatched “the knotted cord from the hand of God”
and dealt a murderous blow to the rights of the indi-
vidual American.
A Symbolic Bonfire
While the world’s statesmen are busy slamming
frontiers in each other's faces, it is mildly encouraging to
note that more than a thousand persons from different
mations gathered recently on the bridge of St. Louis
b etween Italy and. France to burn the wooden frontier
posts and a great heap of passports. This cheerful bonfire
| was organized by the European Federalists and was at-
tended by Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, president of
the European Constituent Assembly; Paolo Emilio Tavi-
ani, Italian Foreign Under Secretary; French Deputy
acques Gérard, a member of the Council of Europe;
and some Italian, French, and German Federalists,
Signor Taviani was applauded when he said, “The edi-
- fice we want to build is not called French-Italian union;
it is called Europe.” The site of the symbolic unification
ceremony was well chosen for it was across the bridge of
‘St. Louis that the French Senegalese troops had rushed
in 1940 to sack the Italian town of Ventimiglia and it
was back over this bridge that the Italian troops had
marched to occupy the French town of Menton.:In the
decades before the war many Italians crossed into France
to find work. Today around Menton much of the terraced
land lies fallow because there are not enough people to
the mnie | Wav names of mid- _ last week when M. Gerard said, ‘Frontiers are the ruin
PR ee 3
Oe PR eek. 4 ra
ft ‘it, while in Ventimiglia the unemployment rate is
high and climbing. Let us hope everyone was listening
of European countries, which are condemned to perish if
they remain within their narrow and miserable national
borders.”
Budenz the Witness
The indictment of Owen Lattimore and the finding of
the Loyalty Review Board that “reasonable” grounds
exist to doubt the loyalty of John Carter Vincent—after
twenty-eight years of service in the State Department—
were necessarily closely related and nearly simultaneous
acts. The failure of the Department of Justice to seek an
indictment against Louis Budenz for perjury logically pre-
cipitated the ordeal that Lattimore and Vincent must now
endure. Either Budenz was lying or they were lying. But
Budenz could not be indicted without jeopardizing con-
victions that have already been secured on the basis of
his testimony, as well as destroying his usefulness as
a witness in future ptosecutions. In addition to Latti-
more and Vincent, Joseph Alsop, the columnist, has
also directly contradicted Budenz. More recently, in
connection with Budenz’s appearance before the Cox
committee, the following individuals have denied the
charge of Communist Party membership he has leveled
at them—namely, Dr. Linus Pauling, who has referred
to Budenz as a “professional liar,” Thomas I. Emerson
of the Yale Law School, Walter Gellhorn of the Colum-
bia Law School, Corliss Lamont, Ira Reid, and Carey
McWilliams. But no matter how many individuals
contradict him, Budenz will continue to enjoy complete
immunity, Like Whittaker Chambers, he is a Witness
Against Communism; therefore his motives cannot be
questioned or his veracity impeached. He is today one of
the most powerful individuals in this country, since, as a
witness, he stands above the law.
A Fair Press?
As usual, the wire services and newspapers featured
the Budenz slanders and ignored or played down most of
the denials. For example, even the New York Times
placed two denials back among the obits and the ship-
ping news. An honorable exception was the York Gazette
and Daily, which in reporting the testimony of Budenz
dropped the names of those he had mentioned and iden-
tified them only as “‘a leading professor,” “a philosopher
who teaches at a prominent university,” and so forth.
“We have not published the names of those labeled
Communist in this instance by Louis Budenz,” the editor .
explained, “because we do not choose to spread libelous
matter about some of them, considered by us to be high-
minded Americans, and because such libelous matter has
been furnished by a person whose credibility we doubt.”
23
ear
tences for peace-time espionage.”
BY £ REDA KIRCHWEY
HETHER Julius and Ethel Rosenberg live or
die, their case will be tried over and over again
in the minds of people everywhere. One need not ques-
_ tion the ability or good faith of Judge Kaufman to recog-
nize that there are weak spots in the evidence on which
_ the Rosenbergs were convicted and sentenced. But at this
eleventh hour such considerations are almost irrelevant.
What remain important as the day of execution ap-
proaches are deeper considerations of humanity - and
mercy and an honest weighing of the Rosenbergs’ of-
fense against the irreparable punishment they face. It is
not necessary to challenge their guilt; it is essential to
ask whether the crime they committed, in the citcum-
stances under which they committed it, justifies death.
By refusing to grant the Rosenbergs judicial clemency
Judge Kaufman last week reiterated his belief that it
does.
Now President Truman must ask himself that ques-
tion, and we profoundly hope he will find a different
answer. Otherwise his conscience and that of the Ameri-
can people will be heavily burdened. We have not yet
hardened ourselves to endure the ruthless dictates of
“political justice”; we still reject concepts of vengeance
and exemplary punishment. If the Rosenbergs die, we
shall feel that both concepts presided at their execu-
tion.
It would be absurd to minimize the crime of which
they were convicted. Whether or not it was “worse than
murder,” as Judge Kaufman declared, it was bad enough.
But it was not treason, and it was not spying in behalf of
an enemy country—however hard it is to keep that in
mind in the atmosphere of cold war. Judge Kaufman
takes issue with the frequent assertion that the Rosen-
bergs were guilty of peace-time espionage and that the
death sentence is without precedent in such cases. They
were sentenced, he says, for war-time espionage. “This
court would not have the power to impose these sen-
But in thus demolish-
ing one of the argmuents against their execution, he
provides a new and possibly stronger one. For if their
sentence is based only upon acts committed during the
war, the contention that they were enlisted in a “con-
spiracy to destroy their own country” loses its force. Cer-
tainly they were not free to “decide for themselves”’
whether or not atom secrets should be given to Russia.
But is not their undeniable guilt modified by the fact that
Russia was our ally in the war and that our government
was going to great lengths to keep it powerful and on
our side? The Judge tries to brush aside this uncom-
fortable question by pointing out that the Rosenbergs’
spying continued “right down to 1950.” In doing so he
falls into a trap of his own making—his previous asser-
24
the Eieatdin: effect of our war-time sas with Ru: oe
sia by citing as a precedent the case of the German spies |
and saboteurs who slipped into this country in 1942. Few | ‘
protests were heard, he says, against their execution after | j
a military trial. He makes nothing of the fact that these.
spies were working for an enemy with which we were at ‘
waft—our major enemy.
He ignores completely a further fact which would de
molish this precedent, even were it a legitimate one. i"
There were other German saboteurs who slipped into hee ‘
United States after the lot he refers to. They were also '
tried and sentenced to death. But they were not executed —
while the war lasted, and when it ended and the vation a z
of dealing with them arose, their sentence was commuted —
and they were sent to federal prison. The complete story —
of the German spies would provide an excellent prece- ;
dent for reducing, not confirming, the sentence against i |
the Rosenbergs. a.
HE Judge also did his best to counter the plea that 4
"Be death sentence is far out of line with the penal- "
ties imposed for similar offenses in Britain and Canada. .~
Klaus Fuchs, he says, received the maximum punishment
possible under British law, and both Fuchs and Alan
Nunn May pleaded guilty; in any case this country is —
under no obligation to “blindly follow the law of a for- +
eign nation.” One can only urge, in answer, that when —
our own law permits, we would do well to follow so —
pertinent an example of restraint and humanity. The
alternative to a death sentence in the Rosenbergs’ case
would be a maximum of thirty years in prison, as com- a
pared with the fourteen years given Fuchs, Thirty years |
would seem to be enough to pay for the crime of espio- |
nage committed under the circumstances outlined above. |
Recent petitions for-clemency signed by such sobet- 4
minded citizens as the Reverend Donald B, Cloward, —
Baptist leader of Mr. Truman’s church; Professor H.
Richard Niebuhr of the Yale Divinity School; De | a
Harold E. Urey, atomic scientist and Nobel ptize-winner; — 4
Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, and several hundred more have |
strongly urged the moral duty of exercising clemency in
this case. The latest petition, after conceding the fairness
of the trial, declared that commutation of the death sen-
tence would “provide a striking demonstration that the
spirit and behavior of a democratic people can bee
objective, restrained, and humane,” serving as an ex-
ample to “multitudes in all countries, including the
totalitarian lands.”
We commend these.words to President Truman in the
firm belief that no final act would better prove his cour-
age and independence than the granting of 7 j
these two convicted spies.
BY J. ALVAREZ DEL VAYO
‘HERE have been many theories circulating in the
J. last days of 1952 as to the nature of what has be-
me known as the “Atlantic crisis.” While the first half
the year was characterized by a moderate optimism on
e problem of recruiting the armies planned by the
Western bloc, increasing alarm has been voiced since
Ictober. When the North Atlantic Treaty Council final-
7 met in Paris on December 15, the prospects looked
lark. It was feared that the ministers would fail to agree
nm “infrastructure,” the bases and communications
ng program. General Ridgway was asking for at
st $473,000,000 for 1953 and 1954. He had to be
fied with the $229,660,000 which was approved for
es and communications work, This was the result of
lard bargaining, and in the last forty-eight hours Gen-
etal Ridgway had to adopt a very serious tone to obtain
hat much. The Council finished its tenth ministerial ses-
= in a spirit of consolidating and improving its exist-
ing tesources in 1953 rather than considerably i increasing
h em. The British were particularly active in keeping ex-
penses below those authorized during the last twelve
months, but no European member wishes the original
figures restored.
lt would be a mistake to underestimate the achieve-
ments of Nato, and the Russians will be the last to
make that mistake. The objective, agreed to at Lisbon, of
easing the West’s forces by the end of 1952 to fifty
ions and 4,000 first-line planes seems to have been
substantially achieved.” However, while the Lisbon ses-
sion had laid down a tentative target of seventy-five divi-
for 1953, the final communiqué from Paris pru-
dently refrained from mentioning a 1953 target.
I Even more serious than the purely military difficulties
CO: ncerning, the number of divisions, first-line planes, and
bases are the political and economic difficulties. In France
sth the conception of an Atlantic Pact and that of a
suropean community have lost ground, and the Nato
me eting was held in the shadow of the sensational at-
s by Herriot and Daladier on German rearmament.
The most thorny of all the problems lies in the unre-
solved contradiction that while Germany provides the
entral element in the American conception of Nato,
Be other members are more afraid of German rearma-
ment than of anything else.
Another essential point is the contrary concept of
Nato held by Europe and the United States. To Ameri-
ans the difference between “containment” and “roll-
is apparently converted to the idea of an anti-Com-
st crusade—or so the election returns would suggest.
in the eyes of the average”European there is an
wary 10, 1953
” may not have great importance, The average Amer- —
Da ” as Pak to the Sina ae Eyen officially,
Western Europe, apart from Adenauer’s Germany, which
has identified its policy with the objectives pursued by
Washington, has viewed with increasing alarm the evo-
lution of the Atlantic Pact in the last three years.
The economic obstacles are well known. For the coun-
tries of Western Europe to rearm within the period asked
for by the Americans would have meant forfeiting the
hope not only of a balanced budget but also of new,
much-needed industrial equipment and an adequate level
of agricultural production. And this would lead fatally
to economic crises, with the consequent aggravation of
_conflicts between the classes. Not even an old Conserva-
tive like Churchill could face such a prospect cheerfully.
“It was [Mr. Churchill’s} desire for a new look at the
concept of European defense plans,” wrote Ned Russell
in the New York Herald Tribune, “that resulted at the
recent Paris conference of the Nato Council in scrap-
ping both the military program laid down at Lisbon last
February and the even more elaborate program proposed
by General Eisenhower in September, 1951.”
But if the wish to avoid disastrous economic effects is a-
permanent factor, resistance to being led- into a policy
of challenging Russia has proved an even more ef-
fective brake. As I have insisted many times, it is upon
the issue of German militarization that the question of
war or peace is likely to be decided. The more the
original character of the Atlantic Pact has been modi-
fied by the growing American tendency to talk about
“liberation” rather than “containment,” the greater has
become the reluctance of the French and other Europeans
to being thrown into the arms of the German generals.
German rearmament at the service of the idea of “con-
tainment’”’ was serious enough; but German rearmament
under a concept of “liberation” looks to Europe like a
fantastic risk,
The respite resulting from German and French delay
in ratifying the treaties with Bonn was used at the Nato
Paris meeting to gain yet another respite, During the
present French government crisis, politicians of right
and left have insisted that there is no hurry about the
creation of the European army. The drive to delay a final
commitment on Germany is precisely what is holding up
the formation of a new Cabinet.
In view of these undisputed facts, it would be a
dangerous oversimplification to judge the problems of
Nato from a strictly military point of view. The mili-
tary were naturally disappointed that the Paris meeting
slashed expenses and declined to make certain decisions.
But the politicians and statesmen have welcomed this
indecision because it allows diplomacy to keep on trying
to find solutions that will not destroy all the bridges
between East and West. If this is not borne in mind,
then the meaning of the Paris meeting will be lost.
25
_ European Union:
ESS A,
N THE recent Presidential campaign American sup-
port of the unification of Western Europe, and of
German remilitarization as its integral part, was the
single non-controversial aspect of the foreign policy of
the Truman Administration, Does such unanimity imply
that American public opinion is genuinely bipartisan,
or only that the current fixation on the containment of
communism prevents a critical analysis of this issue?
The noble concept of European Union has made more
progress in the last five years than at any other time in
history. To some it appears to offer Europe its one hope
of achieving prosperity on the American level by creat-
ing a single market. To others it represents a “third
force” which might hold the balance of power between
the colossi of the West and the East. To others the his-
torical parallels with this country and other federal states
ate persuasive.
From the start two schools of thought have been in
conflict on how to accomplish European Union. The fed-
eralists insist on the priority of a political authority with
sufficient power over the national governments to achieve
unification, The functionalists favor the gradual Euro-
peanizing of important segments of economic life, lead-
ing ultimately to political fedegation. The Council of
Europe, established at Strasbourg by the reluctant gov-
ernments of the Brussels Pact states under pressure of the
“European movement,” was a lame compromise between
the two approaches. All its brief history (since 1949)
reveals its impotence, allegedly because the Council of
Ministers stymied the programs of the ambitious Con-
sultative Assembly; actually because the organization,
aside from the unrepresentative character of its parlia-
ment-appointed delegates, was incapable of “selling” the
European idea to the masses of the fifteen participating
states.
However, a contributory cause of Strasbourg’s failure
was that it ran into competition with the American
functional approach. Emphasis shifted from political to
economic cooperation. The Marshall Plan (European
Economic Cooperation), conceived and executed with the
sound purpose of raising living standards and thus re-
ducing the appeal of the Communist promise of salva-
tion, measurably contributed to the economic recovery of
most of the sixteen participating nations. But it fell short
of serving as a vehicle for European unification, While
making the aid-receiving nations awate of common
KARL LOEWENSTEIN is professor of political science ai
‘Amherst College.
26
not indorse the effort to build an economically integra
BY KARL LOEWEN STE IN
European needs it did not promote their solidarity. Ea
was eager to cut for itself the largest possible slice of the”
American cake. Moreover, the assistance failed to filter.
down to the masses. With its understandable accent on
free enterprise and its unavoidable intervention in '
domestic affairs, the Marshall Plan provoked rese
against the donors, Increasingly the recipient govern-
ments and their business communities demanded trad
instead of aid, which the rising protectionism of the
American Congress was believed to deny them.
Against this backdrop of the desire to emancipate
Europe from American economic tutelage the Schuman, /
or rather Monnet, Plan must be evaluated, The plan pto- |
vides for the pooling of the coal and steel resources of the’ |
six nations constituting the inner core of the Continent,
r “Little Europe’—France, Western Germany, Italy, |
and the three Benelux countries. In proposing it the’ |
French pursued a triple aim: (1) to regain their prestige |
by assuming European leadership; (2) to create a single |
market for the bulk of production, thus freeing Western
Europe from American charity; (3) to contain Ger- |
many’s economic power by harnessing German heavy i in
dustry to European requirements, .
No more revolutionary step toward Eutopean eco- |
nomic integration has ever been taken than formation of
the Coal and Steel Community, which began to operate 4
last August. Whether it was a leap into the dark or a |
well-constructed bridge leading to European unification, |
only time can tell. As yet the scheme lacks’ enthusiastic |
defenders except for the ministerial bureaucracies of the: 4
governments that fashioned it—and the American gov- ‘
ernment, which worked ceaselessly for its completion. ©
Big business is suspicious of its potentiality as a machine |
for super-national planning, and labor is suspicious of it ;
as a super-cartel and as official recognition of techno. | J
cratic and managerial control. About its undemocratic _
character there is no doubt. The “Assembly” is only a —
democratic facade. To satisfy federalist aspirations, —
a Constitutional Committee was created to draw up az
political constitution for Western Europe, under which .
the Coal and Steel and the Defense communities and
other future European organizations would be operated —
by common European organs. It is hoped that this and |
tempt will improve on the Strasbourg record,
Whatever the objections, there will be few who =
me nt
P
Europe, ending the internecine pees of frag
, $ ¥ $y i,
rae Stet ae yb
| in the East; (2) Britain does not and will
‘n. Both British parties are adamantly opposed to a
anger of sovereignties that would withdraw large seg-
ents of the national economy from parliamentary
atrol and would be irreconcilable with Britain’s posi-
m in the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire.
~ IVEN time for development and adjustment, the
J [ chance of European economic unification is by no
eans bad. But organic growth is stunted by American
essure to recruit military allies in the cold war. Euro-
n militarization has superimposed on European
fication an element wholly alien to and, possibly,
ctive of it. American opinion has been misled into
elieving that common defense against a possible aggres-
f is a powerful incentive to unification. Nothing is
arther from the truth. The Western Europeans are by
io means indifferent to the danger from the East, but
hey do not share the American belief in its imminence
ot in the ultimate showdown which would turn their
lands into uninhabitable radio-active swamps.
he reasons for such optimism are complex. The
Eu fOpean governments must choose between spending
their insufficient revenues on economic rehabilitation or
pf rearmament. If the latter is chosen, the living stand-
ard of the masses will drop to a point where they may
be susceptible to Communist blandishments; this, in
turn, would endanger existing middle-of-the-road gov-
srments, none of which are supported by a reliable
majority. There is no escape from this dilemma, since
under the Mutual Assistance and Mutual Security acts
American financial aid to civilian economies has been
sharply reduced. No wonder that Nato, the first re-
sult of America’s search for allies, is unpopular, believed
to 0 be aimed as much at providing us with a glacis and
-power in a war against the Soviets as at serving
Eu Bropean defense needs. Pentagon pressure overreached
itself at Lisbon. By now American opinion unhappily
Bealizes that the military commitments undertaken by
Europe had to be scaled down drastically, though in view
of the existing military build-up a Russian invasion of
Western Europe would be no longer a walkover.
Moreover, to the European governments and their
peoples the immediate fear of Germany has begun to
ershadow the more remote fear of Russian expansion.
Germany's recovery has outstripped that of all other
Western European nations. The neighbors look at Ger-
many without the roseate glasses of John J. McCloy. The
same ruling class that carried the Reich into the First
World War and flung itself with Hitler into the Second
is in the saddle again. Denazification has failed signally;
ru: ia Aelinnetsiion Jat eiberhat West-
ern n Europe could not be defended without German
divisions, Europeans became deeply alarmed.
To counter the danger of German membership in
Nato or, what seemed even worse, the remilitarization
of Germany on an independent basis, the French an-
nounced (October, 1950) the Pleven plan for a Euro-
pean army in which the national contingents of the six
Schuman Plan nations would be merged. The French
skilfully dressed this up as another instalment of Euro-
pean unification. The Adenauer government eagerly took
the bait: for its share in Western defense Germany would
“win, through a replacement of the onerous Occupation
Statute by “Contractual Relations,” its full sovereignty.
After most difficult negotiations, in which the United
States was more than an innocent bystander, the six gov-
ernments signed the European Defense Community
(E. D. C.) treaty on May 27, 1952. Again it is to be
noted that the group is confined to “Little Europe,” con-
trolled by Catholic governments, and that the British
stayed out,
E. D. C, has little to do with European unification. It
is a shotgun marriage in which the American govern-
ment, in the person of High Commissioner McCloy,
served as the by no means disinterested marriage broker.
Nor are the motives of the partners more than super-
ficially “European.” To the French it offers the chance
of delaying full-scale and uncontrolled German rearma-
ment. Germany's misgivings about remilitarization are
alleviated by the prospect of regaining its position of
hegemony, with an American alliance in the bargain.
What the French fear, and the Germans cannot but hope
for, is that the German territories lost to the East will
become a European problem which may easily drag the
partners into a war they abhor. Once again militarily
strong, the Germans may act on their own, either forcing
Moscow to agree to German unification on their terms or,
failing this, trading unification for an economic alliance —
with the Soviets. If this contingency may seem remote to
those who take the present German aversion to com-
munism at its face value, they should recall the tremen-
dous temptations the East has to offer German industry
and labor in the industrialization of Asia, particularly of
China. Moreover, cooperation with Russia conforms to
German tradition, which from Frederick the Great to
Rathenau and Ribbentrop considered it the rock-bottom
principle of national foreign policy.
URING recent weeks progress toward European
unification has come to a screeching halt. In both
France and Germany ratification of the E, D. C. treaty
has run into road blocks. France, militarily tied down in
its hopeless struggle in Indo-China, shrinks from under-
writing German rearmament, which, once legalized, no
27
Proposals for Peace—Ii
BY JOYCE CARY
ve only hope for peace is an international law with
teeth, and some world power not afraid to use the
teeth. That does not exclude a democratic system for
the nations. The United States is a federation under
law, but it is also democratic. In fact, a democratic sys-
tem is required, for a legal system must be modified
and developed to meet new situations. If you say that
a federal system is not applicable to the world problem
because the nations have different languages and
religions, the answer is that the Swiss Federation in-
cludes three different languages and two different re-
ligions, and also that the old empires, from the Roman
to the British, which secured peace throughout most of
the world for long petiods, maintained the law over a
great variety of peoples in every stage of development.
The imperial system is out of date; it could not
handle the new violence of national agitation. But it
had to be replaced, and so we saw first the League of
Nations and then the United Nations assuming respon-
sibility.
If the United Nations should fail for want of teeth,
you may be sure that some other authority will take its
place. World government is already in sight, although
probably at a congiderable distance. What that distance
is nobody knows, or what the difficulties, perhaps the
wars, by the way. But it is certainly coming, and this is
a good hope for all New Years.
{Joyce Cary is a distinguished British novelist.
His latest book is “Prisoner of Grace.” Others which
have been widely read in this country are “Mr, John-
on,” “The Moonlight,” “Herself Surprised,” “The
Horse’s Mouth,” and “A Fearful Joy.’”}
power on earth could restrain within treaty limits. The
German generals, from Scharnhorst to Seeckt, were past
masters in circumventing them.
Objections to ratification on the German side are more
complex. The Saar issue has now officially taken the
place of Alsace as the trouble spot in Franco-German re-
lations. The settlement favoring France in the elections
of November 30, 1952, is accepted by German national-
ism as only temporary. Ratification is also opposed by
the neutralist and pacifist movement supported primarily
by the Protestant church, which is alarmed at the pros-
pect of a “Little Europe” of Catholic states. German
youth of all classes is genuinely anti-militarist. Yet Dr.
Adenauer’s crude and America’s subtle persuasion are
slowly reconciling German opinion to remilitarization
~and conscription. Powerful pressure groups of war vet-
erans, shot through with old and new Nazis, see their
day dawning.
Opposition to rearmament is spearheaded by the
strongest party in the Bundestag, the Social Democrats,
28
quested by both the Social Democratic Party and the |
‘to legal arguments alone, the court as the custodian of = a
Eastern Gorday since the Soviets would never agree to
a united Germany tied to the Western defense system, |
Aside from emotional reasons, unification would serve |
the Socialists’ political interests because with Eastern
Germany added they would be sure of an electoral ma:
jority. (2) Remilitarization would further intrench heavy
industry, traditionally allied to the military technocrats.
At least in Germany militarism and democracy have
proved incompatible. The government's intention of -
creating a “democratic” army instead of the Prussian type | i
of the past is given little credence. Even in the United ©
States the civilian government finds it at times difficult | a
to check the military. (3) The Social Democrats are the ©
only post bellum party that takes seriously the democratic
premises and procedures of the Bonn constitution. 3
ERE American opinion less obsessed by the cold.
war, the recent constitutional crisis in Germany ‘
arising from the ratification struggle would have found
more understanding here. The legal and political impli-
cations of the case before the Federal Constitutional
Court at Karlsruhe are far too complex to be treated in |
one short article. Their essence is briefly this: When the
Bonn constitution was drafted, it deliberately omitted ~
any provisions about military powers. Militarization was:
prohibited by Allied Control Council legislation. Though
the latter by now has fallen into abeyance, it still remains —
necessary to add to the constitution provisions for the —
exercise of military powers and to assign such powers to |
specific government organs. The Socialist contention |
seems incontrovertible, Since the required constitutional —
amendment can be adopted only by a two-thirds’ ma- —
jority, for which Social Democratic votes are indispen-
sable, the government is trying to sidestep the amendment _ |
by the specious argument that it can proceed to set up —
the military establishment and introduce conscription on |
the basis of the provision of the constitution (Article 24, 4
Section 1) which authorizes it, by simple majority, to
ransfer sovereign rights to international organizations, | i
Months ago the Federal Constitutional Court was re-
federal President, Dr. Heuss; to decide this constitutional —
issue. All contestants are supported by an unprecedented
barrage of expert legal artillery. For Germany this isthe 4
first and the crucial test of the new constitution. a
Dr. Adenauer and the authoritarian-minded barca a
cracy which writes his briefs are fully aware that, if left
the constitution would rule against them. By deft pro- |
cedural maneuvering they have succeeded in casting
doubt on the political impartiality of the court and
ation on the defense ae by a subservient parlia-
aty majority will not be accepted by the Socialist
position or public opinion in general. If, however, a
on: stitutional amendment is required, the treaty is
Joomed for the time being, at least until after the elec-
ion next summer, in which the Socialists hope to win a
lajority. With the defeat of the treaty, the American
government would also be defeated. If the Germans
to ratify it, France and the other partners, with great
elief, will likewise refrain from ratification. In other
ds, the miracle European unification according to the
American formula will become a mirage.
, What, then, are the chances of European unification?
FTAHE Indians of the United States and Alaska are
looking to you, General Eisenhower, for rescue. I
state their case bluntly.
_ Since May, 1950, an attempt has gone forward to
wreck the federal Indian Service, repudiate the Indian-
trusteeship obligation of the United States, and spread
palsy through Indian group and individual life. Merely
to stop this administrative and social genocide will not
be enough. A work of healing, of reconstruction and
new construction, is desperately called for.
_ The matter is more important than the size of our
In ndian population would suggest, There are 450,000 In-
dians in this country and Alaska, but there are more than
40,000,000 Indians south of the Rio Grande. The
ir usteeship obligation of the United States toward its
Indians is our oldest national obligation toward any
minority group and is buttressed by treaties between the
United States and hundreds of sovereign Indian tribes,
by numerous statutes, and by an unbroken line of Su-
preme Court pronouncements,
“It is for its bearing on the future that I summarize
pe the policy and practice of the last two and a half
rears in Indian relations. But before doing so I wish to
all the things that were attempted and done by Presi-
de dents Hoover and Roosevelt and by President Truman in
his first five years,
}
IN COLLIER, formerly Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
ow president of the Institute of Ethnic Affairs. He is the
ut ‘hor a “Indians of the Americas.”
Bae, 1953
3B
Je
TO
a
re
A mericans: s wou Nia be a. ates to ae it, not In the
2 - abstract terms of a desirable goal for strengthening the
free world, but in the realistic context of the German
problem. For the time being two currents carry the
European idea. There is on the one hand _the sincere
Europeanism of an intellectual élite. This, however, has
not penetrated the masses, and without a mass basis it
will not succeed. On the other hand the idea of
unity is stimulated by the urgent desire of Germany’s
neighbors to contain its resurgent power within the
limits of a European organization. But fear and distrust
are too rickety a foundation to hold up an enduring
European structure. The two currents, therefore, are
mutually contradictory. If European unity, the Grand
Design of our time, fails because for political reasons it
is coupled with military expediency, it may suffer a set-
back from which recovery will take more time than man-
kind can afford.
Letter to General E isen bower
BY JOHN COLLIER
The Hoover-Roosevelt Indian policies were undeviat- |
ing. First, the responsibility for service to Indians was
distributed among the branches of the federal govern-
ment which serve everybody else, such as the United
States Public Health Service, the Department of Agri-
culture, the Social Security Board. The ratio of services by
the Indian Bureau to services to Indians by all federal
agencies was consistently cut down.
Second, with statutory authority, responsibility for
service to Indians was shifted steadily to the states and —
their subdivisions. The bulk of all Indian children were
placed in local non-federal schools, Health services in
most of the Midwest and the Northwest and along the
Pacific Coast became a state function.
Third, Indian tribes and local groups were permitted
and helped to organize for mutual aid and, in regions
where conditions required it, for limited local self-gov-
ernment. This development of Indian self-help, pursuant
to statute, was underwritten through more than 200 con-
stitutions and charters. Indian economic production was
greatly increased, and Indians proved themselves to be
the safest credit risk in the United States,
All these Hoover-Roosevelt policies were carefully
worked out within the letter and spirit of the treaties,
Congressional agreements, and other bilateral commit-
ments between the government and the Indians.
I come now to the year 1950, when Dillon S, Myer
was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Mr.
Myer had gained distinction through his proper action in
breaking up with great rapidity the concentration camps
29
oo
oes
Ade aod
» ,
i
ke
yh
mn
<
he
-
e
rT
TS
into hie 110 ,000 ou Fapada’ pe
_ their parents had been imprisoned after 1941. These
camps of the War Relocation Authority had no possibili-
ties for permanence. The people in them were heteroge-
_meous groups, herded in from many neighborhoods and
held there by force. They had no proprietary interest in
the camps and never considered a future there.
When he became Indian Commissioner, Mr. Myer car-
ried over from the War Relocation Authority his for-
mula of “withdrawal” and “relocation.” But the Indians
live in genuine and permanent human communities;
their reservations and other homelands are theirs by
proprietary right; their status is not that of prisoners of
the United States but of citizens, with all the constitu-
tional rights of citizens.
There have been other paroxysms of “withdrawal” in
United States Indian affairs, from as long ago as 1870 on.
Invariably the result was to turn Indian property over to
whites, demoralize the community life and personality
of the Indians, increase the costs of the Indian Bureau,
and multiply its arbitrary controls over the group and
personal transactions of Indians.
OMMISSIONER MYER'’S pseudo-“withdrawal”
C has been like the earlier ones. The budget of the
Indian Bureau has been doubled, not diminished; for the
current fiscal year Mr. Myer tried to treble it. Admin-
istrative controls have been wound like Gulliver’s threads
around Indian political, industrial, and personal life, and
Indian properties have been thrown open to white
seizure.
Moreover, this ‘““withdrawal,”’ like the others, has been
welcomed by certain elements in Congress whose chief
interest is the separation of Indians from their lands,
water rights, and other properties. Like other “withdraw-
ing” commissioners, Mr. Myer has built a Congressional
_ machine which has tried to dominate the Secretary of the
Interior and to inhibit the actions of the Chief Executive
in relation to Indian affairs.
The consequences, in the large, have been to drive out
of the Indian Service much of its best personnel, to para-
lyze or misdirect the people not driven out, to swell
the power of faithless Indian Bureau officials, and to
create in the tribes a feeling of desperation and mount-
ing wrath.
I have stated that the distribution of Indian Bureau
responsibilities among other federal agencies, the states
and their subdivisions, and the tribes themselves was
proceeding consistently and rapidly before 1950. Under
Commissioner Myer these decentralizing trends have
been stopped. The Indian Bureau has been steadily re-
capturing authority, and the operation has been described
with complete falsity as the “withdrawal of the Indian
Bureau.”
The history of Indian affairs has been determined, as I
30
Indian life. I beg you to give your personal attention to
uf
a
wl
ments eni4 in the ee of federal t rus ceship. D.
The drive of Commissioner Myer has been toward the
administrative eluding of the bilateral agreements and o! .
the constitutional and civil rights of the Indians and also,
through attempted legislation, toward the bilateral de- 4
struction of the contractual commitments, With Indian j
consent if he can get it, without Indian consent if neces-
sary, Commissioner Myer has sought to destroy the |
trusteeship system both by administrative action and by
attempted legislation. a
The reason-why it is not improper to dwell on the i im:
mediate past in this open letter can be stated in a few
words. The immediate past could become the Jethat
future.
The program called “withdrawal”—which is no wwithe
drawal, but a renewed concentration of control in the |
Indian Bureau—has won important Congressional sup:
port. Not because it has produced financial economies: it _
has produced great financial extravagances, No, simply. 4
because the Indians have large properties which they can
protect under federal trusteeship and cannot protect |
under the Myer program. “a
But there is a greater danger than the selfishness of
Congressmen, and it makes one fear that Commissioner —
Myer’s plans may go on even though he does not go on
as commissioner, This danger is the trend, with which |
we are all sadly familiar, in American life at this moment |
to consider that human, social, and ethnic “differentness”
—anything that holds itself out from the fiction of the —
American melting-pot—is anti-American, un- Christian, :
outmoded, and perhaps disloyal or barbarous.
The United States. has not only its Indian responsibil-
ity. The United States is in the world, as you, General —
Eisenhower, so fully know. And that world is a world —
of human, ethnic, and cultural diversity. If the adminis- —
trative assumptions of the last two and one-half years
were to be carried over by the United States from Indian
affairs to the world, the results would be fearful indeed. °
But what we cannot curb in our behavior at home, we
may not be able to curb in the wide world.
I urge you, General Eisenhower, to do much more
than just replace Commissioner Dillon S. Myer with a
man of good-will. Commissioner Myer is a man of good- i
will. I urge you to find an Indian commissioner with |
sophisticated understanding of the basic American con-
cept of due process of law, with respect for human dif- a
ferences, and with sympathetic knowledge of the facts of
= sa Fe eS. CE
i
Siete eta
ee ee ea” ee oe. an Ce
the situation that has been brought fatefully into bein,
tion to the shi see leae own attentions tieke can
no fear as to the event. :
London
¥ “HE tone of the London Daily Worker is seldom
_ defensive, and its stridency has increased as the
aper’s circulation has dropped. Communist Party mem-
et ship also has fallen from a peak of 60,000 in
945 to 30,000; the party is no longer represented
atliament, and its influence in the country, except in
ettain key trade unions, has been reduced to a fraction
what it was at the end of the war. On one subject,
ever, the Daily Worker had been very much on the
. ensive for weeks—the recent Prague trials and the
wi atges of anti-Semitism arising from them. Thus when
ot b ewish Board of Deputies recently announced that it
is
i
i
| sup.) would hold a protest meeting, the Daily Worker gently |
ra eminded it that the Communists had held no such meet-
imply ing to protest against the rearmament of Germany and
th at anyway the chief rabbi of Czechoslovakia had told
the Daily Worker's diplomatic correspondent in Prague,
himself a Jew, that no anti-Semitism existed there.
_ This was the first Communist trial that British leftists
could watch with any background knowledge enabling
them to judge it. In previous Moscow-style trials few
persons in this country had had any contact with the
accused. But three of the men hanged in Prague had
‘spent the war years in London—former Foreign
Minister Vladimir Clementis, who was in the Benes
government in exile, and Otto Sling and Ludwig Freyka
(originally Freund). Freyka was a Sudeten German Jew
‘who joined the Communist Party in his youth and be-
came editor of the Sudeten edition of the German Com-
_munist daily Rote Fahne. This was a dangerous job,
particularly for a Jew, when Hitler was taking over the
- seadetenland. After the Nazis marched in, a fund to
which many prominent British liberals contributed was
used to bring Freyka, among other Jewish refugees, to
De gigna. The fact that he was rescued from the Nazis by
a “capitalist organization’’ was one of the charges against
him. As a final degradation, Freyka was forced to attack
those who had once saved him.
- To Britons the Prague charges appeared particularly
_fidiculous because of their references to ex-Member of
Parliament Konni Zilliacus and the foreign corte-
. spondent of the New Statesman and Nation, Alexander
3 Vv erth. “I can imagine Konni as a ballet dancer as easily
as I can imagine him as an ‘imperialist agent,’ ’’ one
ot P. said jokingly. Both Zilliacus and Werth have, as
NDREW ROTH is a eee editor now writing from
Le 0 ndon.
BY ANDREW ROTH
a matter of fact, been particularly unswerving in plow-
ing a left-liberal furrow, although self-interest would
have made both of them bear to the right.
The disillusionment caused by the Prague trial has hit
the Communists where it hurts: they have lost ground
among the middle-class intellectuals whose names they
desperately need to make an impression in a country that
still venerates respectability. One of those who said they —
had had a “revulsion of political feeling as a result of
the recent judicial proceedings in Prague,” was Ben-
jamin Frankel, a British composer and musician who had
been a party member for twelve years. He wrote to the
Daily Worker to protest against the “indecent haste with
which the ultimate penalty” was being applied, but found -
its pages closed to him, and he had to announce his resig-
nation in the correspondence columns of the New States-
man. The number of approving letters he has received
from former party sympathizers proves that many fellow-
travelers have been similarly affected. He had made
many allowances, he said, for what he considered un-
democratic procedures in Communist countries because
these countries had no democratic tradition. But when
they occurred in Czechoslovakia, his eyes were opened.
After Frankel’s public apostasy, it was learned that —
a. number of other resignations had been handed in
privately. Mervyn Jones, the successful young novelist,
disclosed that he had resigned eighteen months ago.
Many people have hoped for a statement from
Dr. J, B. S. Haldane, who quit the party quietly i in 1951
because he could not swallow Lysenko.
The Prague trial, by causing a revulsion against com-
= eg
Codiiteey Providence Sunday Journal
Tending to Dampen One's Ambition
31
No Comment
Washington—A request that all Indiana universi-
ties and colleges bar New Deal professors who have
worked with the last two Democratic administrations
was made today by Republican Representative John
V. Beamer, Wabash. He addressed letters urging this
blacklisting to the five colleges in his district—Taylor
University and Huntington, Marion, Anderson, and
Manchester colleges. He also sent it to Indiana, Pur-
due, and Notre Dame universities and Wabash Col-
lege. His letter states that it is his hope that the
Indiana schools will not employ on their teaching
staffs those who have been “espousing and promulgat-
ing the cause of socialism or communism in various
ways. . . . He feels that they could further poison
the minds of the young people, who are in their plastic
age. ’—Evansville, Indiana, Press, December 9.
munism, might have made the United States more popu-
Jar here in comparison had it not been followed by the
indictment of Owen Lattimore. This reminded people
that the United States, in fighting communism, has taken
over some of its conformist pressures. When Professor
Lattimore was here last January he impressed everyone
with his moderation: his position on China was even
Chaim Weizmann
W ith Edin he Srediot in Chine t ae
People who had been shocked by the ‘oak oppor-
tunism of the Communist judicial system in Prague were —
somewhat upset to read in the Times (December 8) —
that the Lattimore indictment was “ordered by the |
{ American} Attorney General soon after the election re- —
sults were known. . . . In initiating the Lattimore trial, it”
is pointed out, the Truman Administration is covered
whatever the result may be. It would, of course, be sat- |
isfactory to the Administration if the professor's inno-
cence were proved by the court in the first few months of —
Republican rule.” But if it is not, Mr. Truman can daim | :
that his Administration had him indicted. It is not the: '
man’s innocence but the best interest of the party that
counts in Washington as in Prague.
Of course there is a considerable difference between —
the two legal systems. Instead of two years or so of
solitary confinement and psychological torture, Mr. Lat- .
timore has only had three years of McCarthy- “McCarran |
harassment. Instead of facing a farcical trial, Mr, Latti- .
more will be able to fight, with skilled legal aid, for .
his complete vindication, And if he is none the less con- 3
victed he will not hang. There is a difference, even if
Mr. Lattimore cannot be expected to be greatly impressed +
by it at present.
Jersusalem
HAIM WEIZMANN was perhaps the most per-
fect synthesis in our time of the two great
geographic-cultural trends that have shaped the con-
temporary Jew; no other man of our time has combined
to such an extraordinary degree Eastern Pe ae: Jewish-
ness and Western European culture.
He was not a traditional Jew in the religious sense, but
he had a profound reverence for Jewish tradition in all
its forms. The story has been told of him that in the days
of the blitz in England he would take the Bible to the
shelter with him and read it for hours. This was not
motivated by the superstition so common in the face of
death. It was a characteristic expression of his inseparable
link with Jewish discipline. :
His deep attachment to his family, so movingly ex-
pressed in his autobiography, was part of his attachment
to all traditional Jewish forms. The quality and habits of
DR. NAHUM GOLDMANN is chairman of the American
section of the Jewish Agency and head of the World Jewish
Congress.
32
BY NAHUM GOLDMANN
his intellect were typically Jewish. His was primarily
an analytical mind, accustomed to antithetical thinking;
it was an agile mind, and brilliancy in dispute and argu-
mentation was his in an extraordinarily high measure.
Dr. Weizmann had that propensity for irony which is
also characteristic of so many Jewish minds and is a
reflection of the garnered heritage of an ancient people
too wise to be impressed by ephemeral achievements.
He possessed the combination of skepticism and faith
typical of the Jews as a whole, skepticism with regard to
powers that pass with the day and unshakable ii in
the eternal values.
As he moved among the so-called great of the world,
he bore himself proudly, unawed by titles, rank, or. —
sweeping authority. There was a touch of good-natured
sufferance in his dealings with rulers and statesmen. He
regarded himself as their equal, not as a person but as:
the chosen representative of a people that had seen
empires crumble, that had survived precisely because of
its confidence in the victory of righteousness over persecu-
tion, torment, and the hostility of powerful leaders, He
never for a moment doubted the final victory of Zionism.
a
fo le go
w at the age of eleven or twelve he wrote a
to his teacher in Motele expressing his faith in a
state. His Zionism was never simply political.
im Zionism was the fusion and realization of the
st traditions of Jewish history, an obligation to im-
em ent the values of Jewish civilization by casting them
the pattern of a modern state. The teaching of the
xOphets, the imperatives of the Bible were for him no
ss an integral part of Zionism than its political aspira«
He had a deep faith in the power of moral ideas,
ile conceding that political and physical power may
Indispensable in carrying out an ideal in the frame-
k of the grim realities of history, he never believed
hat these instruments were decisive. He abhorred terror,
dt for reasons of political expediency or for fear of the
tior might of the British, but because he could not
uiesce in the theory that the noble aim justifies ignoble
: . Zionism was to him, above all, a manifestation of
the « creativeness of the Jewish people. He envisaged a
Jewish state great notin terms of territory or population,
in a cultural and moral sense. Notwithstanding his
piness over the establishment of Israel, with himself
4s its first President, he was sometimes disturbed, in his
last years, because this aspect of Zionism had been so lit-
te implemented.
_ Weizmann was a great scientist. He could certainly
have become one of the top chemists of our time had
he not lavished most of his energy upon Zionism, He
absorbed and assimilated all the riches of Russian, Get-
man, French, and English culture, But even greater than
Weizmann the Jew or Weizmann the scientist was Chaim
zmann the man. All who were granted the grace of
working with him were solemnly aware of his quality.
He was ah artist, even in his science, and most defi-
nitely in his political genius. More profound even than
his intellect was his intuition. I have been told by
‘scientists that his greatest successes were achieved not by
logical calculations but by inspired intuition. I can testify
that this was also true of his political achievements. He
was an artist, clinging to the precipice of his nerves,
yminated by moods, and highly sensitive to atmosphere,
His was not a cold, matter-of-fact world; he could not
ee the presence of hostile opposition. He had to be
su pended by friends, warmth, sympathy. He was tem-
eramental; he could hate and love, rage and forgive. He
v was spontaneous and often said and did things that ran
oa to all political calculations and brought him
harm. He exposed himself to attacks, was incautious in
ics and had nothing but supreme contempt
z 1 scheming. His was the self-assurance of a genius,
he refused to do things incompatible with his tastes
2 ay ng tl
er ge to be forced into the isk (eek of pany, politics or
_ Party programs,
; Churchill explained: ‘I am afraid to see him. I would
The artist in Weiz-
mann explains his
charm, to which so
many succumbed, His
greatest successes,
even as a statesman,
were aided by his un-
matched charm, He
had an uncanny un-
derstanding of others,
an instinct which told
him how to approach
a particular statesman ff,
and win him to his¥#
cause, During the war
Churchill, forced to ig
pursue a non-Zionist Chaim Weizmann
policy, at one time refused to meet Weizmann, whom
he respected and cherished. Castigated by a colleague,
have sleepless nights.” This sovereign taleat for dealing
with people explains his influence with many of the
leaders of our time—Balfour, Lloyd George, Churchill,
Roosevelt, and others.
He lacked all the pyrotechnics of the great speaker; ei
the speeches of few public men have made such a lasting
impression, He could demolish an opponent or capture |
an audience with a phrase. Yet it was not his language |
or his logic but the human being behind the speech that
made this impression. Long after his speech was forgotten
the personality of the man who had made it lingered on,
It was a delight to be with Weizmann. Once admitted
into his circle, you became infected with the warmth
radiating from him and charging his environment, For
those who worked with him, every day was a new drama
and evety dialogue a revelation. He had little under-
standing of or patience for organizational work—the
inevitable rules and routine of a great organization in
operation. He also had little appreciation of continuity,
I once said to him, “For you each day is Genesis.”
From a historical perspective the Zionist movement has
not only lost its greatest leader; his death rings down the
curtain on a drama-charged period in Jewish life. Herzl
was the creator of the Zionist vision, Weizmann the
symbol and creator of the Zionist fulfilment. Long after
the contemporary image of Chaim Weizmann has
passed away, he will continue to exercise influence as a
symbol. He represents Zionism at its best, as a moral
idea which regenerated a people and liberated it politi-
cally. But even more important, he is a symbol of Jewry’s
regeneration as a creative force,
33
‘7%
Vf, ee es
Ss , he TAA ee
wie Ap eee ae
BOOKS and th i 7
The Frontier Formula
THE GREAT FRONTIER. By Walter
Prescott Webb. Houghton Mifflin
Company. $5.
N 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner
pointed to the significance of the
frontier in American history. Turner
went on to years of productive teaching
thereafter, years that were productive be-
cause he did not allow a casually turned
essay to become a blinding dogma.
Among some of his students and
among many of his followers who never
had the advantage of personal contact
with him the frontier idea became an
inflexible doctrine, sufficient in itself to
explain the whole course of American
development and not to be amended the
least jot or tittle. In “The Great
Frontier’ Professor Webb of the Uni-
versity of Texas reduces the frontier con-
ception to its ultimate absurdity.
Professor Webb began his scholarly
career with a study of the Texas
Rangers, an institution he found com-
prehensible in terms of the frontier ad-
vance. In “The Great Plains’ the
frontier explained the entire character of
a section; in “Divided We Stand” all
American history fell into place; and in
the present volume the whole history
of the Western world since 1500 is
fitted into the formula.
By this account the decisive event of
modern times was the discovery by
Western Europe—the Metropolis—of
the Great Frontier. The frontier, as here
defined, is the line of settlement along
_ which Europeans have moved into free
unpopulated lands. Such lands, since
the sixteenth century, Professor Webb
asserts, have existed only in America,
Australia, and South Africa.
Professor Webb believes that the
subsequent exploitation of the new ter-
ritories created an economic boom that
transformed Europe’s modes of pro-
duction and, ultimately, the whole
structure of its society. Capitalism, indi-
vidualism, and democracy had each its
source in the frontier. The frontier also
directly and vitally affected science,
literature, law, and the arts. The closing
34
of the frontier at the beginning of this
century ended an era in human history.
Nothing can take its place; in an un-
predictable but rather dismal future
all the institutions that grew out of the
frontier will decay.
It will not be profitable in such a
review as this to call attention to the
errors of fact, the ambiguous definitions,
the dubious interpretations in which the
book abounds. It will be enough to in-
dicate the fatal weakness in Webb's cen-
tral conception of the great frontier.
The frontier in his sense can hardly
account for the transformations of the
sixteenth century with which he begins
his discussion. The ‘metropolis’ had
been expanding long before the Ameri-
can discoveries. Indeed, the opening of
the New World was but one incident in
a much longer process that brought
Europe also into relationship with the
Levant, India, China, and‘the South
Sea islands. Contact with these areas
affected European institutions as directly
and as vitally as did contact with
America.
Upon closer examination the very con-
cept of the frontier as a uniform and
constant phenomenon is untenable.
Even within the American continent
there are significant unexplained dif-
ferences. Mexico was certainly not un-
populated in the sense Virginia was.
The influence of Peru upon the Old
World was more analogous to that of
Japan than to that of Massachusetts.
And the frontier did not produce the
same political and social institutions in
Connecticut as in Canada.
Finally, it is necessary to remember
that Europeans had already had a long
experience with frontier settlement be-
fore they turned to America. (Profes-
sor Webb misses the meaning of that
experience because he defines his terms
to yield the result he seeks.) In Ireland,
on the marches of Wales, Scotland,
Pomerania, and Prussia, in the Azores
and the Cape Verde Islands, Europeans
had planted settlements on the under-
populated lands of nomadic aborigines.
In these places, however, such results
_as individualism and democracy did not
follow upon the advance of the fronticnsl
That in itself is sufficient indication —
that the frontier was not a free force,
exerting a determining invariant influ-
ence upon human affairs. The frontier |
was rather one of many forces affecting |
modern men—but in a manner shaped |
by the larger social context within which ©
it operated. OSCAR HANDLIN |
Critic and Craftsman
LANGUAGE AS GESTURE. By R. P. ©
Blackmur. Harcourt,.Brace and Com-
pany. $5.75.
ATHERED together in this bok
are twenty-one of Mr. Blackmur’s*
critical essays on poetry, most of them.
focused on the works of individual poets _
of this century. I have not searched the
bibliographies or the back files of the
literary magazines to determine which of _
his essays and reviews the author may
have chosen to leave out; but certainly —
this volume contains, in its 440 pages ,
of rather close print, an ample, a nearly —
monumental presentation of Mr. Black-
mur’s critical attitudes and techniques.
Much of it is hard going. I do not think
many, even among those who have
chased fast on the heels of our con- —
temporary critics and who have sought
out Mr. Blackmur’s separate essays as
they first appeared, will go through this
book with complete confidence in their —
own understanding. In part the trouble |
lies with Mr. Blackmutr’s writing, for he |
is a man who believes very profoundly
in the drama of language, in the 7
heightening effect of tension between
form and meaning: sometimes it appears —
that he maneuvers his narrative to —
achieve the proper tenebrosity from the —
midst of which to discharge a ia y
flash of insight. But more often the ob- —
scurity derives from the nature of Mr.
Blackmur’s speculations, which he
pushes always into the extreme areas of |
contingency and uncertainty. Mr. Black- _
mur is a critic with a pronounced philo- _
sophical turn of mind, and if he has not q
produced a systematic and inclosed |
aesthetics, it is rather because he has not “a
tried than because the problems he at-
The Nation:
AT
4
w
ie arguments and paar
and often incidental to them, are
ny extraordinarily original and
tening perceptions of individual
; and poets with which these es-
} are studded—detections that as-
with their suddenness and de-
with their accuracy.
e most collections of essays, this
contains a deal of repetition, and
h this is a disadvantage to the
it may be an advantage to the
who fails to catch the full content
{r. Blackmur’s position from one
ent. Again and again, until it
hes a note of hysteria and one won-
at such insistence, Mr. Blackmur
ks out against his anathema—ex-
ressive language. He makes constantly
appeal to reason, which in poetry is
ive form, and he appeals too
. Now this is a fine idea and one
+ I and most others agree with—
ly, that a good poem must contain
hin itself, and must express in the
age it appropriately assumes, all
meanings and emotions it imparts;
nust not derive from private knowl-
or common feeling any of the
ing of its content or any of the
er of its words. And using this
mentary criterion, Mr. Blackmur is
ble e to cut through much of the critical
nonsense that has sprung from the sym-
: tradition. As might be expected,
is harsh with such poets as Hart
Crane and D. H. Lawrence, and he has
wholehearted aproval for scarcely any
of the poets he considers. But he makes
oint too well, and again one seems
0 catch in it a note of anxiety.
The fact is, Mr. Blackmur has been
empting perhaps as difficult a critical
as was ever conceived. Staunch in his
ef in objective language, he has
yettheless acknowledged readily the
extra power that words in poetic
ination sometimes achieve. He has
led directly into a study of poetic
mage as a process for intensifying
ling: he has been concerned with
oem as an action arrested at its sig-
cant moment of movement and with
eloquence of gesture in Jan-
guage. Especially in modern poetry,
10, 1953
ie aakeeicic How es can be poetic
and still objective. Perhaps Mr. Black-
mur’s fearful note is near to the cry of
those who push analysis to the limit of
reason. And perhaps, as I think, he has
been pushed ‘himself into statements
that exceed his purpose, as when he
says, for instance, that poetry is “lan-
guage so twisted and posed in a form
that it not only expresses the matter
in hand but adds to the stock of avail-
able reality.” Adding to the stock of
available reality is not (thank God!)
the poet’s function, and to say so is to
try to invest poetry with faculties it does
not have and does not need. Thus Mr.
Blackmur arrives, by way of the back
stairs, at a sort of higher romanticism,
the very attic of romanticism, where we
children of his prior, or downstairs,
enlightenment are likely to feel timid
and ill at ease.
I come back, or rather Mr. Black-
mur leads us back, to his own writing,
where the qualities he has pursued in
other people’s poetry themselves appear.
Often his writing is in “language so
twisted and posed in a form’ that it
pins down for us a feeling or observa-
tion which might otherwise escape. But
occasionally one feels that Mr. Blackmur
is himself attempting to add to avail-
able “‘reality’’ by saying something in a
way so new and eccentric that the
language will attain autonomy and lend
its authority to the substance. In doing
so he defeats his own purpose, both as
craftsman and critic: for on one hand
he is in danger of becoming incom-
municable, and on the other, he shows
himself to be a victim of his own idea
that language itself maintains meaning.
In at least one case, that of his essay
on Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” it seems to
me that the entire form trembles on the
edge of turning itself into an extrinsi-
cality—a house, say, of a kangaroo—so
that the poem is an explanation of the
essay.
These few comments are not intended
to suggest that Mr. Blackmur is wrong,
but only that if he is right we need a
somewhat clearer statement of his criti-
cal aims and a somewhat simpler ex-
planation of his notions about value,
reality, and perception, in poetry as else-
where. In a time that is remarkable for
> bre ssc Veale « We its critt
cal writing, ate, Blackmur* Is certainly
“1
in the foremost rank, and this book is 4
very good demonstration of how he gat
there. HAYDEN CARRUTH
Men Who Served Hitler
IN THE NAZI ERA, By Sir Lewis
Namier. St. Martin’s Press. $2.25,
ITH this slim volume the eminent
British historian takes leave of
those of his readers who have followed
his work on preawar diplomacy—he has
now returned to his chosen field of
British parliamentary history. As a last
instalment he offers six critical pieces on
the memoirs of “men who served Hit-
ler’ —Halder, Dirksen, Weiszacker, the
brothers Kordt, Paul Schmidt—and un-
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ler the heading Sdrieaaee' eo Degeer
five more on men and events of the
International appeasement period. These
sketches in particular, with their cold,
precise presentation of shameful fact
after shameful fact, make ghastly and
absorbing reading.
In an introductory chapter, Missed
Opportunities, Sir Lewis indicates cer-
tain judgments of his own by answering
the question whether the Allies missed
Opportunities to integrate the democratic
Weimar Republic into the comity of
European nations, to stop Hitler, and
to cooperate actively with the anti-Nazi
elements in Germany. Sir Lewis con-
cludes that they were at fault only in
failing to stop Hitler and German re-
armament, which would appear to be
more than generous. He does not be-
lieve, either, that the conspiracy of the
generals against Hitler in 1938 would
have come off even if Chamberlain had
not flown to Munich. He notes, how-
ever, that the news of Hitler’s incredible
success at Munich was received with
less enthusiasm in Berlin than in Paris
and London.
Nowhere does Sir Lewis remark upon
the startling similarity between the
German appeasers who surrendered Ger-
many to Hitler and their French, Brit-
ish, and Russian counterparts (the
Americans of their ilk appeared only
later) who surrendered Austria and
Czechoslovakia to him, though he had
already shown his face and even to sit
down with him meant to. ignore his
pogroms and the concentration camps.
Plainly, Munich and the Russian partici-
pation in the rape of Poland cannot
serve to excuse the German appeasers
and half-hearted collaborators, but their
resentment at being condemned for
practices which were not spurned by
those who judged them is understand-
able. As for the common people, first
victimized and then made responsible
for their own sufferings, they rarely
appear in the apologias of the generals
and diplomats who decided their fate
or in the writings of their critics. In
the present short studies there are by
necessity other omissions. As a result, the
book is likely to leave the general reader
with a sense of unreality and may even
confuse him.
“In the Nazi Era”
well-written, thought-provoking,
cursory survey for specialists.
FRANZ HOELLERING
is an extremely
but
36
Fo ett Gee © nl a
Socialism in Am Pie
~ mae
THE AMERICAN ROCrATINT
MOVEMENT, 1897-1912. By Ira
ape Columbia University Press.
At THE beginning of this century
the German sociologist Werner
Sombart wrote a little book with the
title “Why Is There No Socialism in the
United States?” The question was sig-
nificant, for it was raised in what Daniel
Bell has called “the ‘golden age’ of
American socialism.” This was the era
in which European Socialist parties en-
tered parliaments in growing numbers,
polled votes running in the millions, and
began to have impact on legislation. Yet
in the United States Presidential elec-
tion of 1912, the climactic year for the
American Socialist Party, fewer than one
million votes—6 per cent of the total
vote—were cast for Eugene V. Debs.
Why this striking failure of socialism
in America? Mr. Kipnis’s careful and
detailed history of American socialism
before the First World War does not
supply the answer. To be sure, “The
American Socialist Movement’’ possesses
major virtues: it is painstakingly docu-
mented and soundly written. The book
presents as comprehensive and compre-
hensible an account of the growth of
the movement as any reader could de-
sire. The information is all here, and
Mr. Kipnis clothes his solid scholarship
in a lively and attractive dress. Since the
movement he writes about was almost
unbelievably sectarian and petty, his -
achievement is notable. The chief pre-
occupation of the various wings of the
party appears to have been internecine
warfare, with all hands ready to see the
movement perish rather than have it dis-
figured by the ideology of the “others,”
who were clearly traitors to the working
class. While most of the book is of
necessity taken up with accounts of
squabbles—over the name of the party,
over aid e strikers, over political ac-
tion, over “‘pure-and-simple” unionism
—Mr. Kipnis manages to include some
illuminating chapters on Socialist propa-
ganda, and on the curiously know-
nothing attitude of most American
Socialists on questions of race and im-
migration. The author dwells on the im-
maturity of American Socialist thought
with deft irony.
But the history of the movement is
4
-logic and significance. No one can dis-
discourses on places he has been and |
rakers, the non-Socialist. eform move
ments of Progressivism and the ° Wil. 3
sonian New Freedom, the growth of ©
the American economy, the class struc- —
ture of American society were all vital |
elements in the failure of the move- §
ment. Yet they are hardly mentioned,
and in consequence we learn all about |
the activities of American Socialists”
without coming close to an understand- ~
ing of the meaning of socialism to”
American life. The only conceptual —
scheme that seems to underlie this book -
is Mr. Kipnis’s conviction that while»
the “shortcomings of the left were séri- —
ous enough . . . major responsibility —
for the failure of the novels must —
rest upon the right wing.”
It is instructive to compare this vol-
ume with Daniel Bell’s brilliant long
article The Background and Develop- ©
ment of Marxian Socialism in the;
United States in “Socialism and eee
can Life.” Mr. Bell hardly shares Mr.”
Kipnis’s predilection for the left; his
generalizations are on occasion facile,
and sometimes he is too ready to credit —
the evidence of professional ex- -Com-
munists. But Mr. Bell at least attempts |
to write meaningful history—he goes |
beyond the events themselves to their
pute the utility of purely narrative his: ;
tory, but the first-rate historian must —
penetrate to the essential character of
the period about which he writes, and _
disclose the basic realities of which the —
surface events are the reflection. Daniel —
Bell’s essay undertakes, in my judg- |
ment with considerable success, to an- —
swer Sombart’s fundamental question. —
It should therefore be read in conjunc-
tion with, and as the indispensable —
supplement to, Mr. Kipnis’s straight-
forward chronicle. PETER GAY |
Verse Chronicle
ENNETH REXROTH’S “The ©
Dragon and The Unicorn” (New |
Directions, $3) is one poem, a long —
essay in short lines, where the author a
ideas he has had. For a while this re-__
viewer was inclined to skim lightly
over such passages as: “Just as the time
of mathematics / Is a convention of ©
The Nar.
sdge comes to us, and their / Es-
relation is / One of inclusion.
st / Is less experience than the /
ent and it than the future’; and
dw ell with more interest on the de-
iptions of Welsh mountains, French
d and drink, Italian people, all the
aspects in which Mr. Rexroth
. But before too long one suc-
or adapts himself to the ways
traveling companion, and listens.
poceinning of truth is / Wonder.
who wonders shall / Reign and he
igns shall rest.” The abstractions,
ore general ideas, gain interest
e sensual content out of which
emerge and break. Mr. Rexroth
living and people, though there
ch about both he does not enjoy,
d he is not at all coy about letting you
ow where he stands. This is on the
le of the angels, whose dwindling
apany cannot afford to be too pat-
cular these: days anyway; I aim not so
ce about this, and suspect that Mr.
exroth may have more allies than he
willing to admit. All told, there is a
t of fun in this book, possibly a bit too
uch minstrelsy about tarts with hearts
gold, but a philosophical anarchist,
ne as anybody else, is entitled to his
aventions.
The gey fey side of the Scots comes
it in “The White Threshold,” by
. Graham (Grove Press, $2.25).
& SeGsiahar with his less flexible
ythms, sotnds somewhat like a
mpier Dylan Thomas, at times only
bumpier, as in
Witt h all many men laid down io the
ial heart,
g spring fall and the joyfaring
ther waken
other thunder’s arrival under my
footfall,
wa el over ‘the hill of my listening
from watched wonder and all my
sd people
behind me into the look in my
e well em here, and a
re ‘sober i in tone, more solemn in
; Stanley Durnshaw, in Early
C / They at ee e the way Laakisive / |
d ea , fs cs nes 2, : ry nD oe f
1 aay ce. MOOKS IN ie
: Paptatininity and.
D lowe He sounds a little desperate about
it, in both his preface and the eight-
section title poem, and his singing has
a struggle to break through the weight
of a tendency to didactic prose.
the sad young men are looking for
papa / the sad young men who think
they wete bad young men’’—I think
Mr. Burnshaw’s message, the essential
rightness of it, could have been more
happily conveyed if he had let himself
go, a little more often, with such sky-
larking as the quoted lines. In addition
to the main poem Mr. Burnshaw has
some well-turned odes, and some lyrics
whose title, it seems to me, is a bit of a
misnomer; it is too bad the term elegiac
has lost its original meaning, which
would be more appropriate for this
kind of poetry, declamation with flute
accompaniment, rather than the singing
voice rising above the personal lyre.
Mr. Burnshaw’s translations of André
Spire are finely made.
Roy Campbell has written “An Ap-
preciation of Federico Garcia Lorca,
with Selected Translations of His
Poetry’’ (Yale University Press, $2.50).
I cannot help feeling a little shocked
by this performance, for Mr. Campbell,
one time or another, I believe, used to
go around calling himself -a fascist.
The dirty word does not appear in his
text; he claims, as a matter of fact,
that Lorca’s death was merely a private
murder, the result of a grudge, which
seems hard to believe. I do not suppose
that Mr. Campbell would enjoy being
likened to Hugh MacDiarmuid, but he
rather reminds one of that other Scot
in the way he throws his weight around.
It was reactionary Spain, he states, that
produced more good poets in this cen-
tury than any other country; of the list
he cites on page 15, he neglects to- state
that many, if not most, fled or were ban-
ished by the reaction. Both in his gen-
eral observations and in his immediate
interpretations of Lorca’s poetry, how-
ever, Mr. Campbell's study is lively
-and at times illuminating. His transla-
tions, if I may say so, strike me as a
little stiff, and, particularly in the Gipsy
Ballads, forced by an insistence on Me.
Campbell’s metrical theory into too rigid
a form.
ROLFE HUMPHRIES
“ALL
WRITERS FOR TOMORROW. Sec-
ond Series. Edited by Baxter Hathaway
and John A. Sessions. Cornell Uni-
versity Press. $3. This second collection
of student writing by members of Cor-
nell University’s Writers’ Workshop dis-
plays a surprisingly high level of skill
and an unusual variety of theme in the
twenty-six stories presented. The quality
of this short fiction may be attributed
in part to the fact that the editors, and
teachers, are largely responsible for the
publication of Epoch, which has gained .
an excellent reputation in the last few
years as a literary quarterly. Particularly
noteworthy are three short stories by
H. D. Rossiter, one of which had ap-
peated in Epoch, Elaine’s Hope by Ted
M, Levine, and Edgar Rosenberg's The
Happy One, originally published in
Commentary.
THE NEWS IN AMERICA, By Frank
Luther Mott. Harvard. $4.50, A simple,
concise account of how news is col-
lected, processed, and disseminated by
large and small newspapers, wire serv-
ices, and radio, While primarily in-
formative, the book draws one important
The Nation
on Microfilm
for Libraries
)
Two series of The Nation ars now
available on highest quality micro-
film for libraries. Vols. 1 through
105 (1865-1917), $350, (compan-
ion to index of unsigned articles
published by the New York Public |
Library). Vols. 1 through 167
(1865-1948), $700. Write for com-
plete information.
UB
UNIVERSITY
MICROFILMS
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
RRPPARPEPLEL REL PPLE LLIELPRRR,
37
moral from the facts assembled—that _
the most dangerous trend in journalism
today is not the decline in the number
of papers but the over-emphasis on
“soft” or unimportant news at the ex-
pense of “hard” or significant items.
THE NATURE OF GAMBLING. By
David D. Allen. Coward-McCann.
$3.50. A systematic analysis of the role
and function of gambling in an attempt
to find indisputable answers to three
questions: Is it natural? Is it harmful?
Is it suppressible? The answers arrived
at are in each case affirmative. This
academic approach to a lusty subject
seems at first glance to be slightly comi-
cal but ends by being definitely il-
luminating.
IN SEARCH OF CHOPIN. By Alfred
Cortot. Translated by Cyril and Rena
Clarke. Bibliography and Discography
Compiled by Cyril Clarke.
Press. $3.50. This sentimental causerie
on The Hand of Chopin, Chopin the
Pedagogue, and so on, like all senti-
mentality, dishonors rather than digni-
fies its subject. Poor little Chopin again.
Also there are not two concretely per-
ceptive words about the music. All the
vices of the intimate tone are here—
breathy irrationality, lyrical banality,
“unashamed” feeling. In addition the
virtues of intimate contact with a third-
rate mind,
S. LANE
FAISON, JR.
Art
IOLLOWING the lead of the
diseuse of the New York Times,
Miss Louchheim, I offer some critical
resolutions for the New Year. First,
to speak favorably of whatever promis-
ing new work I am able to review within
the limits of a monthly column. Second,
not to speak unfavorably of what I
do not like unless the artist already has
an established reputation. Third, not to
hesitate to attack an inflated reputa-
tion. Fourth, to balance the claims of
past and present. Fifth, to write for in-
formed consumers, not producers, of
art—on the theory that criticism has lit-
tle reason to expect to influence an artist
—who, if he is any good, knows what
he is about—and much reason to hope
38
Abelard.
fs 7 ‘A
to develop a sympath;
quality in art, wherever i
I have no hesitation whatever in ad-
vising anyone interested in these propo-
sitions that the Kootz Gallery has been
showing on its walls a new work of
Adolf Gottlieb, called Unstill Life,
which is one of the major designs
not only of this artist but of the present
decade. Gone is the division of the
canvas into some two dozen pictographs,
related chiefly by a decorative scheme,
through which Gottlieb has until lately
been expressing his private world, rely-
ing all too heavily on symbolic asso-
ciation supplied by the — spectator.
Instead, this canvas is a single entity, a
crablike design powerful in its contrasts
of black and red on a white ground,
and at the same time poetic in its sensi-
tive variations within the white ground
itself and in the atmospheric pinks and
grays that link the blacks and reds. Un-
still Life comes sufficiently to terms with
contemporary restlessness, but its title
belies its ultimate internal oneness,
which I find classic in the sense of the
best—not the recent—work of Léger.
All of this seems to imply that
Gottlieb is now ready for major oppor-
tunities as a mural painter. These re-
marks are addressed, therefore, primarily
to modern architects or those in a posi-
tion to bring them to the attention of
such architects. We have progressed a
long way since Radio City, when the big
wall surfaces of then not quite modern
architecture were given over to false
artists—what Walter Pach called the
Ananiases—of that time. Escaping from
the bitter winds that were shaking Radio
City’s magnificent Christmas tree one
evening last week, I dodged into the
main lobby. I have always thought that
the removal of Diego Rivera’s mural
was more of a loss for artistic freedom
than for the history of art, but I had
not realized that Jose Maria Sert had in
the meantime painted ‘some additional
square yards of his sepia murals on this
surface. It seems clear to me that these
works have rather less excuse for ex-
istence than John W. Alexander's
Apotheosis of Pittsburgh, et cetera, on
the stair well of the Carnegie Institute,
because the latter were at least represen-
tative of the prevailing taste of their
day.
There is reason to believe that Gott-
lieb and other potentially major mural
few chances that tae ee uae val
so far, will at best constitute only « a
beginning. I recall a statement by aa
lace Harrison some years ago at an ex-
hibition sponsored by Vassar College to
the effect that the greatest single influ-
ence on architecture of the past hundred
years has been the painting of Picasso,
Léger, and Juan Gris. It is more than
time for successful architects in the
modern idiom to repay their indebted-
ness—by placing mural commissions at
the disposal of the rightful younger
successors of these old masters of mod-—
ern art. _
In line with resolution number three,
stated above, I have little hesitation in
pronouncing Salvador Dali’s latest pro*
ductions (Carstairs Gallery) artistic
junk. There is a new subject matter, ace |
cording to the artist marking a shift
from Freud to nuclear physics, but I do
not seem to recall any historical ‘instance —
of artistic salvation through iconography.
The current -items exhibit the same
dreadful wastage of talent, like the agile
pianist who lives for the cadenza, which
one has seen in Dali so many times’
before.
A dozen tapestries, from paintings by
as many modern artists (Sidney Janis
Gallery), demonstrate that when texture
is eliminated from modern oil painting, |
its heart is torn out. The:chief excep-
tion to this statement—Etoile Poly- —
chrome by Léger (1937)—proves the
rule: Léger’s work of the past fifteen
years has gone blandly decorative. A
recent oil at the Kootz Gailery supports —
this negative judgment. Much as I
admire the Léger of 1910 to 1925, and ©
of perhaps a decade later, I fear the —
recent work is more at home in the |
salons of the Liberté than, let us say, —
in the United Nations Building. _ 4
Speaking of textureless art, I may —
refer briefly to the exhibition, recently —
opened at the Museum of Modern Art, |
on the early twentieth-century Dutch —
movement known as De Stijl. This isa —
small segment of a big show which ~
was organized in 1951 by the Stedelijk
Museum in Amsterdam, and went to *
the Biennale in Venice last year. The |
main significance of this exhibition is,
of course, architectural, and I shall not |
question its importance for the history —
recent review of the Toscanini
ding of Prokofiev's “‘Classical”’
my I forgot to mention one note-
feature of the performance—the
tdinarily and excessively slow
» Of the second movement. This
change from the traditional faster
of his previous - performances
me with his recent tendency to play
verything faster. My guess is that this
me he felt impelled to obey the
La ghetto in the score literally; and I
yon't be surprised if next time he feels
impelled to obey again the impulse of
the flow of the music toward the tradi-
al Andante. For the fact is that
e ate such different decisions, each
trongly felt at the moment, produc-
ag such changes from one performance
the next. When I wrote that Tos-
ni’s tendency in recent years has been
y from elasticity to strictness in
tempo I should have added that there
have been momentary reversals of the
tendency: an American now in England
wrote me about the many changes of
pace in the Toscanini performances of
hms’s symphonies in London in
tember; and I was told of equally
nishing retardations in the recent
ormance of the Brahms Third here.
Also, the tendency has been to play
everything faster; but the recent Bee-
ven Eighth was slower and more re-
E ked than the one Toscanini recorded
“years ago.
: "These inconsistencies occur also in
Toscanini’s choices of music to play:
the standards which don’t permit him to
P ay Tchaikovsky's Fifth do permit him
to > play Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrs,
Sa unt-Saéns’s Danse Macabre, Kabalev-
sky's “Colas Breugnon” Overture.
However it works the other way too:
if Toscanini has persisted for twenty-five
years. in playing those innocuous little
pieces by Martucci he has persisted as
g in playing parts and finally the
etal. performances of
movement, and a change out of -
gid. in "
when nobody clse was - doing it here;
and he gave us our first experiences of
Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. His pro-
gtam-making certainly has been open
to criticism, but not to some of the
criticisms it has received. He has played
some bad music, but no more, I am
quite sure, than other conductors. The
difference has been that he has played
bad music by Italians while the others
have played bad music by Russians and
Americans; and I don’t agree that this
constitutes the difference between bad
program-making and good.
The bad music is of course regrettable
and hard to take, especially when Tos-
canini is reported to have declared this
is his last season. It is difficult to imagine
him drawing breath and not being in-
volved with an orchestral score, or
studying the score and not being im-
pelled to bring the work to life with an
orchestra; but if one accepts the pos-
sibility that he will do as he says one is
appalled by the waste of some of these
precious last broadcasts, which might
have provided last hearings of the per-
formances of Schubert's C major and
Berlioz’s ““Harold’’ and “Romeo,” but
instead are devoted to Saint-Saéns’s C
minor Symphony, a whole program of
Martucci, and other less consequential
matters. But on the other hand there
has been the broadcast devoted to Act 2
of Gluck’s “Orfeo”; there will be the
one devoted to Debussy: and there will
be the final Beethoven series concluding
with the Missa Solemnis.
It is not Toscanini but Cantelli who
one week has offered an excellent pro-
‘gtam comprising Mozart's Symphony
K.201 and Bartok’s Music for Strings,
Percussion, and Celesta, and the next
week has combined distinguished mat-
ters like Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 and
Stravinsky's “Jeu de cartes’ with
‘Ravel's Bolero. The performances gave
us each work as something completely
and beautifully and effectively achieved
—except that the marches in “Jeu de
cartes” were played too fast for their
proper effect.
The playing of the NBC Symphony
this year has again been something to
marvel at; and if Toscanini’s retirement
brings the orchestra’s existence to an
end it will be a deplorable loss. As for
the: iassclicesk over Wace aity NBC still
“cannot bring itself to use the CBS mi-
ctophone set-up that achieves such excel-
lent transmission of the New York Phil-
harmonic, but persists in the monkeying
around that transmits the NBC Sym-
phony performances with a loss of
some of the beauty they have in
Carnegie Hall.
Cantelli’s completely and beautifully
achieved performance of the Musorgsky-
Ravel ‘Pictures at an Exhibition” with
the NBC Symphony has been issued by
RCA Victor, reproduced with excellent
over-all sound but with a few imperfec-
tions—e. g., the discontinuities in vol-
ume in the saxophone solo of The Old
Castle; the not excessive hash around
the huge sonorities at the end. On the
same record is a beautiful performance
of Tchaikovsky's “Romeo and Juliet”
that Cantelli tecorded in England
with the Philharmonia Orchestra—the
dubbed recorded sound good but te
quiring stepping up of bass and volume.
Though illness prevented me from
hearing the Little Orchestra Society's
repetition of Berlioz’s “L’Enfance du
Christ” I would like to report what a
discriminating friend told me—that
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benefiting by last year’s rehearsals and —
performance with the same musicians
Thomas Scherman conducted a very fine
performance of the remarkable work, in
which there was especially beautiful
singing again by Donald Gramm, bass,
Leopold Simoneau, tenor, and William
Jonson’s Choral Art Society, and good
singing this time by Martial Singher. I
think it would be a good idea for
Mr. Scherman to make the performance
an annual Christmas event.
CONTRIBUTORS
OSCAR HANDLIN, a member of the
History Department at Harvard Univer-
sity, is the author of ‘The Uprooted.”
HAYDEN CARRUTH, formerly editor
of Poetry, is on the staff of Intercul-
tural Publications.
FRANZ HOELLERING is the author
of two novels, ‘The Defenders’ and
“Furlough.”
PETER GAY, instructor in govern-
ment at Columbia University, has re-
cently published “The Dilemma of
Democratic Socialism.”
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Is Mediation Still Possible?
Dear Sirs: After the rejection of the
Indian proposals by Russia, I hope The
Nation will reexamine its belief that
mediation is still even remotely possible.
For a long time I held on to the hope
that the Russians wanted to end the
Korean war or that they might not be
confusing ends and means. It is folly to
hope so now. It is inescapable that the
Russians are quite willing to fight to the
last North Korean and Chinese Com-
munist.
Can The Nation still believe that
mediation is possible with the “ruling
circles” of the U, S. S, R.? The Russians
want concessions and conciliatory ges-
tures, not mediation. What was called a
policy of appeasement in Hitler’s time
is now called a policy of mediation. ...
And the purge in Czechoslovakia, Is
this evidence of a truth-loving, liberal,
progressive regime, or is it another ter-
rifying display of Soviet fascism? How
much evidence does The Nation need to
be convinced that mediation is impos-
sible with totalitarians?
The Nation has been critical and
rightfully alarmed at the undermining
of freedom here at home. “How Free Is
Free?” hit many bull’s-eyes. Its apprais-
als of the F. B. I., of our State Depart-
ment’s bumbling nonsense over pass-
ports, of McCarran and McCarthy are
right... . I do not say that affairs here
are healthy, but I would like The Nation
to exercise a little more judgment con-
cerning the Soviet ‘‘ruling circles’ when
internal freedom is being discussed. In
fact, The Nation might do well to pub-
lish a list of the responsible liberals—art-
ists, writers, journalists, scientists, and
Nation staff members—who can travel
freely in the U. S. S. R.; the list won’t
take much space. Ask Mr. Werth
whether Russia opens its arms to trav-
Cloris 5
New York JACOB D, HAMMER
How to Break the
Korean Deadlock
Dear Sirs: The Communists’ rejection
of the Indian proposal on Korea has
widely been taken as ruling out any
formula of ‘‘voluntary” repatriation at
this time. But Russia’s offer to postpone
repatriation and Stalin’s reply to James
Reston, published recently in the New
York Times, hint that if a really practi- |
cal proposal is put forward, China and
North Korea may settle for less than
unconditional repatriation. ‘3
In providing a bipartisan commission
and taking all prisoners out of the |
hands of their captors before a vote is
held, the Indian proposal tacitly invali--
dated the earlier U. N. poll as coercive &
and prejudical. In line with Vishinsky’s”
suggestion, a revised draft of the In-
dian proposal should underscore this &
point. The groundwork for the first poll @
was laid by the U. N. in December, &
1950, in a resolution which construed
“voluntary” repatriation as being con-
sistent with the Geneva Convention. By _
a bill of particulars citing this and cer-'
tain other pertinent facts, a revised In-,
dian formula could make it clear that
the first poll was not intended to pro-.
long the war.
As a result of the first poll, the
50,000 prisoners of war who renounced
their allegiance to North Korea and
China were fatally compromised. They
were indoctrinated against changing their
minds by the anti-totalitarian programs
the U. N. ran in the prisoner-of-war
camps until the Red Cross put a stop to
them. A revised Indian formula should
not allow its poll to become a facade to
legitimize the results of the first poll. It
should accept Vishinsky’s criticism that
the first poll created new coercive condi-
tion that a new poll cannot temove un-
less extraordinary measures ate now
taken.
A pledge would have to be included
in the new Indian formula binding offi- _
cial agencies of all countries to refrain
from using the results of the poll as a
propaganda weapon, because if they
were they would undoubtedly imperil
subsequent peace negotiations. No loop-
hole could be left whereby the U. N., a
party to the dispute, would be allowed
to select the umpire who casts the-decid-
ing vote on the bipartisan commission.
For only an umpire acceptable to both
sides would give China and North
Korea reasonable assurance that the
commission would adopt rules of pro-
cedure granting them an opportunity
to “unindoctrinate’” their own men cap-
tured by the U. N. forces and prevent’
those who reject repatriation from being
forcibly incorporated in Chiang Kai-
‘shek’s army. ;
New Brunswick, N. J. ALAN SILVER
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ACROSS 4 ime aie when starting a drive, per-
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January I7, 1953
Se 5 ance ae : a ial ois ae —= ieee is ee: a Bek ome =
+r
1
j
i
¥
Chiang’s Troops
To Korea?
AN EDITORIAL
+
| POINT 4
| : FOUR YEARS LATER
L. . The Rich Got Richer
Py:
a
| . | BY PAUL A. BARAN
CENTS AcOpy VERY WEEK SINCE 1865 - 7 DOLLARS A YEAR
i od
, sh a-ha’
An Annona to Our Readers 4q
ITH the start of 1953 The Nation is instituting a series
of editorial changes which we believe will produce a
more effective journal, as well as a more economical one.
Readers will already have noticed the creation of a group
of Contributing Editors which includes, besides The Nation's
regular correspondents abroad, Keith Hutchison, until re-
cently our Financial Editor, and two eminent political scien-
tists, H. H. Wilson of Princeton University and W.
Macmahon Ball of Melbourne University. Other names will
be added shortly.
We have also engaged Bruce Catton, journalist, historian,
and former government official, to write a weekly series from
the capital, beginning next week, The opening of the Eighty-
third Congress and the advent of the new Administration
call for the sort of reporting-in-depth that he is preeminently
fitted to provide.
A resident of Washington for many years, Mr. Catton
knows national and international politics both as an observer
and as a participant. He began his newspaper career on the
Cleveland News and Plain Dealer, later became Washing-
ton columnist for N. E. A. service, the Scripps-Howard fea-
ture syndicate, During and after World War II he served in
an executive capacity on many government boards and de-
partments. His most recent post was as assistant director of
information in the Department of the Interior, under Oscar
Chapman, “The War Lords of Washington,” an inside story
of the War Production Board, was published in 1948. His
latest book, ““Glory Road,” is part of a trilogy he is prepar-
ing on the Civil War.
In addition to the weekly articles by Mr. Catton we shall
publish occasional reports on special aspects of the new
regime by William L. Shirer, famous correspondent and
author of ““Midcentury Journey,’ and by Carey McWilliams
and Freda Kirchwey.
Beginning in a few weeks there will also be a new and
different book section. In place of a number of long and
short reviews we shall publish each week one major article
on an important book or group of books by a leading critic.
This will be supplemented by brief comments on other
books worthy of attention. Our hope is to offer readers the
best critical judgment available, while at the same time ef-
fecting economies in space and personnel—economies neces-
sitated by the inflationary rise in production costs. While we
are following no single model in reshaping the department,
the change reflects a trend apparent in most of the serious
publications. As a regrettable part of this change we must
also announce that Margaret Marshall will no longer serve
as Literary Editor. Miss Marshall has held that position for
some fifteen years of the twenty-four she has been on the
staff. Herself an able writer and discerning critic, she has
been responsible for the integrity and high standards main-
tained by the book section. It is the firm intention of the
Editors to preserve those standards.
Other plans have to do with The Nation's appearance.
_ journal handsomer, easier to read, and at the same time moré
bf
a
3
Without introducing any startling innovations we are pre-
pacing changes in paper and format which will make this
economical of space. The redesigned Nation will be presented
‘4
to our readers with the issue of February 21. :
This is only a foretaste of our plans for 1953. Others willl
be announced from time to time.—EDITORS THE NATION. . |
2
Proposals for Peace—IV
BY BISHOP G. BROMLEY OXNAM | |
ITLER affirmed “the nothingness of the indi- !
vidual.” Stalin sees man as but an incident in-an 7
inexorable historical process. Jesus of Nazareth believed |
every man is a being of infinite worth, created by the -
eternal and in his image, morally responsible, Out of
the heart are the issues of life. The transforming power
of the Christian religion must be brought to bear upon”
the human heart to the end that men may be motivated _
by love and dedicated to brotherhood. Statesmen give —
too much attention to the boundaries that divide, too
little attention to the brotherhood that unites.
Peace cannot be built upon foundations of economic
injustice. Positive programs of land reform designed to
give the disinherited peasant ownership of the land are
essential to peace. The democratic idea must live in the -
economic life if it is to be preserved politically.
The United Nations must be perfected. Loyalty to
the United Nations must be developed, and those
who would destroy it must be restrained. The idea of
preventive War must be rejected. Concepts of absolute _
national sovereignty must give way to the idea of —
world law, democtatically determined.
We must come into world affairs with clean hands.
This means the end of all discrimination based on race
or religion at home, and the constant support of human
rights and basic freedoms in world affairs.
It is imperative that the number of private agencies, |
such as the Commission of the Churches on Intet- |
national Affairs of the World Council of Churches
and the Church World Service of the same organiza- —
tion, be increased to release the thought and the oo
of groups other than government,
We must refuse to break the moral Jaw upon grounds _
of military necessity, and must consider the relative |
- worth of bases in Spain as compared—as Justice
Douglas puts it—with “bases in the hearts of the —
common people.” Decisions of statesmen must then —
recognize that God is the ruler of the universe, that he —
will not be mocked, that his law is relevant to all ban z
activities of man, . ;
SF Se Ss & ._B Ba Fe es SE. eS
- = B
VOLUME 176
e
“T)RESIDENT- ELECT EISENHOWER is being
i strongly urged to use Chinese Nationalist troops
in Korea. The advice is reaching him from top military
‘men who speak his language and who are presenting
jl) persuasive arguments in favor of the plan.
It might be a simple decision if there were not politi-
cal and psychological factors involved. On the familiar
pattern the multi-starred generals are thinking of more
armed divisions without realizing there is another sort of
division, which means dissension.
_ What Eisenhower does about the matter may be the
first test of his <aliber as President. It is an exercise in
weighing possible military gain against probable politi-
cal loss. One would normally expect men like Dulles,
and other American diplomats, to approach a problem
like this with a civilian mentality. But nowadays theit
attitude too often reflects a military point of view. The
immensity of the Pentagon dwarfs the State Department.
_ There have been visible signs that activation of
Chiang’s forces on Formosa has been preoccupying Ei-
ssenhower. The American ambassador in nearby Tokyo,
Robert Murphy, never saw the General during his Far
Eastern mission. But Major General William Chase, chief
of the United States mission in Formosa, was hurriedly
oned to Seoul from his post two thousand miles
away to talk about the eventual disposition of the Chinese
ationalist forces. And after Eisenhower returned to
New York, he consulted with Nationalist China’s For-
eig Minister, George Yeh.
: What can be done with the Nationalist troops? Some
lm say they should be sent against China’s mainland, only
a hundred miles across the Formosan Straits, Or part of
| them could be shipped to Korea. A third possibility is to
use them to reinforce the French in Indo-China.
) = American and even Chinese Nationalist military men
admit that the Nationalists are now wholly incapable of
seizin ing a beachhead on China's masnland and holding it.
Their forces ate underequipped. Not a single unit has
enough artillery to venture into battle. They lack the
ecessary Janding craft. Above all, only by a miracle
ees
i
Re
=
7
L
a
J
NEW YORK + SATURDAY «+ JANUARY 17, 1953
AMERICA’S LEADING LIBERAL WEEKLY SINCE 1865
NuMBER 3
Chiang’s Troops to Korea ?
could they supply such a beachhead, even if it were
established. Contained along the coast, they would pre-
sent a completely exposed target for aerial machine-
gunning and bombing.
Dispatch of Chiang’s troops to Indo-China can also be
ruled out in existing conditions. France, however gladly
it would welcome reinforcements, would be the first to
reject the offer. Such aid would only give the Chinese
Communists a cogent reason for open intervention in
Indo-China, That is what France dreads most.
Chiang’s garrison on Formosa is a wasting asset. His
550,000 troops have been undergoing training there for
more than thirty months. Their average age is twenty-
nine; many are between thirty-five and forty-six. In an-
other few years, as far as their combat value goes, they —
can settle down to playing Mah Jong.
Eisenhower knows all this.
HERE REMAINS the alternative of sending these
forces to Korea. It is a tempting plan, Militarily, it
has the advantage that supply lines are already operating
in Korea.
This is known to be the view of American military
leaders in the Far East. To make their project even more
attractive to Eisenhower, they are suggesting that the
Nationalist forces be sent to the front lines piecemeal,
on rotation, so that eventually the whole Nationalist army
in Formosa would be transformed into battle-hardened
troops. This, they argue, would cause Mao Tse-tung to
chew his fingernails.
If only these military considerations were involved,
Eisenhower might have a reasonable case for accepting
his colleagues’ advice, Unfortunately, this military sim-
plicity is heavily laraed with political liabilities.
Chiang may be far less anxious than is popularly sup-
posed to fight at all. He must realize that~battle will
cost him dearly in men. Besides the casualties, many
might desert to the Communists, as they did by the
hundreds of thousands in 1949. Where would he get
replacements?
, 7) Cos
ne”
Ray pA
le eae ee
7
~ 7 2 ban 5
; . -_
« 4 ans. ? e
° IN THIS pe
EDITORIALS
Chiang’s Troops to Korea? 41
The Shape of Things 43
ARTICLES
Point 4—Four Years Later.
I. The Rich Got Richer by Paul A. Baran 45
The Future Comes to the South 4y Alfred Maund 47
What Germans Talk About by Fritz Sternberg 49
New Strait-Jacket for Unions?
by Richard A. Lester 51
TV’s Brave New Experiment by Saul Carson 52
BOOKS AND THE ARTS
Artists and Gondolas by Dorothea S. Greenbaum 54
The German Generals by Franz Hoellering 55
Letters of Stendhal by Ernest Jones 56
Politics and Ethics by Hans Kohn 57
Films by Manny Farber 57
Records by B. H. Haggin 59
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS 60
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 499
' of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3
STEEN a RETR 8 a SEN RST TE
42
by Frank W. Lewis opposite 60
SS LE TS
EDITORIAL BOARD
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Copy Editor: Gladys Whiteside
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Andrew Roth, Alexander Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus,
Keith Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball
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Sena which cannot be made without the old address as well as
e new.
Information to Librarise: The Nation is indexed Ana ae Guide
to Periodical Literature, Book Review Digest, Labor
Articles, Public Affairs Information Service, Sremiatis Index,
‘mate settlement. As they see it, Chiang has one funda- .
Chinese have” seed to join him. There rema a
theoretically, the Formosans. In 1952, out of 90,000 ¥
Formosans who came of military age, Chiang conscripted
only 12,000, Although of Chinese origin, these islan ¥
people regard their present masters as alien and have ©
shown no disposition to help Chiang reimpose his rule i
over China. 3
So if Chiang risks his troops in battle, it will a a
one-time throw. Yet if Eisenhower wants them for | a
Korea, Chiang is too dependent on America to say
no. But he could say, “Yes, if...” 4
If his forces were used in Korea, he would almost cer=
tainly insist on having a voice in any future Korean set- q
tlement. He would demand arms not merely for his |
invasion troops but for his forces on Formosa, He would ~
want jets, radar, anti-aircraft guns, to defend them ;/
against Communist air attacks. ‘These are extremely ||
costly weapons. q
Chiang has already complained because he has been *
left out of the security pacts which the United States has 3
signed with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the |
Philippines. As President, Eisenhower might go some |
way to meet this complaint by de-neutralizing Korea and ~
declaring it a kind of protectorate of American military |
power. }
But it is doubtful whether Chiang’s other terms-would ~
be acceptable, If President Eisenhower is actually to carry 4
out some of the budget economies he has promised, he —
cannot increase expenditures enough to satisfy Chiang.
|
a a ae
.
ah ge a i a — a
-- a - |
S TO the political aspects of using Nationalist forces
A in Korea, the objections begin in Formosa and —
extend far beyond. They exist in Korea itself. President —
Rhee has denounced every suggestion of transferring —
the Chinese civil war to Korean soil. He distrusts the |
Chinese, be they red, white, or even yellow. He has |
hinted that it might be easier to bring the Chinese Na- —
tionalists into Korea than to get rid of them later. If his —
opinions are shared by South Korean troops, their morale —
would hardly benefit from the appearance of Chiang’s
forces.
Britain, France, and our other European allies are —
against infusing the Nationalists into the United Nations —
forces in Korea. Several nations fighting in Korea have |
declined to recognize Chiang’s regime, They believe |
Chiang’s participation would confuse our war aims and
put an intolerable new obstacle in the path of an ulti- —
mental objective: to return to China, That collides —
head-on with the United Nations’ limited purpose of 4
repelling Communist aggression in Korea. There is no 4
common gtound here. To identify the United ae 4
on-Communist camp. ‘They want
I no part of Chiang, \
To many Americans and to almost all our friends
‘ abroad, a confusing of Chiang’s objectives with those of
the United Nations would mean an immensely extended
war that could easily become a universal blood bath.
_ On the other side, there is a dangerous element in these
Biealations, and it is much closer home. That is the
influence of the China Lobby and of the politicians on
its periphery. Both Eisenhower and Dulles have close
"personal ties with the Knowlands, Hickenloopers, Judds,
_ Luces, and their like. Any activation of Chiang Kai-
shek’s armed forces would receive the support of these
| powerful groups. It would arouse enthusiasm in an im-
_ portant sector of the Republican Party and enjoy the
_ approval of some rightist Democratic leaders and inde-
- pendent publishers.
_ Eisenhower is expected to order swift preparation
of a major offensive in Korea to break the stalemate. He
_ will promote the training of yet more South Korean divi-
- sions, but this takes time, and it is an even longer process
_ to qualify officers for the higher commands. It may seem
alluring to use Chinese Nationalists in Korea because
_ their training is far advanced. Their arrival might shorten
_ the period of preparation for a northward drive. But if
_ Eisenhower adopts this course, it will strengthen the
_ growing belief abroad that military motives dominate
_ America’s foreign policy, It will discourage those who
_ expect the United States to equate military power with
economic, social, and political advancement. To employ
_ some Chinese Nationalist troops in Korea could by no
means be decisive, but it could alienate many of Amer-
_ica’s friends and buttress the alliance between Com-
-munist China and Russia.
In the yastness of Asia Chiang Kai-shek personifies a
en age.
eT: be Shape of T bings
FE Enter M. Mayer
_ René Mayer, the new French Premier, has the repu-
_ tation of being a “strong man” in the Radical Party. It
- will certainly require strength and determination to get
the country out of the almost impossible situation brought
+ Bei 5ut by the absence of a genuine and dependable
_ parliamentary majority. Through concessions to the
Gaullists involving the sacrifice of Robert Schuman,
_ artisan of all the European unification plans, M. Mayer
has assured himself at least a temporary majority. But
_ the price will probably be a sharp break in the policy
aimed at a federated Europe and a European army.
ge gteat operation upon which the right and center
y 17, 1953
india, owe a ke
eee apd fiat PTAA
ie oe Ae RS te iti : : P
tie have 10W embarked,” writes our Paris corre-
7% “spondent, ' ‘is to get the support of the Gaullists, who by
_ changing their tactics and becoming a government party,
or at least a supporter of right-wing governments, hope
to improve their fortunes and gradually work their way
into positions of authority.” The conservatives for their
part were naturally readier to make a deal with the
Gaullists than with the Socialists. Following the trend
initiated when the Communists and later the Socialists
disappeared from the government coalitions, each suc-
cessive Cabinet has been farther to the right than the one
it replaced.
In the domestic field.M. Mayer’s first task will be to
secure the adoption of the budget. He has already hinted
at some reforms in the fiscal system but has wisely ab-
stained from making the promises.of a balanced budget
that had proved fatal to his predecessor, M. Pinay. In
his presentation speech he gave a new emphasis to the
development of economic activity, which, coming from
him, means greater profits rather than higher wages.
A strengthening of the Socialist opposition can be
anticipated,
Exit M. Schuman
In the domain of foreign affairs M. Mayer’s accession
to power and the disappearance of M. Schuman have
shaken the Western world. In Bonn Chancellor Adenauer
overnight lost his most valuable ally and has been forced
to acknowledge that he must accept delay in the rati-
fication of the treaty providing for the inclusion of
German troops in a European army. In London the re-
Opening of negotiations on the treaty is viewed with even
greater concern in view of Schuman’s removal. In Wash-
ington his loss was considered an American loss, the
. departure of a friend who had struggled hard and long —
for the sort of European unity that is now a major ele-
ment of American foreign policy.
But it is the future of the European army, ‘already
behind schedule, that worries Washington most. Imme-
diate efforts to salvage it are being made. Among them
is the proposal of Field Marshal Montgomery, Deputy
Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, that the British
government formally join the European Defense Com-
munity. Lord Montgomery undoubtedly believes that
such a move would offset the harm done by M. Schu-
man’s departure and M. Mayer's concessions to the
adversaries of the European army. If the British come in,
the French will not find themselves facing alone a Ger-
many that is each day growing richer, stronger, and more
pro-Nazi. The British Foreign Office lost no time in re-
buking the Field Marshal, pointing out that he was ex-
pressing only his personal opinion. Just the same, the
crisis in Nato will inevitably sharpen with time unless
something is done to counterbalance promptly the effect
of the French situation.
43
}
+4
re}
>
‘Unbudgeable wi . ” pa ein
_ After the election pathologically suspicious Incscai
cans expressed two contradictory fears about President
Truman’s budget-making. Some thought he would seck
to embarrass his successor by inflating it recklessly; others
a suggested he would slash it to the bone, forcing the
G. O. P. to begin the new era by increasing appropria-
tions. These fears have been proved as unjustified as they
were ungenerous. Mr, Truman’s last budget is quite un-
political, and if the expenditure it envisages is very
large, that is because, to quote the New York Herald
Tribune, it is “the fiscal expression of policies that have
been adopted by previous Congresses.”
Actually, proposed expenditure for 1953-54 is almost
$10 billion less than the total Mr. Truman asked for a
year ago, a total which Congress, after much flourishing
of verbal meat-axes, cut only by some $2 billion. How-
ever, largely because of lags in the placing and fulfilment
of defense contracts, outlays this year are falling far
_ below the original estimates, and as a result the expected
deficit on June 30 will be under $6 billion. Next year,
according to Mr. Truman’s estimates, it will rise to $10
billion, assuming that the automatic tax cuts provided by
existing laws are allowed to take effect.
Thus, to achieve its twin ambitions, a balanced budget
and lower taxes, the Republican majority in Congress
must carve at least $10 billion out of the proposed ex-
penditure total. Since security programs account for 73
per cent of the whole, they will have to bear a large part
of the cutting. But any major economies in this field will
require much greater changes in defense and foreign
policies than Mr. Eisenhower appears to contemplate.
Indeed, such changes as he has hinted at—in the Far
East, for instance—are apt to increase rather than decrease
costs. We suspect, therefore, that when the dust settles,
the main structure of the Truman budget will be intact.
Churchill’s Visit
While no statement has been issued on the Eisenhower-
Churchill talks, the British Prime Minister on arrival
gave the press a good idea of the topics he was most
anxious to discuss, He made it plain, for example, that
he resented the repudiation of Roosevelt's promise to ex-
change information about atomic development and was
going to press Britain’s claims to be “a useful partner”
in this field. He also referred to Britain’s desire for
“trade not aid,” poiating out that this policy could not
be implemented without a revision of American laws that
hamper the entry of foreign goods.
But it was on the subject of the Far East that
Mr. Churchill was bluntest and most communicative, He
reiterated his well-known opinion that Western Europe
is “the real center of gravity’’ and suggested that while
stalemate in Korea was bad, “checkmate” would be
44
infinit ‘a
“for s and the U
hi a
wander about this vast. Chins.’ Ask ati
British recognition of the Peking government, — 9
hedged, saying that it was ‘‘a difficult question,” but he ‘i ;
added significantly a hope that the United States would |
“listen to the opinions we express. ”
Perhaps Mr. Eisenhower and Mr. Dulles proved good
listeners. Many of their followers, however, appear de-
liberately deaf to any opinion that conflicts with their |
own congealed views. Thus David Lawrence in his syn-
dicated column of January 6 accused Mr. Churchill of
“‘ineptness” in his references to the problem of recog-
nition, and of msulting the intelligence of American |
leadership by suggesting that extending the Korean war.
would mean sending American troops to the mainland.
The sublimity of Mr, Lawrence's confidence on this point
is equaled only by that of his lofty complaint that
Churchill “‘is still following the Truman-Acheson line —
. unaware that it was repudiated in the recent election.”
That should put these British colonials in their place.
George III, move over!
Dropping the Oil Suit
The Government's decision to drop any attempt at
criminal indictment of the major oil companies on anti-
trust charges came as no surprise to Washington. For
weeks both the Defense and State departments had been
generating tremendous pressures to this end, The deci-
sion, it is important to note, had nothing to do with the
nature of the case against the oil companies, which is
just as strong today as it was a month ago, (Indeed, the
way is still open for the institution of a civil suit.) It was
simply that the National Security Council, cornposed of
the heads of key government departments, decided that
criminal prosecution would endanger some of our oil
supplies and would in general discourage private invest-
ment abroad,
It is known that extreme pressure is also being brought
to bear upon the Truman Administration to get the Iran
oil problem settled quickly. Iran and the anti-trust suits
are not unrelated. The British are said to be willing to
relinquish title to the Abadan refinery and to certain
profits which they have been claiming from Iran, pro-
vided the oil suits are dropped and a monopoly is granted
the major oil companies for the marketing of Iran oil. It
may yet be that Washington’s latest attempt to smash the
existing cartel will end with the creation of a new one.
There remains the possibility that the new Adminis- _
tration will elect to proceed: with a civil suit against the’
oil companies. But this too would have its irony, for it -
was these very oil interests that furnished a good part of
the money which made possible the nomination and the
election of our next President.
[On January 20, 1949, President Truman presented Point
0 Congress. Four years have passed, and now, on all sides,
ore is a hue and cry for a new foreign economic policy. "A
w pattern for America’s foreign-aid program and a new
k at its foreign economic policy appear inevitable,” writes
fred Friendly in the Washington Post. "A new long-
ge foreign policy,” says Winthrop Aldrich, our next am-
a9 S&S FE
(dynamic economic strategy.’ What, then, has happened to
pint 4? And what about the U. N.’s “Point Four,” or tech-
cal-aid, program? In this article Paul A, Baran, a member
| the Department of Economics of Stanford University,
escribes the “reinterpretation” of Point 4 now shaping up.
lext week Peter Weiss will discuss the U. N.’s develop-
gent schemes. In following issues W. Arthur Lewis and
tringfellow Barr will present proposals for another kind of
‘oint 4.)
ay ake SIR ee = Poe Be
RESIDENT TRUMAN’S announcement, in his
| 1949 inaugural address, of a “bold new program”
f American aid to underdeveloped countries was a
hrewd political move. It was calculated not only to give
“Fair Deal’ touch to the rapidly unfolding foreign
blicy of the cold war, making it more palatable to
fropressive opinion both in this country and in Western
lurope, but also to conjure up for the American business
ommunity a new vision of prosperity, just as the post-
at boom was apparently drawing to a close. These
onsiderations however, though important and urgent,
yere secondary. The main purpose of Point 4 was
9 counter Communist propaganda in backward countries
ith the prospect of economic and social develop-
nent sponsored and generously aided by the United
states.
The first objective was easily attained. Editorial writers
nd radio commentators were thrilled by the Adminis-
ation’s “imaginative” and “humanitarian” plan and
alked and wrote about it so busily that they paid lit-
le attention to the State Department’s flirtation with
fanco, to American support of the French guerre sale
a Indo-China, or to the rapid revival of fascism in West
setmany and Japan. As a device for assuring prosperity,
ae proposal did not do so well, The recession of 1949
as short and mild, the international political scene was
lot conducive to much private investment abroad, and
Va ‘Street accorded a rather sour reception to the idea
f sinking large funds in underdeveloped countries. Nor
a s the chief purpose of Point 4 realized with any great
- = & = & Te MR Ee. Tee. ES es +R
=
re ei. See ae) Me a, Bee SE, Sh BS
Th he | Rick b Got Riker a
a ssador to Great Britain, must be supplemented with a
BY PAUL A. BARAN
success. Whatever propaganda value the program might
have had was almost nullified by the magnetism of the
victorious Chinese revolution and the United States’
open alliance with the traditional colonial powers and
native reactionary elements.
Under such circumstances not much enthusiasm for
Point 4 was evinced by the policy-makers in Washington.
The first Congressional appropriation for the newly es-
tablished Technical Cooperation Administration did not
exceed $34,000,000, and twenty-eight months later the
London Economist—usually the State Department’s most
faithful friend on the other side of the Ae
noted that Mr. Truman’s “bold new program” was “still
being watered with little more than fine phrases and -
lavish promises.” The situation was subsequently some-
what improved. For the fiscal year 1951-52 the Point 4
program got a larger appropriation, and for 1952-53
the amount, though about one-third less than the Ad-
ministration requested, was still $137,000,000.
What is most important, however, is that this in-
creased support for the Point 4 program is accompanied
by a far-reaching “reinterpretation’’ of the nature and
purpose of the entire undertaking. Indeed, altogether
new wine is being poured into the old bottles, and it
promises to be a much headier brew than that decanted
in Mr, Truman’s inaugural address, The first indication -
of what is to take the place of the President’s noble prom-
ise to “supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of —
the world into triumphant action, not only against their
human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies
—hunger, misery, and despair,” was conveyed in a report
of the International Development Advisory Board en-
titled ‘‘Partners in Progress.” This report, prepared under
the direction of Nelson Rockefeller, takes a “realistic
view” of the United States’ interest in underdeveloped
countries and frankly places ‘‘first things first.” “Since
three-quarters of the imported materials included in the
stock-pile program come from the underdeveloped
areas,” it declares, “it is to those countries that we must
look for the bulk of any possible increase in these
supplies.” A great number of commodities are involved.
“Aside from minerals, important expansions are con-
templated to increase our supplies of rubber, petroleum,
fats and oils, and some basic fibers.”
This theme has been elaborated and solidified in
another document called “Resources for Freedom,” pre-
pared by the President's Materials Policy Commission
45
ey
Elmina
rae
frag
Sa te eee a ng
headed by William S. Paley. “The commission believes
that the United States will find it increasingly worth
while to turn abroad for more supplies of many basic
materials, particularly minerals.'’ Production of these
materials must therefore be increased in the under-
developed countries, And neither the Rockefeller nor the
Paley report leaves any doubt about how this increase is
to be obtained, ‘The production and distribution of
goods and services is primarily a function of private
enterprise, whether it involves food and manufactured
goods to meet ever-growing civilian demand or whether
it involves the production of strategic raw materials’
(“Partners in Progress’), But although ‘private enter-
prise can and should continue to carry the major burden”
(‘Resources for Freedom”), it cannot be expected to
carry it all. The government must step in and relieve
ptivate business of excessive responsibilities. Whenever
outlays that are indispensable to the conduct of business
are unattractive to private investors either because they
would not be remunerative enough or would be too risky
or too big, the government should pick up the check.
In the words of the Eeonomist (July 5, 1952) “a
way has been found for the government to bear part
of the burden in the name of national defense, which
is the umbrella under which all those wanting subsidies
now shelter from the storms of the free-enterprise
system,”
Spending on the Technical Cooperation Administration
and on its Point 4 activities is thus given an alto-
gether new significance. It is seen to be for the purpose
of insuring a steady flow of strategic materials, smooth-
ing the way for private enterprise, providing American
corporations with free prospecting services of all kinds,
saving them the “burden” of ¢xploration, and financ-
ing undertakings that they find exceedingly useful but
insufficiently profitable.
NCE the principle of private profits but public
O losses is firmly established, the Rockefeller and
Paley reports express profound solicitude for the health
and happiness of the peoples inhabiting the under-
developed countries. Indeed, as if to illiustcate the
astute observation of the Economist cited above, “Part-
_ nets in Progress” proclaims that “an improvement in
46
countries, the necessaty a output of raw mal
may be unattainable, It is needless to add that whil
appropriate investment in the nutrition and health of the }
natives of the “source countries” would be thus fully),
justified by “hard-headed self-interest,’ it is up to th he
government to provide what is required to support a rea
sonably efficient and contented labor force, As noted it
“Partners in Progress,” “the abseateeism on the Vitoria ay
Minas railroad was cut dramaticaiiy by effective mala ia
control. This has made it possible to reduce maintenance
crews by one-third, which in turn has cut the cost off
extracting and transporting iron ore and mica from th
Rio Doce Valley.” r ‘2
Such expressions of concern for the welfare of the
people only throw into sharper relief the nature of 7
the entire program. While great pains are taken to”
prove that it is “vital” to the United States to obtain?
control of “the manganese and tungsten deposits of Latin |
America, Africa, and Asia, the chrome ores of Turkey =
and the Philippines, the timber stands of Chile and
Brazil, the pulpwoods of Labrador” (‘‘Partners in
Progress’), little thought seems to have been given to)
the question whether such an arrangement sedeld confer ™
equally vital benefits on the people living in the backward i ‘
areas, :
It is undoubtedly true that exports of minerals andi
other raw materials could “provide the financial basis ~
for a domestic development program’”’ (“Resources for 2
Freedom”), but the fact remains—though neither report | |
mentions it—that none of the raw-materials-exporting —
regions have thus far been able to carry out any develop- ©
ment program worthy of the name on such & “financiai ~
basis.” The misery in the oil-rich and oil-exporting coun- |
tries of the Near East is no less proverbial than the 4
squalor, disease, and stagnation in cotton-rich and cotton- |
exporting Egypt, in sugar-rich and sugar-exporting Cuba, ©
and in coffee-rich and coffee-exporting Brazil. The Paley
report cites the prosperity of Venezuela as an example
of the blessings that accrue to backward areas catering |
to the vital needs of the Standard Oil Company of New |
Jetsey. But the less said about Venezuela the better. ~
Harvey O'Connor's brilliant report on that country |
published in the July, 1951, issue of the Monthly Review —
reads like an account of conditions in India in the heday
of British domination:
What has happened in Venezuela is a gold-plated
disaster moving on noiseless oiled bearings toward ~
tragedy. Its ancient, static, but self-sufficient economy
has been tossed in the ash can. ... When the oil runs
out ... the nation will be like an old tailors’ chest
filled with useless spangles. It was impoverished, disease-
ridden, illiterate twenty-five years ago, and still is..
The Na (ION.
in 1c in m Miderdeveloped
oun ntries all c or r the bulk of ’ these revenues ate collected
| by a small group of big proprietors who use them for
xurious living or deposit them as capital abroad. The
share going to the corrupt governments supports a para-
| sitic bureaucracy and an overgrown military establish-
| ment.
_ Such economic development as takes place is of neces-
‘sity lopsided. The raw-materials-producing enterprises
' form islands of advanced technology in seas of general
backwardness. In these islands cluster a relatively small
number of native workers, business men, and lobbyists.
Only there does growth take place, and it resembles that
of a cancer rather than of healthy tissue. It assumes
mainly the form of bigger and better hotels and night
|
|
|
|
|
|
= *
ETS
f ie
e 0
| privileged natives, and of some industrial and commer-
- cial establishments serving this small élite.
OR the raw-materials wealth of the backward coun-
tries to previde a basis for their economic develop-
i, ‘ment, it would be necessary for the extraction and
marketing of the raw materials to proceed within the
te framework of a well-considered plan of general economic
_ gtowth. Only by using the proceeds of their general ex-
portation for the harmonious development of industry
_ and agriculture, only by advancing from a raw-materials
"economy to a technologically and economically balanced
processing economy, can the underdeveloped countries at-
stain a decent level of productivity and welfare. They are
Columbia, South Carolina
To the President of the United States, the Attorney
General, and the Governors of those states where racial
segregation is enforced by law:
Wuereas, There are before the Supreme Court of the
_ . United States cases involving the constitutionality of
enforced segregation in Delaware, Kansas, South Caro-
lina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, and
Wue|rEAS, The decision rendered by the court will
+ have great bearing upon the very existence of democracy
q within the boundaries of the United States, which must
stand today as the democratic stronghold of the world,
and
Whereas, We as youth will be vitally affected by this
decision, and whereas equal opportunities which are
fundamental to a democratic society cannot exist in a
segregated system, and
January 17, 1953
oe BS
dubs, of residential construction for foreigners and ~
Ty. be Future Comes to the South
ly to Sci tbs y being Mr, Rocceteller’s pat
AI f | progress” ot by supplying Mr. Palef with “‘re-
: ‘sources for freedom.” They are not likely to attain it by
paying, as they currently do, over 17 per cent per annum
for such capital as is invested in their economies by
American corporations,
The scheme of creating a raw-materials base in back-
ward regions and reserving the role of industrial center
to the mother country is by no means new. It may “work”
for a short time; it is bound in the longer run to lead
to increased misery and colonial revolutions. It is es-
sentially inimical to the interests and aspirations of the
people living in underdeveloped countries. It may be
forced upon them with the help of the native upper
classes and the nouveaux-riches of the raw materials
booms; it will not be tolerated by them forever. More
than a hundred years ago Lord William Bentinck, the
governor general of India, reported to -the British
public:
If security was wanting against extensive popular.
tumult or revolution, I should say that the Permanent
Settlement, though a failure in many other respects and
in its most important essentials, has this great advantage
at least of having created a vast body of rich landed
proprietors deeply interested in the continuance of the
British dominion and having complete control over the
mass of the people.
The fate of the Indian people under this “complete
control” is well known. Is it the ambition of the United
States to be able to boast about a similar success for
Point 4?
BY ALFRED MAUND
WHEREAS, A segregated system is founded upon un-
democratic laws, which are in antithesis to the substance
and spirit of our Constitution,
We, delegates coming from forty-five colleges in
seventeen Southern and border states and attending
a Southwide conference on youth and racial unity
through educational opportunity convened in Columbia,
South Carolina, do hereby petition that you act imme-
diately to eliminate segregation in education.
HIS resolution, after paragraph-by-paragraph dis-
cussion, was passed without dissenting vote by the
138 persons, white and Negro, attending the final
session of the recent anti-discrimination conference at
Columbia. :
The conference was sponsored by more than ‘five
hundred outstanding Southerners and was arranged by
47
Od
PA Aeterk Lag
_ dents have Negro roommates. There is an air
Sy Aa OR. PE
the Soothers Confers Educational Fund, an organizz
tion with headquarters in ‘New Orleans.
was widely representative. Besides college students and
teachers there were present, for example, a white busi-
ness man from Savannah, the first Negro to graduate
from the University of Arkansas law school, a white
high-school girl from Louisville, the president of the
South Carolina Federation of Labor, and a Negro
Methodist bishop. All delegates paid their own trans-
portation and other expenses.
The meetings were held at Allen University, a Negro
institution in downtown Columbia. The delegates were
housed in one of the dormitories, with the young men
on one floor and the young women on another. “The
dining tables,” the Columbia State reported,
“are non-segregated. Some of the white stu-
of informality and friendliness about the
place.”
No one would have thought that Columbia
was the citadel of James F. Byrnes. It outdid
itself in hospitality, The mayor sent regrets
that he could not attend the opening session.
In his stead City Councilman Marion A. Park ex-
tended official greetings to the delegates. By informal
arrangement the ordinance forbidding whites and Ne-
groes to ride together in a taxicab was suspended. The
city’s two newspapers, the Record and the State, were
impeccably fair and thorough in their coverage. Radio
‘station WMSC broadcast transcriptions of the opening
session and of interviews with Dr. James A. Dombrow-
ski, director of the Southern Conference Educational
Fund, and Dr. William Marshall, president of Wayland
Baptist College in Plainview, Texas. A party, with
dancing and games, was given for the delegates at a
U. S. O. hall.
Only one small incident occurred, and it ended hap-
pily. Some twenty delegates who arrived before eating
facilities were available at the university went to a
Negro restaurant in the neighborhood to get supper.
The white proprietor sent word by the Negro waitress
that he could not serve a mixed group. So the delegates
started to walk out and were followed by a number of
other customers who apparently held similar views. The
proprietor then reconsidered, and the group was served
without more ado.
The conference rewarded Columbia’s hospitality by
discussing the issues before it with the greatest modera-
tion and seriousness. There was no posing or bragging,
although the gathering was probably the first of its
kind ever held in South Carolina. In panel discussions
which covered every aspect of racial relations—school,
home, church, industry—participants stressed both the
lag and the promise of their home states. No one
presumed to know exactly what would happen if seg-
48
_ Attendance
8
= 9
oe a
Z
The ay, ma engadget He u =
ning that would be necessary if legalized racial integra-
tion led eventually to the disappearance of race as a
competitive and socially exclusive factor. Dr. Marshall _ a
described the steps he took to induce the Wayland board
and student body to accept Negroes. Dean James P. Hupp |
of West Virginia Wesleyan College, who initiated in-
tegration there, discussed ways of leveling psychological ~
barriers. Aubrey Williams, the Alabama publisher and |
writer who is president of the S. C. E, F., and Dr. Her- ©
man H. Long of Fisk University warned that court and ~
= legislative battles must be continued even if we
» are so fortunate as to get a good decision from:
the Supreme court.” A campaign for tenure ~
laws to protect the rights of Negro teachers in
any merger of school systems that ete take §f
place was strongly urged. am
The awareness sind reasonableness of the a |
young people were wonderful to behold. Al- ©
* though many were active members of church . |
groups or students at church-supported schools their @
thoughts ranged far beyond sectarian lines. When the. ©
conference was asked to approve a section of a panel re- = |
port urging that “personal behavior” be made “more |
spontaneously Christlike” the word “Christlike” was —
challenged as being possibly offensive to non-Christian |
groups both in the United States and abroad and was ©
amended to “moral.” A report pointing out the need ff
for more social contact between the races if integration ; G
of schools was to work smoothly stated: “The principal | yb
means of contact is through the church.” This was con- |
tested because it might be construed as advocating Be
church intervention in state affairs. It was amended to:
“A principal means of contact is through religious
groups.” |
I went down to Columbia with some misgivings. The “#
meetings had been widely announced. The prophets of —
I
Fur
wud
(oh
hoi
doom who say the end of segregation will mean blood @ (
flowing in the streets had ample opportunity to make the 7 :
gathering prove their thesis, Perhaps old Bishop Richard @ «
Allen, who a century ago broke with the Methodist (§}
church because of its segregation policies, interceded in fj
heaven for the university named after him. All of —
us were certainly sustained by the thought of the count- |
less persons in the South who have taken a resolute |
stand for decency and reason. I left Columbia feel- |
ing that I had seen the South’s future—and that it |
worked, : 4
ALFRED MAUND is on the staff of the Louisville Courier- © |
Journal. He has made a special study of the economic and —
racial problems of the South. a
et
TURING the last few months I have been lecturing
F F in West Germany on American foreign policy in
' Europe and on the present armament economy. My
; -audiences—in Hamburg, Munich, and Frankfurt, in
Cologne and Diisseldorf, in the Ruhr and the Rhine-
Jand, in Berlin—included chambers of commerce,
_trade unions, Socialists, liberals, university and middle-
class groups. This experience taught me, first, to what
‘an amazing extent the world has become homogeneous,
' since I could give the same talks in any German city that
' I had given in New York and Chicago; and, second,
that Germans of all sorts in every part of the country are
_ interested primarily in problems of foreign policy. An
extended question period followed each lecture, and the
_ discussions were long and spirited. |
It is easy to understand why foreign policy is the first
_ concern of most Germans. Everyone feels the presence of
the occupation forces and wonders how long they will
stay. In addition, Germany's geographical situation be-
_ tween the two great power blocs makes the importance
of its international relations very clear. Thus discussion
centered in the question: Will there be a war and if so
when? No one wanted war. Over and over again peo-
ple said that the results of another war, especially for
_ Germany, would be so frightful that they could not even
_be thought about. In this context one question was in-
_ variably raised: Why haven't the Russians already
launched a war?
A handful of those who contributed to the discussions
argued that the. Russians were peace-loving, or that they
_ knew the horrors of war from experience. In Munich
some ofthese belonged to Communist groups; the
majority were members of the Bavarian trade unions.
_ Other trade unionists, supporters of Adenauer, would
| retort: “Those are just empty words that you don’t
_ even believe yourselves.” Just once, at a meeting in the
. Rhineland, a man declared that the Russians were
_ deterred from starting a war by the NATO divisions sta-
_ tioned in Europe. Everyone laughed at him. But many
said that the Russians did not want a war because they
. were afraid that their cities would be atom-bombed. Al-
_ most invariably someone would then ask why, if that
_ Werte true, the Americans were pushing so hard for
_ European and German divisions, which would not be
5 eB
; . 2 os i
_ ns
seeiniiineniitaes meer se TS. Ee. Eh. be
FRITZ STERNBERG is the author of the widely discussed
; book “Capitalism and Socialism on Trial,” which came out in
~— this country at the beginning of the year. It is soon to be
[published in France, Yugoslavia, and Japan.
January 17, 1953
ee tale a
a a
a
BY FRITZ STERNBERG
needed if the threat of the bomb were sufficient. Some
said that the Russians were having difficulties with their
satellites and could not risk a war in Europe until their
empite was consolidated. Another frequent contention
was that Moscow did not need a war to gain most of its
objectives in Europe; the differences among the Euro-
pean nations were so great that the Russians would even-
tually profit from them, Speakers generally agreed that
if the Russians did not start a war in 1952, they were
not likely to do so in 1953 or 1954. The consensus was
that although Russia is rearming on a tremendous scale,
America is building up its defenses much faster,
It was emphasized time and time again, by white-
collar groups as well as workers, by students and middle-
class audiences, that the Russians were not political -
hysterics like Hitler but coldly calculating men, In 1948,
when Soviet authorities sought to seal off Berlin, and
again at the beginning of the Korean war many Germans
had been afraid that the Russians might launch an attack
on West Germany any day. But since the rearming of
Germany had been planned, this fear had vanished.
Germans in all walks of life seemed convinced that the
Russians would not wage war in the near future,
The question of what America would do after 1954,
or whenever its arms output equaled Russia’s, was fre-
quently raised. As long as Germany’s own military prepa-
ration was not brought into the discussion, there was
usually some measure of agreement that it was better
for peace if neither power bloc had military superiority; _
therefore all speakers—except the Communists, of course
—favored America’s rearming rapidly enough to close —
the gap between the two countries.
But what would happen when an approximate mili-
tary balance had been attained? Some thought that the
United States would have to reach an understanding with
Russia. Others, particularly Socialists and trade unionists,
asked if there was any guaranty that the Americans
would stop rearming once they had caught up with the
Russians? After all, the United States produced three to —
four times as much steel as the Soviet Union. If there
were no war, it might end by outarming the Russians.
Middle-class spokesmen usually thought this unlikely, __
arguing that the American people were known to beanti- —
militarist and would not support such a policy in peace
time, Socialists and workers would reply that this was
true only on the assumption that American prosperity -
continued: if a severe depression occurred after 1954,
America, they believed, might step up its rearmament
program. To which their middle-class opponents would
49
7
s e infos 4 re a gars? SR. ¥ nar iy
answer | + that the Riciank had predicted 2 intl he
United States right after the war but it had failed
to appear. They had again expected it’ during the first
phase of the Marshall Plan, and again it had not mate-
_ rialized, Moreover, America now had government agen-
cies prepared to counteract depressions as it did not have
in 1929. They therefore discounted the danger that the
United States would increase its military expenditures
in order to avoid or cure a recession,
ATIFICATION of the treaties which provide for
R a German army was discussed at every meeting.
In Berlin, where the situation is different from that in
the rest of West Germany, military revival is favored not
only by the middle class but also by a large majority of
the trade unionists. The fight against the Russians and the
Communists is so much part of everyday life in West
_ Berlin that most factions accept the idea of a German
army within the framework of the Atlantic Pact. In the
rest of West Germany middle-class representatives in
Parliament are in favor of the army; the Socialists are
opposed, The trade unions have not yet taken a clear
stand, but many of their members are against the idea.
These divergent views were reflected in the discussions
that followed my lectures. The middle-class position
is that in the world today power politics prevails, and
this means military power, If Germany is to regain its
independence, it must be armed; and if the Americans
favor a German army, they should be supported,
The Social Democrats are absolutely opposed to the
Soviet regime and advocate the military defense of West
Germany in case of Russian aggression. However, for rea-
sons of internal politics they regard the creation of a
German army as a grave danger, to be accepted only if
_ absolutely necessary. Since Russia, in their opinion, is
4
unlikely to attack in the near future, the need of an
army is not urgent. Meanwhile they are fighting for
control of the government, They do not expect to win a
majority in next summer’s elections, but they hope to
make large gains and thus become an integral part of the
government. If the government begins to build an army
between now and then, the Social Democrats fear that
internal politics will veer sharply to the right.
An additional argument against remilitarization
phrased by Socialist intellectuals was that Germany would
be in a weakened condition for a long time, and that
a weak democratic state would not be the master of its
army but would be ruled by it. With old and new Nazi
officials in high posts, this army-dominated West Ger-
many could play an ominous role in Europe. In that case
__ the United States might be prodded by the Germans to
extend its own rearmament program beyond 1954, until
‘it had attained clear-cut military superiority over Russia,
- and then demand that Germany be unified. If the Rus-
sians refused, the Americans might threaten war. But if
50
. m d re On NG j C
TR 2 interesting comm ent ; worl
situation that when the question of ratifying the German
treaties came up in the British Parliament, the arguments "
presented and the misgivings expressed were vety similar |
to those voiced by German intellectuals.
In other countries rearmament is generally considered ~
in relation to the social sacrifices it entails, but in the
talk I heard this aspect was subordinated to the effect of
rearmament on German unification. Many middle-class
and intellectual groups without definite political affilia-
tions opposed the creation of an army on the ground
that, at least-for the time being, it would rule out uni- —
fication; in fact, it would widen the split between East —
and West. Why, they asked, should Russia give up East-,
ern Germany if it received no reward? A frequent —
argument was: The creation of our army means that —
twentieth-century Germany will meet the fate of Poland —
in the nineteenth century,
N WEST GERMANY today the Social Democrats ;
have the backing of the vast majority of organized |
and unorganized labor. The Communists, outnumbered —
seven or eight to one by the Social Democrats, have be-
come a mere sect because they are identified with the
Soviet regime. The experiences which German residents
have had with the regime in the eastern zone and in
the eastern sector of Berlin cannot be concealed; those
who leave the areas spread the facts.
In the Ruhr and the Rhineland I frequently talked
before hundreds of workers who had come directly from
the factory. More than once a man stood up during
the discussion period and said that the standard of living
in West Germany and West Berlin was much higher
than in Eastern Germany. Men who had at one time a
worked in the easterh zone would confirm this. At one
meeting a worker of about fifty took the floor and said
that while that might be true, it was not the main thing.
He was a skilled metal worker, he said, who had for-
merly worked in Saxony. He had now been in West’
Germany for six months, had been unable to find a job
in his own field, and was earning at other work only 90° 4
per cent of what he had got in the eastern zone. Yet ai- 4
though he was worse off financially, he had never con-
sidered going back, for when he attended a meeting —
like this he could be sure that his wife and two children a
were still at home and had not been arrested, and if he
participated in the discussion as he was doing now, he 4 he
did not have to fear that the police would spirit him |
away. As a rule the applause was perfunctory when some- a
one made a speech in the discussion petiod after my lec-
tures, This time, however, it was vigorous and sponta- -
neous; the man had said what they all thought.
One question frequently asked in academic circles a
The Nation a
Lit 0 tically? Sora: agreed
cal independence did not simply happen, that it
fought for, but opinions differed as to means.
me intellectuals said that Germany could become a
mS
se)
FACH time a crippling strike takes place, employer
groups revive the union-fragmentation scheme,
h failed of approval in the Hightieth Congress by
“one vote in the Senate. In the last Congress many
blicans and Dixiecrats sought some means of break-
ing up nation-wide unions and putting them under
nti-trust control—the Gwinn bill would have banned in-
dustry-wide strikes; the Lucas bill, bargaining with more
than one company or local group. Before Congress ad-
urned in July, the Wall Street Journal reported that
Se nator Taft was considering introducing in the next
Congress a new “anti-labor-monopoly Jaw.”
Although state experience with laws against strikes
on utilities shows that proper provisions for seizure
can protect the public against paralyzing stoppages, there
‘is no basis for the belief that breaking up the national
unions would solve the problem of strikes creating a
ng national emergency or cure monopolistic practices in the
urchase and sale of labor. Fragmentation is rather an
tful scheme to entangle unions in legal red tape and
to weaken organized labor by forcing it into uneco-
omic units and destroying loyalties that extend beyond
the individual company or locality.
The ‘campaign to sell the proposal to the American
people has been marked by misuse of terms, misleading
ana, oe ambiguity, and astounding ignorance of labor
or ation and history. Company negotiation to estab-
list wage patterns and union action to enforce them
are miscalled industry-wide bargaining, which is indeed
fare in manufacturing industries in this country. The prin-
cipal industries in which it is found are men’s clothing,
y, and pressed and blown glassware, and these
2 been strike-free for fifteen to fifty years. In steel,
02 argaining has been on a-company basis, although at
is i imes of deadlock and government intervention the large
com panies have united in the presentation of their case.
ee — Sr eS ee —
SoS Bo Se
Bare ERR RRS So
ics Pet Briecelae U pet aon author of “Labor and
jal Relations.”
eign state ‘remaining ng aloof Has both the
sia and pursuing “Talleyrand’s
es, ticy of playing one big power against the other. The
‘Socialists said there could be no pact with Russia and
that Germany could grow more independent of the
United States only by developing a democratic planned
_ €conomy integrated with that of Western Europe.
N ew Stratt-Jacket for Unions? .
BY RICHARD A. LESTER
reached by separate regional negotiations and not by
one industry-wide bargaining conference.
Advocates of partition contend that the federal anti-
trust laws limiting business practices should be balanced
by an anti-trust law applicable to labor. This argument,
however, disregards the fact that employers have not been —
subject to the federal anti-trust laws with respect to the
purchase of labor services; they have, in fact, freely co-
operated and colluded on wages and hiring through
personnel associations and management meetings, More-
over, under the Taft-Hartley act all secondary boycotts
—treally sympathetic strikes—are declared unfair labor
practices and made subject to damage suits. Inter-com-
pany cooperation to defeat a strike is not similarly pro-
scribed by Taft-Hartley.
Even Senator Taft has recognized that the federal
anti-trust laws are not well designed for application to’
labor. Prosecution of unions under anti-trust legislation
is certainly not the road to constructive labor relations.
Only a person without experience in industrial relations
would maintain that union rivalry has beneficial con-
sequences for the public and exchange of information
among companies or local unions injurious ones.
Proponents of partition fail to explain how single-
firm bargaining would prevent disrupting strikes, given
large materials producers like United States Steel, the
Aluminum Company of America, and Kennecott Cop-
per; certainly it has not stopped the spread of strikes
from one firm to another in the past. And they disre-
gard the fact that the elimination of monopolistic buying
and selling of labor services would require truly revolu-
tionary changes in the structure of Americam industry as
well as in that of unions, It could probably be achieved —
only by compulsory central hiring of all labor through
a single community employment exchange, modeled after
stock and commodity markets; only thus could assurance ©
be given that no buyer or seller would handle more
than a minor fraction of the total hirings of a given
type of labor in a locality.
Nor has any attempt been made to answer the many
. other questions and objections that have been raised.
51
}
ar
]¥ ker aS
NMP ORY:
te ak ee
The proposal for autonomous 6 inp vc
is offered as a simple reform that could ae realized with-
out too much difficulty. Its advocates fail to state, or
perhaps even to realize, that their program would mean
_ the practical destruction of craft unionism, the transfor-
mation of the two hundred-odd national unions into in-
effectual federations that would duplicate present
A. F. of L. and C, I. O. set-ups, the compulsory severance
of long-standing institutional and personal loyalties; and
the enforced isolation of the parts of a movement with
fifteen million members and a hundred and fifty years
of militant tradition. It is like proposing to carve up the
_ Presbyterian or Catholic church into local units which
shall remain separate and autonomous.
O BE logical and defensible, the program would
have to be accompanied by a thoroughgoing dissolu-
tion of large firms and employer associations and enforced
independence of the severed parts of company or per-
sonnel organizations. And in slicing up industrial
combinations, account would need to be taken of the ap-
propriateness of each segment as jurisdiction for a union.
It has repeatedly been emphasized by labor experts that
little more reason exists for unions to be cut up according
to the odd assortment of activities in which many multi-
plant companies are engaged than for a company to be
restricted in its operations to the jurisdiction of an in-
‘dividual union, To insist that the unit of organization of
a company and of a union should be identical is to ignore
their different needs and historical development; the
most economical and effective unit for business purposes
may be completely inappropriate and unsatisfactory for
the activities of a labor organization.
Company unionism of this type would generate in-
I'V's Brave New Experiment
ELEVISION has brought us the biggest jackpot yet
Tred on the air waves. It is a $2,000,000 prize,
put up by the Ford Foundation. The value immediately
obtainable, for the mere twist of a television dial, is an
excellent program, But at the end of the rainbow are
possible rewards far outweighing present benefits. The
distant goal is nothing less than curtailment of the adver-
tiser’s role, which since the days when “The A. and P.
Gipsies” first wowed American radio listeners has in-
fused so many programs with mediocrity out of con- .
cern for the lowest of all possible common denominators
SAUL CARSON has been a radio and TV critic for many
years. He is now writing for both mediums.
D2
he en) , on
stag cer t 2 gina B 7 at,
‘ dance, music, with a good deal of dazzling glamour and
threat to union ‘existence, it it would
a major issue throughout the economy ‘for an indefinite —
petiod, Severance of long-established institutional ties —
and enforced autonomy of the pieces would require |
artificial barriers to communication between union offi- §
cials and federal policing of a union’s internal affairs.
One cannot but wonder why such a naive and obtuse’
proposal, with its revolutionary implications for the
structure of industry and for labor relations in this
country, should find ready acceptance in certain business
quarters. Is it because many industrial leaders. still
hanker for the company-union era of the 1920's? Is it ~
because they liope to entangle organized labor in new.
legal difficulties even at the risk of additional restrictions
on industry? Is it because a propaganda campaign against
“labor monopoly” and “industry-wide bargaining” is
useful in obfuscating issues and forcing labor into a de-
fensive position? Or does it simply reveal mental rigidity .
and lack of constructive ideas at a time when we need |
a new approach to the problem of industrial disputes? :
A constructive program to protect the country against _
crippling strikes should have high priority in the next —
Congress. State experience with utility strike legisla-.
tion offers a basis on which to build. Virginia, for in-
stance, provides penalties for both parties in case of
stalemate and state seizure; such a provision makes it
unattractive for either side to block a settlement. If
Congress is not sidetracked by debate of whimsical ideas’
for institutional reconstruction, the prospects are good
for the adoption of legislation that is fair and that con-
tains real incentives for the two parties to reach work-
able solutions to their differences.
BY SAUL CARSON ff,
and inured an entire generation to the vulgarity of the |
pitchman’s taste. ;
This venture of the Ford Foundation’s TV-Radio
Workshop is centered in a video program that may be
seen any Sunday afternoon on sets tuned to one of at
least fifty- one stations hooked uP with the CBS-TV
network. The name of the show is “Omnibus.” It is an
outsize show, big in every respect. In its ninety minutes
—a very large slice of “peak-period” time—it brings the |
viewer famous performers projecting drama, poetry, e
considerable sheer pretentiousness. But the important | it
thing is its promise to show broadcasters the advantages)
of freedom from advertisers’ control. F
The NATION
each cel fora progeiien bought blind.
_ The sponsors have absolutely nothing to say about
ormat, content, or any of the details of production.
2 ese matters are the concern of the TV-Radio Work-
poe: and no one’s money can make the slightest differ-
. The sponsor who buys “Omnibus” must forget the
ie d convention that the huckster who pays the bills gets
ank canvas to decorate or deface at will. Broadcasters
et had any business relinquishing program control;
legal responsibility as licensees is theirs, and so is the
moral obligation. They abdicated their trust when they
“permitted advertisers to run programs, thus opening the
to the vapidity of so much of our radio fare. Now
the Ford Foundation, without lecturing or scolding, is
doing something about the situation. It has bet $2,000,-
000 that an established trend can be reversed. From this
Viewpoint alone “Omnibus” is an experiment worth
watching. It must of course build audience popularity
ze or find itself bogged down in‘ futile if well-intentioned
P p aw So far “Omnibus” has stayed on the road.
ROM the beginning the Ford people discarded sev-
4 eral of the hobbles that advertising had imposed on
"pfogtamming. One was strict adherence to a schedule
of quarter-hour periods. Because time must be found
‘for commercial plugs, a play or an act must be fitted to
the fifteen-minute framework, cut if necessary, padded
when short. “Omnibus” dispenses with such artificiality.
On its debut, November 9, and again two months later,
time was found for a “‘spot’’ that took exactly two
“minutes, all that was needed for a movie of the new
X-ray films. If a drama needs. twenty-two minutes, or
forty minutes, the time is there. On February 1 the
entire ninety minutes, with time out for commercials,
will be given over to the Metropolitan Opera Com-
-pany’s studio productive of the Garson Kanin—Howard
Dietz version of “Die Fledermaus.”
_ Another traditional practice from which “Omnibus”
i as freed itself is that of sticking largely to one or the
other of the usual modes of television production—films
‘of live studio performances. “Omnibus” lets the subject
Matter, not the budget or convenience, determine
‘whether a number shall be transmitted directly from the
st dio or by film.
pp dacs Agee, co-author of John Huston’s much-praised
movie ‘The African Queen,” wrote for “Omnibus” an
affecting and highly poetic drama called “Mr. Lincoln.”
I t was necessary to film the play, both because its length
i “Lincoln”. has been ¢
> RGie ranging from t ty
phe a e of aaa | to Neale .
a supe tb job, On television “Mr.
ivided “into five parts, the running
Pty: -five to forty minutes.
Maxwell Anderson has written three original plays for
“Omnibus”; William Saroyan, six. Rex Harrison and
Lilli Palmer starred in the first of the Anderson plays,
“The Trial of Anne Boleyn.” Helen Hayes and Burgess
Meredith gave emotional intensity to the second of the
Saroyan plays.
There has been some excellent ballet, Several numbers
were filmed for the program in Paris by Jean Benoit-
Levy, producer of the pictures “Ballerina” and “Mater- -
nelle.” The music department is particularly strong.
Helen Hayes has given a reading to the music of -
Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite.” A film made in Finland
has brought us Sibelius. Stokowski has presented
Moussorgsky; and other Stokowski numbers are in the
works.
Science is not being overlooked. Among the films to
be shown will be some made at medical-research ceaters,
some at large industrial plants, a few at museums and
zoos. In the documentary field a film showing the work
of a tugboat captain in New York harbor was a failure.
But some slips must be expected.
Alistair Cooke, chief correspondent of the Manchester
Guardian in the United States, who acts as master of
ceremonies, is an urbane man with a keen sense of humor
and the ability to interpret what he perceives, but “Omni-
bus” does not give him the chance to do much more than
explain the meaning of its title. Left to himself, Cooke
could do much better and could pull the program to-
gether on days when it threatens to disintegrate into a
potpourri,
The program could and should be a laboratory for
new writing. There is safety in relying on Saroyans and
Andersons, but it would be bolder to seek out and help
develop fresh and brave television authors. “Omnibus”
could also afford more technical experimentation, espe-_
cially in music and the dance. I think it might even now an a
and then venture into straight educational fare and show _
tomorrow's educational-TV broadcasters what can be 4
done with ample resources.
Since “Omnibus” is likely to be with us a long time,
the defects may eventually be ironed out, the gaps filled
in, The $2,000,000 earmarked for the program was just
about enough money to keep the show rolling for twenty- Mg
six weeks—without sponsors. But after nine weeks on 8 =
the air five had boarded the bandwagon. What they
pay covers not only the time cost ($60,000 a week). but
the show’s entire budget. Thus “Omnibus” will hardly -
have to touch its principal and will be able, perhaps,
to turn some of its money back into other productions
by the TV-Radio Workshop. The program may usher
in a new tomorrow in television.
»
adic
yeah
ee keep seis
~~ . rye et.
ARTISTS AND GONDOLAS
BY DOROTHEA S. GREENBAUM
E MET in the Palace of the Doges
on a mild autumn morning. There
Unesco’s director general, Jaime Torres
Bodet, welcomed us and asked us to
“investigate the practical conditions
for the freedom of the artist in con-
temporary society and to discover ways
of associating creative artists more close-
ly with the work of Unesco.” That after-
noon we moved across the Grand Canal
to the island of San Giorgio. And more
than four hundred artists sat down to-
gether to start a week’s discussion.
This was the International Conference
of Artists sponsored by Unesco and
held in Venice September 22 to 28
—the first international meeting of
artists. The arts were the theater, litera-
ture, music, architecture, painting, sculp-
ture, and the cinema; forty-three
member nations and international asso-
ciations sent representatives.
There were silks from the Far East,
leather jackets and beards from Australia
and Israel, black vestments and fuchsia
birettas from the Vatican State, and the
high stiff collars of the French lawyer.
There were people wearing rows of
medals, pushing into every photograph,
some with selling schemes, others hand-
ing out national propaganda. And there
were men and women of prestige—
Jules Romains, Henry Moore, Gabrielle
Mistral, Le Corbusier, Jean Lurgat,
Jacques Villon, Idelbrando Pizzetti,
Arthur Honegger, Francesco Malipiero,
Marino Marini, Marc Connelly, Roberto
Rossellini, Stephen Spender, Graham
Sutherland, and many others.
We met in the Cini Foundation, that
beautiful monastery designed by Pal-
ladio; flying angels on the painted ceil-
ing peeked through the materials draped
across them in a vain effort to control
the blaring sound waves from the loud
speakers.
The United States delegation con-
sisted of Thornton Wilder, theater, who
was chairman; Allen Tate, literature;
William Schuman, music; Valentine
Davies, cinema; Ralph Walker, archi-
54
tecture; and George L. K. Morris, paint-
ing. I represented sculpture. Henry
Billings was on the organizing commit-
tee of the conference.
We arrived with high hopes and
sharp pencils, eager and business-like,
impatient of delays. We met at 8:15
every morning, and our smoke-filled
room was the sunny terrace of the hotel
where we breakfasted. We talked over
our ideas. Then we went to the confer-
ence.
There was something for everyone:
for the idealist, addresses on respect for
the dignity of man, on the need for col-
laboration among architects, painters,
and sculptors, on the artist’s place in so-
ciety, on the formation of an Interna-
tional Council of Arts and Letters; for
the practical artist, discussions of his re-
lations with dealers, critics, the public,
and fellow-artists; of the difficulty of
obtaining studios and contracts; of re-
moval of custom barriers, and many
other concrete subjects. Good solid fare.
But thanks to a fine disregard for the
agenda in the conference as a whole and
in the various sections of it, subjects
and suggestions were lost in a torrent of
generalizations. This was particularly
true of the Visual Arts Committee, an
unwieldy body composed of architects,
painters, and sculptors. The smaller
committees fared better.
The French. were determined and
voluble. Their long domination of the
art world made them impatient of any
opposition, and we felt a disturbing re-
sistance to our delegation. They and the
Italians were solidly behind the.creation
of an International Council of Arts and
Letters. Great Britain, the United
States, and many smaller nations insisted
that the money needed to support an-
other international organization could
be used for more direct benefits to the
artists, Sean
The confusion was hard on artists,
who, as Thornton Wilder put it, “spend
their days in making the ideal concrete,”
and especially hard on the sculptors,
_everything else and our freedom to de--
those tough-muscled, _ grubby-handed
people, part plumber and part gardener, 4
whose brains are in their finger tips and
who cannot believe in anything they can-
not touch. The exception was Henry |
Moore, whose paper was one of the .
high points of the week.
The difficulties were legion: bad
acoustics, the difference in language, the
lack of a common parliamentary pro-
cedure and of proper clerical setvice,
which led to much misunderstanding. i
Italy's chivalrous desire to honor old + @
age resulted in the appointment of '
men of unquestioned distinction but «
totally unqudlified to be committee —
chairmen. Our greatest obstacle was the -
lack of opportunity to meet informally+—
with fellow-artists—for in such contacts
lay the real vitality of the conference.
Yet out of the morass of difficulties «
something gradually emerged. At the ;
end of a week of outward turmoil and
frustration we were surprised to find
that we had been part of a wonderful
experience. Aside from the resolutions —
adopted—for the establishment of an [|
International Federation for the Visual
Arts, for free circulation of artistic 4
works, and so on—there developed a
genuine awareness of the other fellow—
a realization that winning a resolution |
sometimes meant losing a friend, that
a resolution good for Connecticut is not
necessarily good for Thailand, that the @
very size of the United States, with its |
vast number of artists, its state auton-
omy, and its conception of democratic —
government puts it in a class by itself.
We learned that there are no blanket
solutions, but that friendliness and pa- 4 |
tience can overcome much hostility. And
perhaps most important, we learned
that we all value our freedom above jf)
cide what freedom means to us. It was a |
week of contradictions and accomplish-.
ments, of naivete and connivance, of @
unexpected hostility and warming sym- —
pathy. Its value was intangible but real 9
nevertheless, and the proof was in the
2a, wit which we talked of meet-
im Pn
| It is singularly fitting that the con-
| ference was held in Venice, that city of
contrasts where beauty and tawdriness
e _ tub elbows. Built on salt marshes, it is
a monument to man’s vision and defiance
e of obstacles. It rests on mud flats, but
its bronze horses cavort unimpeded
s e and the carved angels on the churches
| trumpet hosannas to the sky, The in-
om _describable joy of creation is every-
i _ where!
|
| The German Generals
| SWORD AND SWASTIKA. By Tel-
ford Taylor, Simon and Schuster. $5.
=. IKE the so-called national character
1m of the German people the famous
> general staff of their past armies belongs
~ to those subjects about which much
| - nonsense has been written. Both the
|| admirers and the haters of the German
_ officer corps usually glorify it in one
way or the other, exaggerating either
x its virtues or its faults. It is all the more ~
satisfying, therefore, to find the former
_ chief counsel of that dubious perform-
ance, the trial of the war criminals at
) Niirnberg, coming forward with an ob-
~ jective work that perfectly achieves its
~ limited purpose: to furnish the general
| reader with enough data in narrative
> form to enable him to approach and to
| consider the whole controversial sub-
ject intelligently.
’ Starting with a sketch of the origins
’ of the German officer caste, its develop-
ment during the eighteenth and nine-
|} teenth centuries, and its curious survival
of the World War I defeat, Mr. Taylor
|) with the connivance of Trotsky and
Stalin—of a new skeleton army during
_ the few years of the Weimar Republic.
| He then analyzes, with rare insight for
| ‘a foreigner, the relationship between
| army and state leadership when, after
’ the 1929 New York stock-market crash
| that shook the world, times became ever
| - more critical. All of a sudden the
| "swastika began to rise along with the
| _ pnemployment figures. Until then Hit-
| | let's movement—which had the sym-
E: “pathy of many generals because it
_ allegedly possessed “the powet to make
converts among the workers for the
cause of nationalism’’—had had no suc-
cess whatever: after ten years of effort
“Toner 17, 1933
proceeds to the ingenious building up—
there were only 12 Nazis among 491
Reichstag deputies. But even after
1929 Hitler was umable to attract the
workers,
The notion, later on widely accepted
abroad, that the German people swept
Hitler into power was sheer Nazi propa-
ganda. The power was handed to Hitler
from above at the very moment when
the National Socialist Party was falling
apart. The specter of a liberal, Social
Democratic Germany—there was no
Communist danger—was too much for
the generals and the big industrialists.
If their dated dreams of Gerinan might,
of subject labor, and of dominating
positions for the members of the old
ruling classes had to be forced upon the
German people, only Hitler and his
henchmen would be ruthless enough to
do the job. The aristocratic officers dif-
fered with him more often than not on
manners, method,'and timing, but they
were in basic agreement with his goals
and his anti-parliamentary pseudo-
philosophy.
Mr. Taylor traces the ups and down
of the unholy alliance of an archaic
caste and a modern demagogue during
the fateful years from 1933 until after
the crushing of Poland in September,
1939. If anything, Hitler moved too
fast for the professional soldiers. They
figured that by 1944 or 1945 they would
have restored German military might
and could then face all possibilities with
confidence. But they were unable to re-
strain Hitler. The Pope and Stalin had
been the first to dignify his rule; the
world had accepted his tearing up of the
post-war treaties and his march into
the Rhineland; the English were negoti-
ating with him for a naval treaty. He
moved from success to success on the
international scene. And in Germany it-
self he had not hesitated to annihilate
those of his followers who had wanted
—prematurely, from his point of view
—to dispose of the old officer caste. So
until 1938 the generals had little to
complain of. Only a few of them rea-
lized how their acquiescence in Hitler's
lawless orgies of terror, the concentra-
tion camps, the pogroms, was sapping
their moral s#ength, once their undis-
puted pride. But they were all busy
building a new super-perfect army and
stalemating the intrigues of Himmler
and Géring, who craved all power for
Hitler and themselves. What really mat-
tered even to those generals who had
come to despise and feat Hitler was to
get their new mass army in shape.
With an eye to the essential Mr. Tay-
lor pictures the attitude of the German
General Staff during the decisive years
1938 and 1939, Here, with the ac-
celerated course of events, his narra-
tive makes exciting reading, though he
never stoops to sensational writing. Mr.
Taylor sees more clearly than others
who have written about this period that
if Chamberlain and Daladier had called
Hitler's bluff in 1938, the Fuhrer would
in all probability have been done for.
And it is with a sense of tragedy that
we read of the generals’ trust in the
integrity of the French and English
governments—the generals had no
doubt that these governments would
come to the rescue of Czechoslovakia!
They had decided not to permit Hitler
to plunge Germany into a general war
for which it was not ready. Halder and
Witzleben had set the date for their
putsch—September 28, 1938—-when the
news came that Chamberlain would fly
to Munich, It stopped them cold, and
the next day Hitler proved the generals
political fools, They were never to re-
gain their self-assurance.
It is inconceivable that the English
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1950 Prize Winning Novel
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In English — ~~ $1.75
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and French secret service did not report
to their governments that Germany was
absolutely unprepared for a major con-
flagration, that only five fighting divi-
sions and seven reserve divisions were
guarding Germany's western frontier,
while the mass of the Wehrmacht and
Luftwaffe was deployed around Czecho-
slovakia. What, then, was the compel-
ling reason for the surrender at Munich?
The primitive Russian explanation that
the idea was to push Hitler eastward
is refuted by the events of the following
year. But the archives in London and
Paris have not yet been opened for full
inspection. As far as the documentation
goes, Munich is still a mystery.
Mr. Taylor's narrative closes before
World War II began in earnest. His con-
cluding chapter on the responsibility of
the officer corps reads like the instruc-
tion of an efficient trial judge to the
jurors. Here again he is to be con-
gratulated for his impartiality and his
skill in presenting highly complex
situations with lucidity. His book is a
timely contribution to today’s debate
about the rearmament of Germany.
FRANZ HOELLERING
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“ e)
Pees sof Stendhal |
TO THE HAPPY FEW Selected Let-
ters of Stendhal. Introduced by Em-
manuel Boudot-Lamotte. The Grove
Press. $5.
O THE HAPPY FEW”’—Stendhal’s
salutation to his friends and to
those sensitive souls who, in the fu-
ture, would ufderstand- him—is a se-
lection of 225 letters and parts of let-
ters from a monumental corespondence.
M. Boudot-Lamotte’s intention, he de-
clares, has been to put together “'sig-
nificant pages that are beautiful by rea-
son of their significance: pages,
whose thousand touches reconstruct a
bird’s-eye view of the man who, by
striving to understand himself, did
much to deepen the understanding of
the human heart.” The annotations are
copious and useful, especially many ex-
cerpts from “La Vie de Henri Brulard”
relevant to situations and states of mind
which the letters sometimes only hint at.
The English of Norman Cameron’s
translation falls pleasantly on the ear.
On the whole these pages are less
beautiful than M. Boudot-Lamotte
thinks. For what they tell us of other
times and other manners, or as an auto-
biographical record, they are not com-
parable to the best letters of Byron or
Keats. Often they are engrossing, but
they have confirmed me in heterodoxy:
though he wrote two great novels,
Stendhal has been overrated as a thinker
by the disciples to whom his casual
scribblings—they mount to the thou-
sands and piety has catalogued them at
Grenoble—are of vatic importance. The
greatness of the novels lies in Stendhal’s
understanding of feeling and passion,
and in that double view by which char-
acters entirely involved with their own
problems see themselves, from time to
time, lucidly and objectively. In the
same way the best of these letters are
those in which he describes the passions
which ravaged but never destroyed him,
passions, however, on which, as a phrase
will indicate or as the annotations attest,
he could always shed a very dry light.
On the rough draft of an anguished
letter to Métilde Dembowski he writes,
“Notions of throwing the whole thing
over.” And later, “Respectable women
are as hussy-like as hussies.”
Too often, however, his correspond-
ence, as represented here, reveals the
too, *
up almost one-third of the selection, are, a
simply not very interesting. M. Boudot-
Lamotte defines her as Stendhal’s
“chastest, tenderest, cruelest, and also
most serious love.’ Nothing in them in-
dicates any feeling approaching love.
They were written by a young maf re-
cently come to Paris, poor, boastful, as
yet without the friends and the influ-
ence he was determined to acquire. As a
palliative to loneliness he formulated
advice for the sister immured in the
family circle in Grenoble, advice which
is largely a mixture of rather worldly
copy-book maxims and the empirical
wisdom that abounds in the philo-
sophical and pseudo-philosophical writ-
ing of the eighteenth century. Once
Stendhal had embarked on a life dedi-
cated to grand passions, and once he
had established himself, so far as he
ever was to establish himself, in the
great world, this factitious concern with
Pauline waned. She could not compete
with the women who betrayed him reg-
ularly or who just as regularly did not
want him; she could not even compete
with his ceaseless intrigues to obtain a
suitable government appointment.
To cease complaining. Many of these
letters are very good. The three drafts
of his letter to Balzac after the younger
novelist’s article on “La Chartreuse de
Parme’”’ ate deeply moving. Or there is
the stoic brevity of his reference to the
malady which was to kill him: “I have
been fairly successful in hiding my
trouble. I consider that there is nothing
ridiculous about dying in the street, pro-
vided one does not do it on purpose.”
His outpourings to Métilde Dembowski
are a magnificent record of self-torment,
self-analysis, and self-knowledge. The
events he describes come to life, whether
he is writing about the burning of Mos-
cow or the tedious daily round of the
last years at Civitavecchia. And some-of
his generalizations about the human
condition illumine large areas of experi-
ence exactly as they light up entire
chapters in the novels. Also, the
Stendhalian egotism is never offensive.
As M. Boudot-Lamotte points out, it is
not ‘an excessive love of oneself but
merely the habit of speaking of oneself.
. In the meantime Stendhal had...
clearly proved that ‘egotism, if sincere,
The NATION ‘
ERNEST JONES
olitics and Ethics
NEW SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
By Eric Voegelin. The University of
a icago Press. $3.
ORD ACTON, A STUDY IN CON-
SCIENCE’ AND POLITICS. By
Gertrude Himmelfarb. The University
of Chicago Press. $3.75.
[JERE are two unusually provocative
and thoughtful short books. Eric
gelin, a political scientist well versed
elassical literature and in philosophy,
s in his Charles R. Walgreen Foun-
m Lectures of 1951 an introduction
to political science as understood before
‘the rise of the positivistic and sociologi-
‘cal schools of the last fifty years. Pro-
fessor Voegelin leans rather heavily on
‘theological concepts; he sees the predica-
. 3 ent of modern times in the “gnostic”
Wdeification of man and society, in the
Expectation, without due regard for the
limitations of man as a creature, of
ssianic perfection here on earth and
Sean rs
“1 ap ms ,
within history. This is in no way a new
| , but the author discusses it and
‘its implications from an unusually broad
sackground. Every reader will learn
° ae from it. But though an
re hatological element, a “‘messianism’’
s arized in the faith in progress and
man betterment, forms part of the
E nedern world, it is only one of its
elements. Dr. Voegelin rightly believes
that the English and American democ-
a racies represent the most hopeful and
“most firmly consolidated stratum of
“civilizational tradition,” but that is so
because in their societies there is an-
Jother and much more decisive element
—namely, tolerance and freedom of
F thought rooted in the recognition of
| d rersity, which unfortunately hardly
In senetrated in Germany, Russia, Asia,
! q ye Spain. The modern civilization of
| the West is based upon the rejection of
Ee dogmatic authority. In that connection
Tord Acton rightly said that “the
mancipation of conscience from au-
rity is the main content of moderg
ory.” This emancipation of indi-
: Be
J Cie ana
fi “i mie
} nec 4 one of
a 0
lements of streng - Anglo-
erican civilization, and the tragedy
ay, '
elf- knowledge ‘and alee to the of Germany, Spain, or Russia is not
but their in-
their ‘“Westernization’’
sufficient ““Westernization.”
Lord Acton, who never had any illu-
sion about the weaknesses of human na-
ture or about the moral dangers of
spiritual or political power—as a
Catholic moralist he opposed papal in-
fallibility—has finally found, fifty years
after his death, a worthy biographer.
Dr. Himmelfarb, whose field is the in-
tellectual history of nineteenth-century
England, gives us here not a definitive
biography of the great and solitary
Victorian but a perceptive study, ex-
tremely well written, of a first-rate mind
that probed even more deeply than
Tocqueville into the issues of modern
times. For all his apprehension about
mass democracy, Acton was no prophet
of doom. He was a deeply religious
man; yet he did not regret the loss of
authority, which so many of our con-
temporaries—and not only in the totali-
tarian countries—seem sometimes to
think indispensable for the survival of
morality.
Acton knew of the existence of evil.
He opened his lecture on The History
of Freedom in Antiquity with the words,
“Liberty, next to religion, has been the
motive of good deeds and the common
pretext of crime,” but the idea of lib-
erty, nevertheless, remained for him the
central principle of history. It did not
depend on prosperity or material prog-
ress, on science or religion, on democ-
racy or nationality. “All these things
have been its tributaries and servants,
byt they have, in turn, been rivals and
obstacles.”” Acton’s liberalism was not
founded in an exuberant optimism but
in a sober commitment to a political
faith that carries potentialities for dis-
aster as well as the promise of improve-
ment. While power corrupted, con-
science could redeem; history was a
tug of war between the two. “While
conscience itself,’ writes Mrs. Himmel-
farb, summing up Acton’s belief, ‘‘was
the metaphysical warrant for liberty, the
conflict of consciences was its empirical
security,” In that sense again liberty in
diversity, based upon tolerance and
mutual respect, is one of the funda-
mental elements of modern Western
/ fe ; noe : meee wc? ets
9 «ow
eras a8,"
civilization as it arose in seventeenth
century England and was expanded in
eighteenth-century. Anglo-America.
ma HANS KOHN
Films
Ts only way to pull the vast sprawl
of 1952 films together is to throw
most of them in a pile bearing the label
“movies that failed through exploiting
middle-brow attitudes about what makes
a good movie.” This leaves me with the
following box-office stepchildren to list
as my “ten best’ films. It is difficult
to say whether I liked or disliked a num-
MANNY,
FARBER
ber of films that will appear on most —
other lists, since it was usually a case
of being impressed with classy crafts-
manship and bored by watching it
pander to some popular notion about
what makes an artistic wow. One such
film, ‘‘Come Back, Little Sheba,” went
all out for sympathizing with under-
dogs; another, “Member of the Wed-
ding,” stuffed itself with odd “‘char-
acters” of Dickensian proportions; ‘For
“IT 1S TIME TO
ALL A HALT.
The original rights and wrongs in
Korea are already submerged in a
maze of bestiality and horror un-
matched in all the human story.
I will not purchase life at the price
of the mass annihilation of inno-
cent people.”
REGINALD THOMPSON
Korean war correspondent, Lon-
don Daily Telegraph (Conservative)
The WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE
calls for a KOREAN TRUCE NOW.
For our full program—including what
YOU can do—Write:
WAR RESISTERS
LEAG U E pinen Yack 38. we.
Enrolling war objectors since 1923
|
;
fy
ib |
A
ah eee a es
ran
“a?
bidden Games” rubbed amateur acti ae.
and untampered rural surroundings in
your eyes. In each case, I felt I was
supposed to applaud the “crutches” that
are currently leaned on in cinema, and
that, for me, negated some good things
about the films.
“The Strange Ones.” A macabre
melodrama about incestuous adolescence;
rates top honors in every film depart-
ment for its tough-minded, unself-con-
~ sciously clumsy but. delicate treatment
of a subject a movie crew could easily
have murdered. Turns up one fascinat-
ingly grotesque image after another; set
_in the small, special world of a fan-
tastically disordered bedroom, it works
with a sick brother and his sister who
wander about in bathrobes seeking some
new gadget or ritual for kicks; crowds
the whole tremulous desperation of two
deeply affectionate, anarchic little beasts
into the performances of Stephane and
Dermuthe, whose acting of the queer
and fantastic should be studied by the
overrated Julie Harris—Shirley , Booth—
Marlon Brando academy of overplay-
ing.
“Oh, Amelia.” A fifty-year-old French
bedroom farce refashioned by Claude
Autant-Lara with split-second timing,
extreme gaiety, and ingenuity in re-
peatedly compromising a heroine with-
out actually corrupting “her; though
rae iu Vee rn
‘it may eave booth a slapp ther by a
group of aloofly amused | ring 3
their lunch hour, it has the ridiculous
charm of a Punch and Judy show and
the innocent, pell-mell vulgarity of a
Sennett comedy. 3
“The Turning Point.” A tingling,
rather moving example of the half-
serious gangster film that Hollywood
does better than anything else in its
repertoire; particularly good for its un-
sentimental handling of cutthroat com-
petitors in moments of duress, when
their ambitious careers are about to
crumble around them; also casts a touch-
ing spotlight on New York-type friend-
ships: a cop turning virtuous but trying
to play fair with his gangster friends; an
attorney’s girl friend methodically set-
ting up a romance with his best chum
but being very concerned about not los-
ing the attorney's affections; a triumph
of crisp acting (Edmund O’Brien, Tom
Tully), vigorous camera work, lean
writing.
“Don’t Bother to Knock.” An un-
polished, persuasively written little
melodrama about a blonde baby sitter
drifting in cuckoo-land in a big-city
hotel; Richard Widmark’s acting of a
grousing, ornery, efficient individual
waltzing into a pick-up romance and
then finding himself unable to cope with
the personality of the girl; Monroe’s
The
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ETE REEL PPR ST EE NE TOI EOF TE TI
“Gattowr beret t in
a paranoiac refugee from a mall tow
the best naturalistic photography on & .
drab American hotel since “When
Strangers Meet” and a job of direction
(Roy Baker) that seems to dig its way"
into stale hotel atmosphere through
room radios, between plastic Venetian n
blinds, and over ugly ashtrays.
“Something to Live For.” A soap
opera that started with a story that wa
practically nothing and ended up as ag
strangely disturbing, clean, uncluttered
picture of alcoholism; mark up another
score for the camera magic of Director
George Stevens, the only genuine pio-
neer working in current films; he evokes §
a rich lather of romance with his slow, §*’
imaginative use of looming close-ups, §
overlapping dissolves, filtered camera ef-
fects, and oddly contrived compositions;
story-telling images bring out the inner §™
problems of characters in a purely cine- §™
matic way: two members of Alcoholics ,
Anonymous trembling through a party, §
with the camera insistently hovering §|°
over trays of Martinis and highballs; '
creditable acting by Milland and ee :
taine.
“Five Fingers.” In its literate, satiri- j
cal way, this spy melodrama was the
most unusual thriller since Hitchcock’s
first low-budget films; almost totally a
product of witty scripting, it built up in- 9%
credible tension and speed with ele-
gantly comicalized dialogue, neatly
turned portraits of war-time diplomats §
with their brains at half-mast, and prac-’
tically no outward violence; a great job @
of perfectly controlled, suave acting by
James Mason; wonderful bits of un-
scrupulous carrying-on: the slow awak-_
ening of Countess Danielle Darrieux to |
the possibilities of being a valet’s mis-
tress once she finds out he has a price-
less pair of safe-cracking hands. qi
“Limelight.” A sentimentzridden |
tragi-comedy with enough of Chaplin’s
grace and absurdity as a funny man, and
Raphael-like taste for visual qualities to- [Mw
compensate for the slow, rumpsprung | |
style of story-telling.
“The Sell-Out.’”’ A fast thriller off the ff
top of the news, with perceptive at- Mfij
mospheric bits of barroom drama that ff)
fall quietly into place, two plausible |
et oe (Audrey Trotter, John
odiak), and the feeling throughout < off
Te Nw ION ‘
WM (
A eh
on oh a3
A 0 re,” “Bo. ne,”
y fot the Parson,” ‘House
oss the Street,” “Young Man with
s,"’ ““Casque d'Or,” “‘Scatamouche,’’
Vait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie,”
“Beauty and the Devil,” “Apache War
oke,” “Pennywhistle Blues,” “Jour
B. H.
HAGGIN
A #PUSICIANS' lives have always been
e news, which it used to be the pub-
licity man’s job to get into the papers.
W hat we have today—and what the
present-day publicity operator's job is to
~ get into the news magazine that origi-
nated it and is its chief publication me-
jium—is the news-story with built-in
_ ctitical estimate. An outstanding example
__ is the story of the Monteux career as that
_ of one of the giants to whom recogni-
| tion has come belatedly, with its built-in
* estimate of Monteux as one of the
giants. This one has been kept rolling
” for several years by one writer after an-
"other incapable of hearing Monteux’s
+ repeatedly demonstrated mediocrity, un-
il it is now part of the body of accepted
lief in terms of which most writing
about music and musicians is done.
- Only recently launched is the story
about the soprano Milanov as someone
~ who, having at last achieved the control
| she didn’t have of her beautiful voice
) yeats ago, now occupies “the long-
vacant throne of Rosa Ponselle’’ and,
with the retirement of Flagstad, has “the
grandest operatic feminine voice at the
» Metropolitan”; ; and one wonders
whether this one will stand up very long
| in the face of the painfully audible fact
© that what Milanov has learned to con-
’ trol is a voice that has lost all its former
beauty. As for the grandest feminine
voice at the Metropolitan, rereading my
report of Milanov’s phenomenal singing
~ in a performance ef ‘Norma’ in 1944,
only a few days after her tremolo-
ridden sttidency in “Un Ballo in
Maschera, ” I came to a similar BepOr
of Steber’s singing in “Figaro.” Pre-
viously, I wrote, “she had begun evety
fformance with a strong tremolo
ery orgi
exe and lovely; and her technical
security continued to produce such tones,
which her musical taste molded into
long, continuous, and exquisite phrases.”
Since then I have reported other occa-
sions when the slow vibrato in
Steber’s singing has become a cloud-
ing tremulousness, but also occasions—
notably a performance of “Cosi Fan
Tutte” last year—when her lustrous
voice has been clear and she has done
what I consider the grandest singing
one can hear at the Metropolitan today.
As it happens, that singing—with
moments of the tremulous shrillness—is
heard in Columbia’s recording of the
Metropolitan “Cosi” and is its chief
excellence, others being Guarrera’s
singing and Stiedry’s pacing and phras-
ing of the music. Alvary sings agreeably;
Roberta Peters (replacing Munsel as
Despina) has a voice I don’t find at-
tractive, but produces it more freely
and evenly than in the “Rigoletto” I
heard last year; Thebom sings well with
a voice that has worn a little threadbare;
but Tucker's cold voice and tightness are
again damaging to a part which calls
for a lyric tenot’s warmth and ease, such
as one hears in Richard Lewis's singing
in the “highlights” of the 1950 Glynde-
bourne Festival production on the earlier
RCA Victor record. On this record Sena
Jurinac doesn’t achieve Steber’s grandeur
(nor does she manage all the notes in
the florid passages of Come scoglio, the
trills in Per pieta, that Steber does); but
her singing is nevertheless very beauti-
ful; Thebom’s voice has more velvet
left; the voices of the men—Lewis,
Erich Kunz, and Mario Borriello—are
warm and sumptuous; and to all this
vocal warmth there is added the warmth
of the recorded orchestral sound, as
against the cold, veiled, sharp sound
from the Columbia records. Moreover,
the Victor record gives the music with
the original Italian words that fit and go
with it so delightfully, whereas the
Columbia records give it with English
words—“‘those silly words,” as a writer
I know characterized them angrily—
which turn out at microphone range to
be ear-jarring words, and a mon-
strosity with Alvary’s foreign accent.
One wishes Victor would issue the en-
tire 1950 Glyndebourne performance if
As it happens also, the better singing
that Milanov was still capable of last
year is to be heard in Victor's “Il
Trovatore.”” With it one hears singing
by Bjoerling which demonstrates that
while Tucker has been getting the news-
and-picture-magazine build-ups Bjoer-
ling has been the great tenor of our
time. And the singing of Warren and
Barbieri, the work of the Robert Shaw
chorus and the assembled orchestra un-
der Renato Cellini’s direction, the ex-
cellent reproduction contribute to mak-
ing this a superb version of Verdi's
wonderful opera.
Capitol’s “Il Trovatore’’ offers excel-
lent singing by the tenor Gino Sazrri,
good singing by the baritone Antonio —
Manca Serra, and fair singing by the
mezzo-soprano Sylvia Sawyer, but bad
singing by Stella Roman, and playing by
the Rome Opera orchestra under Luigi
Ricci’s direction that is astonishingly in-
ferior to that of the Victor orchestra
and poorly reproduced.
Urania’s ‘‘La Forza del Destino’ has
Adriana Guerrini—with a voice that is
lovely in its lower range but cold and
shrill in its upper range—singing with
a sustained legato that is in marked
contrast with Caniglia’s explosiveness in
the old Cetra version; Giuseppe Cam-
—30% Less than List on LP Records
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H
pora sings better than Massini; Anselmo _
Colzani and Giuseppe Modesti are as’
good as Tagliabue and Pasero; Armando
La Rosa Parodi conducts a better per-
formance than Marinuzzi; and _ its
recorded sound has a spaciousness, live-
ness, and naturalness which the Cetra
dubbing from 78s doesn’t produce.
London’s “Aida” has excellent sing-
ing by Tebaldi, Stignani, Aldo Protti,
and Dario Caselli; fine work by the
chorus and orchestra of the Academy of
Saint Cecilia, Rome; sensitive conduct-
ing by Erede; recorded sound that has
London’s characteristic depth in space
and solidity, though also London’s
characteristic veiled violins, Its blight is
the singing of Del Monaco whenever
he is required to produce anything lower
and softer than a ringing high B flat.
CONTRIBUTORS
DOROTHEA S. GREENBAUM, sculp-
tor and founder-member of the Sculp-
tors’ Guild and Artists’ Equity Associa-
tion, was a delegate to the International
Conference of Artists in Venice.
FRANZ HOELLERING is the author
of two novels, “The Defenders” and
“Furlough.”
HANS KOHN is professor of history
at the City College of New York.
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New York 7, New York
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Discrimination in Federal
Employment
Dear Sirs: I wonder how many people
know that’ some 400,000 persons are
now barred from employment by the
E.C. A. and other federal agencies oper-
ating outside the United States, For prac-
tical purposes they are also barred from
consideration by any government agency.
These are the men and women who dur-
ing the past twenty years have been so
unwise as to contribute money to any
one of several hundred organizations
listed by the Department of perk as
subversive. ...
When every person who is contrib-
uted a dollar to fight social injustice is
barred from federal employment, the
path has been cleared, to that extent, for
the coming of something horribly evil.
Madison, Wis. THOMAS R, AMLIE
A Personal Opinion
Dear Sirs: The November 8 issue of The
Nation contained an article by Arthur
Garfield Hays entitled The Rosenberg
Case. Mr. Hays is identified in an edi-
torial note as “‘general counsel for the
American Civil Liberties Union.” The
statements in Mr. Hays’s article repre-
sent his personal views only; he was not
speaking for the A. C. L. U.
ALAN REITMAN, Assistant Director,
American Civil Liberties Union
New York
Civil Liberties Conference
Dear Sirs: An. extremely important con-
ference on the American Bill of Rights
is going to be held on January 30
and 31. Sponsored by the Emergency
Civil Liberties Committee—an organi-
zation set up at Princeton in 1951 to
combat the current threats to civil
liberties—the two-day conference, which
will be devoted to a discussion of the
present state of civil liberties, will open
on Friday, January 30, at Carnegie Hall
with a speech by a well-known Sena-
tor and a dramatization of the events
leading up to the adoption of the
Bill of Rights. Four forums will be
hefd on Saturday morning at the
First. Presbyterian Church—on Aca-
demic Freedom, Freedom of the Arts,
The Political Use of Fear, and Loyalty
and the Fifth Amendment, Speakers
"must vehemently protest against the pub- |
will include Matthew Josephson, J. F. J
Stone, Carey McWilliams, Scott Bu-§
chanan, J. Raymond Walsh, Derke
Bodde, Robert S. Cohen, H. H. Wilson,
Dr. Lawrence J. Roose, Judge Hube |
Delany, Alexander Meiklejohn, and
Thomas I. Emerson. After a buffet 3
lunch the conference will close with
a discussion of the steps that can be}
taken to restore the full protection”
of the Bill of Rights to the Anicricagl
people; among the speakers at this final |
session will be Frank Lloyd Wright, §
Walter White, and the Reverend Paul |
L, Lehman, chairman of the Emergency”
Civil Liberties Committee.
One of the objects of the conference |
is to draw up a petition citing the”
governmental infringements on consti-
tutional guaranties. This will be sub |
mitted to the President, the Secretary. |
of State, the Attorney General, and |
Congress in the form of a demand for
redress of grievances. |
The sponsors of the conference, i
which is to be called The Bill of Rights —
—Sublime Risk of Free Men, include §
Stringfellow Barr, Reverend George A.
Buttrick, Earl Dickerson, Albert Ein-! §
stein, Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, Fowler Har- §
per, Leo Lionni, Reverend John A.
Mackay, Clarence E. Pickett, Reverend —
Edwin McNeill Poteat, Rabbi Joachim
Prinz, Ben Shahn, William L. Shirer, |
and Reverend Paul Tillich. Boa
Anyone interested in attending the ff, *
Carnegie Hall meeting and/or the forum ff yu
sessions should address their inquiries to —
the Emergency Civil Liberties Commit- —
tee, 421 Seventh Avenue, New York 1,
or call OXford 5-2863.
MALCOLM R. EVANS,
Spencer Memorial -ff
Presbyterian Church
1)
Brooklyn
Pleased Reader
Dear Sirs: Ym sorry, but I feel-that I | byt
a
iB
i
th
lication in your issue of December 27 _
of the poems by Abbie Evans. The —
poems are delicate and positively intel-
ligible—infinitely beneath The Nation’s
time-honored standards of poetic inco- J
herence and- incomprehensibility. ge
As for the rest of the issue, it’s grand,’ 1
a fitting closing number to a year off hi
progressive, social-minded journalism. 4
SOLON DE LEON q [
Long Island City, N. Y.
The Nation
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
aes cin Ta
nm fs i ,
rs re .
a
eek |
|
ACROSS
1 Not the driver species of the tropics
—they don’t fight! (13)
10 A sort of bomb with an uneasy end
for the cockney bird. (7)
11 Wound stitches. (7)
12 “L” engineer. (The water colors are
blue and white, however.) (4, 5)
18 Stays sort of 11 without W? (5)
14 Metal posters in the mountains? (6)
16 The kind that binds things together
isn’t punishment, (8)
19 People scorn to behave like them.
(8)
20 Swindle sheet out of it? Blanket
more likely. (6)
22 The way a German agrees very
f at with a following is proper.
23 21 takes gin, but isn’t too badly
shaken to find its bearings! (9)
25 Nothing separates Christmas time
’ and the spirit like propriety. (7)
26 A pair of sixes would make this
: pee cutting. (7)
27 Hotel detectives? (You’d know
there’d be a hitch with one!) (5, 8)
DOWN
2 If you mean a dipper, you might
put water in front. (5)
8 Had giraffe races made official, per-
haps. (6, 1’8)
VARY 17, 1953
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr, Lewis's ‘ground rules." Address
requests to Puzzle Dept., The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, New York,
4 The way to excite a frenzy of the
damned. (6)
5 There’s a taste of bitterness in it, as
in most stabs in the back. (8)
6 Not exactly descriptive of a recom-
mended study of Pope. (15)
7 Tips the hat in the gateway,
perhaps. (9) ‘
8 Leaves for good, whien*a bad son’s
reformed. (8)
9 Employs an ungrooved 11 in its
makeup. (4)
15 By virtue of position. (2, 7)
17 Putting on a layer of fat? (8)
18 St. Martin gets to pass thus. (8)
21 A part of one’s clothes a collection
of Zoroastrianism exhibits. (6)
22 One would expect to tire of this
color, (4)
24 One that makes an attempt to
become a cathedral city? (5)
%
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 498
ACROSS :—1 CHROMATIC SCALE: 8 IN-
CARCERATHD; 11 CUBA; 18 WHIRLS;
14 INTERNED; 16 LHADSMAN; 17
GROUSE; 19 ICHS; 20 SPEED ZONES; 22
MALNUTRITION; 23 and 10 MONDAY’S
CHILD IS FAIR OF FACH.
DOWN:—1 CLIFF DWELLINGS; 2 RE-
CRIMINATES; 3 MORE OR LESS; 4 TEE
FF; 5 CHANCING; 6 CLEF; 7 SALAD
DRESSINGS; 9 QUINQUENNIAD; 12 THT-
wee 15 RAMPANCY; 18 HECTIC; 21
RESORTS
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New York,
6
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Write: MEAD LITERARY AGENCY, 419
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book is Theodore Parker, biography of the
great abolitionist preacher. Reg. $3.00. Now
$1.50, postpaid. Wellington’s 346 Concord,
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FREEDOM'S ELECTROCUTION
By Irwin Edelman
Pamphlet on Rosenberg case, giving
vital, nowhere publicized facts which,
if widely known, are bound to stir the
American people’s enlightened self-in-
terest and conscience,
15¢ per copy 8 copies $1.00
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CLUB now examining Analysis and Dream
Psychology. Cultured men and women wel-
come. For free particulars write: Miss M.
Lamont, 2259 Houghton Avenue, New
York City 72.
oe
CO-OPERATIVE seeking to develop large-
ly self-contained group seeks additional an
diverse members. An isolated site in Canada
has been secured with potential water power
development. Can be developed as summer
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falling. Correspondence invited. Box 343,
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EE ea
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Memo To
Independent Thinkers
On Religious Subjects
You would like “Progressive World.”
Progressive World is a magazine for thinkers...
for doubters .. . for men and women who want to
throw off ignorant superstition and understand
natural law.
This monthly is never less than 64 pages. Each
issue is chock full of illustrations—and every issue
contains at least three cartoons by Ha:ry Fowler
who gained fame as the cartoonist fo: '". “aldeman-
Julius’ “American Freeman.” = ~
Progressive World is packed witha. \&
outstanding men as Joseph McCabe, Hugh Robert
Orr, Dr. Max Isenberg, James Hervey Johnson and
Victor Yarros.
It publishes the writings and speeches of Robert
Scott.
Fiction ... news reports ...science...
all on an intelligent and interesting level.
Progressive World isn’t limited to freethinkers
and secularists ... it is for all those who are inter-
ested in objective studies of the forces that have
shaped men’s lives—and have shaped men’s Gods.
The frank program of Progressive World is to
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ours is an important cause.
We want you to get acquainted with Progressive
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Therefore we make this money-back offer to you.
Subscribe for Progressive World now. Send $3
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humor—
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ic Smith”; “March of Dimes”; “Mayor Impelit
The teal tabloid now ih its second year, [ pu
lishes stories and articles which many other ne
papers and magazines dare not publish because th
might bring forth pressure group reprisals or
vertising cancellations.
In each issue of Exposé, a variety of books are offe!
to Exposé readers at special reduced prices.
We are taking this space to offer a few of these title
to readers of The Nation. BR
Also, to invite you to join the hundreds of Nation ;
ers who have already subscribed to Exposé. a
Exposé is a monthly.
You may subscribe for the next 21 issues for $3. Or t ch
next 11 issues for $2.
Automobile . . . Next to a home, the purchase of a
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save money in your car ownership roblems. year after ye ar.
“How to Deal With Your Dealer” by Jack Bannick is a 60-
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=
“The Troubled Air” by Irwin Shaw is an ratap en
and heart-stirring nove live as today’s he lines.
Its backdrop is the radio industry. And it is concerned
with those who out of a mistaken humanitarianism,@
or naiveté or even treachery, aligned themselves with
either Communism or violent reaction... . This best @
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In 1945 a book called “Time Bomb” was pot which
blew the lid off the plotters in the spreading network ¢
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familiar names in it. Allen Zoll and Gerald L. K. Smith and
Elizabeth Dilling and Father Edward Lodge Curran. And)
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Why do some porn fawn upon authority? Wha
personality type has been harmful to human progres:
in ever age? What kind of people are quick to bow |
to the “mighty”—oare quick to be submissive? 4
“Treason Complex,” written by psychiatrist Rene @
Allendy, is a study of history. The words, names and
customs have changed ‘ut not the working of men’s
hearts. This book is about the betrayal of Plato, abou
homosexuality and treason, about the betrayals 0.
Philip and Alexander . but you can read it as ao
study of the world in our day. We offer copies for $2.
(Regular retail price is $3.75.)
The following back issues of Exposé are available
at 25¢ each or all 10 for $2. “The Truth About’
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0C2 53
it i.
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rr nerteneeeneeeeeeeeeeeeneeeeeeeee nn er errr ere ee ee,
January 24, 1953
H. H. WILSON
ithe Senate Sellout |
Scientists in a Mad World
BY MAURICE B. VISSCHER
FHP METRE VDP a) Svein 7 mm ae age aia eam ar Pa ee 7
* . were os Ca
7 ‘ ” eg
ae)
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FEET Pea
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I Have a Thing to Tell You
An Appeal to the American Conscience
BY RUTH E. CRAWFORD ei
Cea A pT ae es
20 CENTS A COPY - EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865 -* 7 DOLLARS A YEAR "|
4
sft, COMIESS A Se tte
rie ee eee rN Vy - oF,
City Censors Ban Classics
St. Cloud, Minnesota
OR almost three years this city
of 30,000 persons in central
Minnesota has imposed a legal censor-
ship on literature. More than 300 books
_and periodicals are already banned from
sale, display, or distribution, and new
books are being added to the list at the
rate of about 30 a month.
Some of the banned books are sensa-
tional stories of violence and sex, but
others are classics of American and
British literature. Among the forbidden
books are “Of Human Bondage” and
“Cakes and Ale” by Somerset Maugham,
“Sanctuary” by William Faulkner, “To-
bacco Road” by Erskine Caldwell, the
“Studs Lonigan” trilogy by James T.
Farrell, “Scottsboro Boy’ by Heywood
Patterson, “What Makes Sammy Run”
by Budd Schulberg, “Black Boy” and
“Native Son” by Richard Wright, and
“The Gallery” by John Horne Burns.
A city ordinance delegates censorship
power to a board of five members, which
can proscribe a book by a four-fifths’
vote. The board met in secrecy until the
city adopted a new charter which re-
- quires open meetings of all city boards.
It has never made public its list of
_ banned books.
The ordinance says publications may
be outlawed if they “prominently fea-
ture an account of horrors, robberies,
murders, arson, assault with caustic
chemicals, assault with a deadly weapon,
burglary, kidnapping, mayhem, rape,
theft, voluntary manslaughter, ridicule
of law enforcement or parental . au-
thority; or are’ obscene, immoral, or
lewd, or ridicule any-person or persons
by reason of race, creed, or color; or
advocate un-American or subversive ac-
tivities.” Violators of the ordinance are
subject to a fine of $100 or 90 days’
imprisonment, but none have been
ptosecuted. Board membets say they pre-
fer to keep dealers in line by obtaining
their cooperation rather than by com-
pulsion. A committee of twenty-five per-
sons appointed by the mayor makes spot
checks of the newsstands. If banned
books are found on display, the dealer is
asked to remove them, with the un-
spoken threat of a fine or jail sentence if
he does not. Critics contend that legal
enforcement has not been attempted be-
cause any court would rule the
ordinance unconstitutional.
MRS. ELMER BARG, chairman of the
board, says, “It isn’t a matter of whether
it is constitutional to ban objectionable
literature. It’s just that young people
shouldn't be reading that kind .of
thing.” A devout Catholic housewife,
Mrs. Barg believes censorship is a means
of “saving souls.” She started the drive
against bad books in St. Cloud when she
overheard some youngsters talking about
comic books. Supported by a Catholic
priest, she demanded an ordinance to
keep “‘trashy books’ off the newsstands.
The ordinance was passed by a Catholic-
dominated city council and signed by a
Catholic mayor.
The mayor then appointed a board of
review consisting of three Catholics and
two Protestants, and the board drew up
a working code based on principles of
the Naticnal Organization for Decent
Literature, a Catholic group. One of
the principal readers is the Reverend
Richard Wey, a Catholic priest, who
has read and reported on more than
250 pocket-size books, Other screening
is done by members of a local Catholic
literary group. Less than 10 per cent of
the books examined are approved. If
board members disagree about a book, it
is placed on a secret “border-line”’ list.
“Werewolf of Paris,” by Guy Endore,
was apparently banned for showing a
Catholic priest in an unfavorable light;
“Wild Palms,’ by William Faulkner,
for giving information on abortions and
birth control; “Quietly My Captain
Waits,” by Evelyn Eaton, had been criti-
cized by the Catholic World for its
account of marital infidelity.
So far the board has screened only
pocket-size books on sale at newsstands.
Members say they seek only to protect
juvenile readers, but the actual effect of
banning a book is to keep it from adults
too. The board has the power to ban
books anywhere in the city, including’
the public library, but it has made no
effort to have books removed from the
library shelves. Newspapers are exempt
from censorship.
' Liberal opposition to the censorship
_ nance should be rewritten so that it cam)
program has its center at the St. Clo d
state teachers’ college. Dr. Lewis Smith, @
an English instructor, thinks the ordi-
be used only to keep offensive books:
out of the hands of juveniles. “The AN
problem,” he said, “is to strike the @ °°
fine balance between protecting the § —
youth and keeping our freedom.”
Many critics who believe the board is
exercising religious censorship prefer @
to remain anonymous because Catholics
are the dominant economic, political, © TI
and. social element in the city. Mrs. |
Barg, however, insists that it is not a ff
religious campaign. “It is strictly a civic, Har
project,” she says. “We're not being # }
radical about this, We're just after those! J p,.
books that really cause young people tom rt
go to hell if they read them con- @
sistently.”” 3 | te
MRS. BARG and her followers have § "'
now carried their program to other com- | hs
munities. Father Wey has started a board ©
of review in nearby Foley. Ordinances
patterned after that in force in St. Cloud ;
have been adopted in Sauk Rapids, |
Hibbing, and Faribault and are under
consideration in several other cities. The
Knights of Columbus are vigorous sup- 4
porters of the movement. | es,
Both Mrs. Barg and Father Wey seek —
to make censorship state wide. Vince 3
Halloran, president of the Minnesota
Association of Juvenile Judges, also ~
favors a state literature code and screen-
ing system and has asked all juvenile’ @
judges to join a campaign against in-
decent literature. j
Arnold Paulson, president of the ©
Minnesota Junior Chambers of Com- ©
merce, says representatives of the Cath-
olic church have approached Jaycee
officers in several Minnesota communi- —
ties to urge curbs on the sale of un- —
desirable books. The Jaycees decided q
against a state-wide campaign. “Free- —
dom of the press is one of our basic - |
freedoms,” Paulson said. “We don’t |
want it taken away.” a |
DEAN SCHOELKOPF AND TOM WILSON =
[The authors are students at the Uni- |
versity of Minnesota who once worked
as reporters for the St, Cloud Dail
Times.} 2 ,
) AMERICA’S LEADING LIBERAL WEEKLY SINCE 1865
_ VOLUME 176
NEW YORK » SATURDAY + JANUARY 24, 1953
NuMBER 4
: Ihe Shape of Things
Harry Says Goodbye
_ Harry Truman will not be numbered among the great
Presidents, but he will have his place in history and may,
in time, become the hero of a kind of folk legend. For
_ there is a Horatio Alger quality in the contrast between
the long, drab years of his political apprenticeship and
its culmination in the White House. And nothing in the
history of the Presidency is more dramatic than his sud-
den elevation to a position for which he felt, as he said
__ in his farewell broadcast, “there must be a million men
better qualified.”
Mr. Truman rose to the occasion in a way that has
commanded the respect of most fair-minded people.
In contrast to other promoted vice-presidents—Calvin
Coolidge, for example—he grew in stature as his respon-
_ sibilities increased. Inevitably he made many mistakes,
and his judgments of men and affairs were often defec-
tive. But there were also occasions when he acted boldly
and wisely. Usually he showed a real sympathy with
and understanding of democracy. And most of the many
enemies he made do him credit.
In his last talk to the people Mr. Truman was simple;
direct, and moving. Putting rancor aside, he gave a
generous welcome to his successor and then reviewed in
modest terms his years of office. This has been a tense,
unhappy period in the world’s history and Mr. Truman
could hold out little hope to his listeners of an early turn
a for the better. But he spoke out strongly against the
immoral doctrine of preventive war and emphasized the
_ vital necessity of clinging to the principles we seck to
defend. This solemn warning will, we trust, be heeded
fy the incoming Administration.
The Truman Record
In his farewell talk Mr..Truman touched briefly on
ithe growth and the spread of domestic prosperity during
_the past eight years. It was a subject he had already cov-
er d intensively i in his final report to Congress on the
Py
Vea
ee Te et.
economic condition of the nation. There, extending his
review over the whole period of the New Deal and
Fair Deal, he was able to cite impressive evidence of
economic progress—evidence that makes nonsense of the
calamity howling that has been the chief Republican
stock in trade ever since 1932.
Comparing conditions in 1929, a year of high produc-
tion and prosperity, with those in 1952, Mr. Truman
pointed out that in the intervening twenty-four years the
national output of goods and services was doubled in
volume and annual average income, after taxes, increased
50 per cent, measured in terms of current prices. He
cited many other comparative statistics indicating both |
the striking improvement in living standards that has
occurred since 1929 and the more equitable distribution
of income that has been achieved.
But the message was not complacent. It pointed out — ra
that there was still much to be done before the problems
of economic and social justice were solved; it warned
that the end of the defense build-up might test our
ability to avoid depression if the tools developed in the
past twenty years were allowed to rust. On the other
hand, provided a balanced and progressive economy were —
maintained, Mr. Truman forecast confidently that another
decade would bring us to far greater heights of wealth
and welfare. Altogether this economic report seems to us
worthy of careful study. We advise all citizens, including
the members of the Eisenhower Administration, to file
but ot forget it.
Inauguration
So the New Deal and the Fair Deal pass into history. a
What do we have now—the Big Deal? There is bigness
all around the White House: General Motors, the Chase
bank, Dillon Reed, Continental Can. When is the last —
time we had a‘candidate for Cabinet office who was em-
barrassed by owning $2,500,000 worth of stock in a
single corporation?
We wish President Eisenhower well, but fear that in
surrounding himself with Big Dealers he has cut himself
off from the millions of little people who elected him.
7 Th aaie pete Wate - ss y o if a ; rr
. IN THIS ISSUE *
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 61
i More Purges 63
mic The Senate Sellout 6y H. H. Wilson 64
mi
ARTICLES
a
Soviet Military Strength by J. Alvarez del Vayo 66
Scientists in a Mad World
by Maurice B. Visscher 69
Proposals for Peace—V by Gabriela Mistral 70
Point 4—Four Years Later
II. The Permanent Sabotage by Peter Weiss 72
Socialist Bridge to Asia by Andrew Roth 74
I Have a Thing to Tell You
by Ruth E. Crawford 76
Giving Wolves an Appetite 4y Elmer Davis 78
e BOOKS AND THE ARTS
Poems by W. R. Rodgers aD
_ French Democracy by H, Stuart Hughes 80
Sandburg’s Middle West by Hayden Carruth 82
Imperfection Unlimited by Joseph Wood Krutch 83
Books in Brief 84
Record Notes by Robert E. Garis 85
Records by B. H. Haggin 86
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS | 88
AROUND THE U.S. A.
City Censors Ban Classics
by Dean Schoelkopf and.Tom Wilson opposite 61
- CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 500
by Frank W. Lewis
ee eS OU a a
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor and Publisher: Freda Kirchwey
Editorial Director Director, Nation Associates
Carey McWilliams Lillie Shultz
Managing Editor: Victor H. Bernstein ~
J. Alvarez del Vayo
opposite 88
Foyeign Editor:
. Drama: Joseph Wood Krutch Music: B. H. Haggin
Copy Editor: Gladys Whiteside
Assistant Literary Editor: Caroline Whiting
Contributing Editors
Andrew Roth, Alexander Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus,
Keith Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Baill
Business Manager: Hugo Van Arx
Advertising Manager: Mary Simon
Lhe Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U.
- by The Nation Associates, Ine., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, B x
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 8, 1879. Advertising
and Circulation Repr esentative for Continental Europe: Publicitas.
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Three
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the new.
Information to Libraries: The Nation is indexed in Readers’ Guide
to Periodical Literature, Book Review Digest, Index to Labor
Articles, Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index.
eel
62
‘sion of strong Congressional support for the use of |
national birth-control ctatuiration: the New York |
fare and Health Council has touched off what promises
to be the year’s bitterest controversy in the field of social
service. Planned Parenthood was a member of the Health
Council of Greater New York before its merger last . |
spring with the Welfare Council. In rejecting the appli-
cation of Planned Parenthood for membership in the |
merged council, the directors specifically cited, as the 7
basis of their decision, the threat by Catholic Charities of Bp...
the Archdiocese of New York to withdraw from the § ,.
council, Yet the rejection followed a vote approving the ™
program, policies, and services of Planned Parenthood
as consistent with the council’s objectives! Seeking to
justify its action, the council contends that it should not.
be made “the battleground for the contest of this issue.”
But what issue? Birth control was not the issue. The
issue was whether a religious group should be permitted 11
to impede and injure an accepted medical program. The
council's action has not allayed controversy; on the con-
trary it has started one that will continue for months. a
An agreeable postscript indicates that Catholic Chari- i
ties might not have withdrawn had the council ignored ~
its threat. One year ago seven non-Catholic physicians
on the staff of St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie
were told to sever their connections with the Planned
Parenthood movement in Dutchess County or get off
the hospital staff. Three of the physicians reluctantly
complied with the order but four of them defied it. @ me
The sequel came this month. Thanks to a solid front
among the physicians of the county, warning was given
the hospital that one firing or one refusal to renew a
staff membership in 1953 would precipitate mass resig-
nations from the staff. All seven of the physicians who — t
were served with the ultimatum in 1952 have received
letters continuing their affiliation. _
Peak of Destruction
The President’s warning that the atomic age is moving
toward ‘‘yet unforeseeable peaks of destructive power” ©
can be amplified by four related statements. The first is = -
Joseph and Stewart Alsop’s informed guess, based upon |
“crude but dependable calculations,” that the primitive
hydrogen bomb tested at Eniwetok was “between 150
and 250 times more powerful than the bomb that fell on
Hiroshima, It was the oo of between 3,000,000
and 5,000,000 tons of TNT.” The second is the expres-
atomic weapons even on the relatively small Korean
battlefield which came in the wake of the President's
message. The third is the statement of Gordon Dean,
chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, before the
American Bar Association in San Francisco on Septem-
the industrial tility of an aggressor to make war but
also his forces in the field. “When this point is reached,”
Mr. Dean said, “what do we do then?” The fourth is a
too little noticed item in the Nippon Times of Decem-
_ ber 30 reporting that Japan has begun to split atoms
_ with a new cyclotron installed at the Institute of Science
| in Tokyo and calling attention to the fact that the peace
_ treaty places no restrictions on Japan’s atomic research.
| Forgotten now is the episode of November 23, 1945,
when American engineers armed with acetylene torches,
_sledges, and crowbars smashed five cyclotrons and related
- equipment in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, dumped the
pieces into the sea, and announced that everything which
{ might some day go into the making of atomic bombs in
{| Japan—“except scientists’ brains” —had been destroyed.
f _— Despite the President’s warning, the moral, political,
_ and military implications of the H-bomb are being ig-
_ nored. For one thing, as the Alsops point out, “‘the facts
_ about the H-bomb are being concealed from the Ameri-
can people . . . the problems are unbearably unpleasant,
" which is the real reason why nobody is thinking about
them.”
_ The Conant Appointment
_- The appointment of President Conant of Harvard as
_ United States High Commissioner for Germany—a good
- one on the merits—may provide some special protection
for Harvard, but it is bad news for American education
in general. With three Congressional committees eager
to ferret out “reds” and “Communist thinkers” in our
_ colleges and universities, key academic spokesmen like
_ the President of Harvard, who has publicly opposed loy-
_ alty oaths and the more rabid forms of loyalty investiga-
_ tions, shouJd remain at their posts to speak out in defense
_ of American education,
President Conant’s decision to accept the appointment
is consistent, however, with his view—from which The
Nation sharply dissents—that American education should
Sa
Next Week in The Nation
On the record, the Republican Party now holds
power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But is it
really the same party that has moved into the White
House at one end and the Capitol at the other? That
may prove the basic question which will determine the
nature of the Administration for the next two years.
Bruce Catton, brilliant journalist and historian, will
give you his analysis of the problem in next week’s
Nation in the first of his dispatches on the new
Washington scene. >
Janu ary 24, 1953
_ Presid lent Conant and |
* countries behind the curtain? In Rumania (with 250,000
Nad i oe re —_s > eee ee ee
ee a" ¥ ’
hat
ms i
>
a ,
garded as “an gaan ent eels pi ” Both
eneral Eisenhower (then of
Columbia) were members of the drafting committee
which prepared the 1949 report, “American Education
and International Tension,” for the Educational Policies
Commission of the National Educational Association.
The view of education as an “instrument of national
policy” was established in this report and was reaffirmed
in principle at the recent meeting of the Association of
American Colleges, which also adopted a resolution wel-
coming a “free and impartial” investigation of American
colleges and universities.
The Congressional committees will of course contend
that in making the investigation their purpose is merely
to see how efficiently American education is discharging
the function assigned it by President Conant. Concerning —
this narrow concept of education Edward R. Murrow,
noted CBS commentator, said recently: “The purpose of
education is to teach people to think in order that they
may have informed views on many things, including
national policy. . . . The concept of education as an in-
strument of national policy was the dusty contribution of
Mussolini and Hitler to the destruction of freedom in
Europe.”
More Purges
N THE conduct of the recent Prague trial anti-Semi-
tism was flagrant. (The official indictments began:
“Rudolf Slansky, born in 1901, of Jewish origin; Lud-
vik Frejka, born January 5, 1904, of Jewish origin;
Bedrich Geminder, born November 19, 1901, of Jewish © 1s
otigin.”) The examination of Geminder during the trial
was a classic of racist innuendo: “You never learned to
speak Czech? . . . Can you really speak a decent Ger-
man? . . . That means that you speak no language
decently. A typical cosmopolitan!” In Moscow the matter
has been handled more circumspectly. The religion or —
racial origin of the doctors arrested was not mentioned
—though in most cases the names spoke for themselves:
at least six of the nine are Jews. Only some of the group
were identified by the Russians as “Jewish Terrorists”
or as “connected with the international Jewish bourgeois-
nationalist ‘Joint’.” The others, apparently were linked
with Tito, Trotsky, or the State Department—you can
take your pick.
It may be that the Russians, in the handling of the
trial when it comes, will continue a certain circumspec-
tion, It may be that the Soviet people, disciplined by
thirty-five years of communism, will act with restraint
towards their 2,500,000 fellow-countrymen of the Jew-
ish faith. But what will be the ultimate effect of this
spotlighting of Jews as “bourgeois conspirators” in other
<< Se “ ~
pe Sead Ao € >
~
ww
AJP
a
’
ak
Jews), in Hungary (155,000), in Poland (45,000),
>
o
rs
a ee sek ee a eee 3 S
ie eee
a
Stnieiieniaien.
ee ae eee
ita is eI vet ee ei
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Wet cw irra yeti Be ich dhe
have already been i repercussions from: “Budapest,”
where the leader of the Jewish comunity has already been
arrested and the newspapers are crying that the “Joint”
—the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee—
and Zionism are worse dangers in Hungary than in the
Soviet Union. What an omen for the purge that is
a6 expected shortly in the Hungarian capital!
The world-wide sense of outrage provoked by the
"Prague trial and by the latest Moscow development has
not been entirely wasted. Communists everywhere
have been put on the defensive, dialectically at least.
Here in this country the Communists point to certain
statements made editorially by the Prague newspaper
- Rude Pravo, and by the Czech President Klement Gott-
wald, hotly denying anti-Semitism and even warning the
Czech people that they must learn to distinguish between
plain Jews on the one hand and Zionists and Jewish
“bourgeois nationalists” on the other. It is a distinction
which clearly did not impress the prosecutor in the
Slansky trial, It is likely to impress even less millions of
ignorant people who, having been nurtured on preju-
dices for ten generations or more, are not likely to have
got rid of them in ten years or less,
HE COMMUNIST leaders of Eastern Europe know
all this. They know who can follow their dialectics
and who cannot. Had they really been concerned only
with bringing a few people to book for crimes real or fan-
cied, they had the machinery to do so swiftly and secretly.
They are old hands at swift and secret justice. But they
have chosen instead the cause célébre, with Israel,
Zionists, the philanthropic Joint Distribution Commit-
tee, and that neo-Marxist phenomenon known as the
“Jewish bourgeois nationalist’ as the principal victims.
One asks again: Why? In our issue of December 6 we
pointed out Soviet Russia’s historical enmity toward
Zionism and its present interest in playing up to the
Arabs. That is unquestionably part of the answer. But
there is also the feeling, shared by many close observers
of the Eastern European scene, that these purges are the
outer manifestations of the inner stresses which period-
ically attack monolithic political structures, But are the
purges designed merely to strengthen a Malenkov faction
against a Molotov faction? Or are they designed to
strengthen the Soviet bloc against the West—with a view
to a showdown that the Russians believe imminent?
In the meantime the Russians have set in motion
another kind of purge. Thousands of progressives all
over the world—Jews and non-Jews—who abhor Hitler-
_ ism even when practiced by the avowed enemies of
Hitler are purging themselves of any last belief they
might have had that communism is for them. In the West
even members of the Communist Party are tearing up
their cards.
64
N JANUARY 2 the Senate Subcommittee on
Privileges and Elections released the main body d q
of its report on the financial manipulations of Joseph R.
McCarthy of Wisconsin, It is probable that no more * :
damning document involving the integrity of a mem- ©
ber of the United States Senate has ever been drawn up. |
Twenty-four hours later the Senate chaplain, the Rev- 4
erend Frederick Brown Harris, opened the Eighty-third |
Congress with the prayer: “Save us from the supreme
hypocrisy of making this holy moment of communion
with the Unseen and the Eternal but a conventional
gesture of unfelt piety.” Thirty-six Senators then took
the oath of office, and not a voice was raised to protest —
the seating of McCarthy, No Senator had sufficient cour-
age to object or to call for a hearing on the charges.
Ignored was the warning in the subcommittee’s report
that “this is a matter that transcends partisan politics
and goes to the very core of the Senate body’s authority,
integrity, and the respect in which it is held by the
people of this country.”
It is now taken for granted that the episode is closed.
The Senate stands revealed as a body capable of fero-
cious zeal in hunting down all sorts of liberals and
radicals suspected of subversion but incapable of acting
on charges of genuine subversion against one of its own
members. However, it is not the Senate alone which is
at fault. The subcommittee responsible for the report
showed timidity in gathering its facts and a lack of
forthrightness in presenting them. With a few honor-
able exceptions, the press and radio of the country,
wilting before the malodorous Marine from Wisconsin,
has completely ignored the report. Surely nothing more
clearly illustrates our social malaise and moral bank-
ruptcy than the fact that McCarthy has been able to
make good his boast: “They should know by this time
that they cannot scare or turn me aside.”
For eighteen months McCarthy conducted a campaign
of insult, smear, and terror against members of the
subcommittee. He accused them of doing the work of
Communists and of “stealing from the pockets of the
American taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.” Ap-
parently as a result of this kind of pressure Senator
Gillette resigned and Senator Monroney started on a
European trip. It is less remarkable that investigator
Jack Poorbaugh resigned on the ground that the sub-
committee was unfair to McCarthy. Poorbaugh, accord-
ing to the report, “had conferred with associates of
Senator McCarthy, including Fulton Lewis, Jr., just
ptior to his resignation in order to assist Senator Mc-
Carthy in the primary election.” Although McCarthy
was invited at least six times to testify before the sub-
chance “that Senator eGiaty wane himself come in
to give explanations with respect to the many transac-
tions under question.” Nor can it be reconciled with
the subcommittee’s account of his insulting behavior.
| “The record of what took place thereafter leaves the
| inescapable conclusion that Senator McCarthy delib-
" erately set out to thwart any investigation of him by
“subcommittee by charges of lack of esac, smear,
-and Communist-inspired persecution.” Senators Hen-
‘nings and Hendrickson of the subcommittee must have
been aware that McCarthy had similarly flaunted it in
) 1951, when -it was investigating his participation in
the Butler-Tydings campaign.
HE SUBCOMMITTEE'’S report does not go into
McCarthy’s activities before he was a candidate for
the United States Senate, “except in so far as such infor-
“mation may be necessary to a better understanding of
- later financial matters.” Thus it does not deal with his
rebuke by the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme
Court for a highly improper “abuse of judicial power”
_ in ordering a portion of the court record destroyed, or
" with his alleged operation of a divorce mill, or with
| his Wisconsin tax troubles, It notes, however, that
“under all the circumstances,” including McCarthy's
membership on the Banking and Currency Committee
_ with jurisdiction over the Reconstruction Finance Cor-
_ poration and the Housing Agencies, his acceptance of
a $10,000 fee from the Lustron Corporation, which
was being financed by the R. F. C. “would appear to
have been highly improper, to say the least.”
- The report also implies that McCarthy may have used
_ inside information about the R. F. C.’s intention regard-
_ ing Seaboard Airlines Railroad, to which it made a loan
of more than $15,000,000—McCarthy bought more
shares of Seaboard with Lustron’s $10,000, In October,
~ 1948, “it did not appear to an ‘outsider,’ or to the
suninformed, to be either a good investment or specula-
tion,” but by September, 1951, McCarthy was able to
sell 1,000 shares for a net profit of $35,614.
Rarely has the racket aspect of the anti-Communist
_. drive been mote nakedly exposed than by the revelation
that funds contributed to support McCarthy’s “crusade
Coming Soon
Mark Gayn, whose articles frequently appear in
The Nation, has prepared a careful two-part analysis
of the recent purges in Russia and its satellite states:
I. Red Purges, the Inner Rot; II. Red Purges—Why?
obscuring the real issue and the responsibility of the .
es hs eu
rm a
&
u re ; a Me,
ast | communism” were Paepaccatly used’ to finance
private speculations. With $10,000 obtained from
Mr. and Mrs, Alvin M. Bentley, and operating through
County Superintendent of Schools Henry J. Van Straten
of Appleton, Wisconsin, the plunging Senator specu-
lated in soybean futures in October, 1950, for a net
profit of $17,354. The subcommittee noted that “just
ptior to the transaction in question, the Commodity
Exchange Authority . . . conducted an investigation of
alleged soybean market manipulation iavolving, among
others, a number of Chinese traders.” None the less the
subcommittee was “reluctant to conduct any extensive
inquiry” into McCarthy’s relations with Alfred Kohl-
berg and the China Lobby.
According to William T. Evjue, editor of the Madi-
son Capital Times—the first editor to expose McCarthy’s
record some six years ago and a close student of that
record—the names of Bentley and Van Straten are
“absolutely new in the five-year investigation of the
tangled financial affairs of the Senator.” Writes Mr.
Evjue: “I have a copy of the committee’s report and I
am amazed over the new revelations.” If the facts amaze
Mr. Evjue, doubtless other Wisconsin citizens will be
amazed. Why, then, were not these facts made known to
the voters of Wisconsin before the election? And why has
the press so generally failed to identify the Alvin M.
Bentley of the report as Congressman Alvin M. Bentley?
The Senator received sizable contributions from Craig. ;
B. Sheaffer, president of the W. A. Sheaffer Pen Com-
pany ($1,000), Bernard Peyton, president of the New
York Air Brake Company ($500), and Frank M. Por-
ter, president of the Fain-Porter Drilling Company
($500). Unfortunately, “interviews with persons who —
were identified from checks deposited in Senator Mc-
Carthy’s special account were limited to the above,”
although “the makers of other checks deposited in this
account, whose identities have been established, are —
retained in subcommittee files.” The subcommittee might
have listed all these individuals, as well as those who
paid for McCarthy’s television attack on Stevenson.
N 1947, when the Appleton State Bank was press-_ , "A
ing McCarthy for additional collateral, -he persuaded
Washington representative of ean aa
Russell M. Arundel,
the Pepsi-Cola Company, to endorse a $20,000 note.
The subcommittee comment on this transaction ade-
quately represents the kind of weak-kneed capitulation
and double-talk that characterize many “opinion leaders”
in our society: “His acceptance of a $20,000 favor from -
the Washington representative of the Pepsi-Cola Com- —
pany at the very time he was attacking the government
for its manner of handling sugar control makes it diffi-
cult to determine whether Senator McCarthy was work-
ing for the best interest of the government, as he saw —
it, or for Pepsi-Cola.”
5 SAR a rte =, Pei AN “ i‘ Hq a) yap
: Ae 4 = dae Ta :
f ‘After discaichay McCarthy's s ‘possible ise of his fam- —
ily and associates to conceal his financiz “operations —
his brother admitted that an account was opened in the
name of Julia Connolly as a precaution in the event of
"an investigation of the Senator’s affairs—and his possible
violations of Wisconsin tax and banking laws, and of
federal and state corrupt-practice acts, the report con-
cludes without recommendations for action, This, it has
been suggested, was a concession by Senator Hennings to
overcome the resistance of Senator Hendrickson.
Thirty-one years ago in a report to Attorney General
Harry M. Daugherty, S. L. Scaife remarked that “the
government is being overthrown not by Bolshevists but
by crooked politicians and trusted officials who know
what is going on and have not the courage to fight or
expose the conditions.” It is increasingly essential that
Americans should identify those in our society who are
prepared to sacrifice freedom, human dignity, and the
democratic political process in their drive for profits
and power. McCarthy does not operate in a vacuum.
For Americans and for the survival of political
democracy this record has profound implications, It re-
veals the failure of nerve of a sick society. What causes
| Soviet Mthitary Strength c .
HE recent NATO meeting in Paris was a great dis-
asec to the Allied High Command, forcing
_ General Ridgway to defer his hopes for more concrete
‘decisions until the spring meeting of the council. One
of the main reasons for the lack of agreement lay in
divergent estimates of the imminence of the Russian
peril. While General Gruenther, one of NATO’s ablest
strategists, declared that “every year is a year of peril,”
and the State Department, wishing to make a more pre-
cise statement, talked of 1954 as the crucial year, the
British and the French placed the fateful date, if it
should come, in 1956, For the purpose of this article,
let us accept a compromise and make it 1955. Having
done so, the question I would like to put here is whether
there is any solid basis for the theory that in 1955 NATO
will have such military superiority with respect to the
Soviet Union that the policy of “peace through strength”
can be shown to have been effective.
I have undertaken the task, not an easy one, of wading
s
through the available documentation on present Russian
strength and on its expected development in the next
two years. To supplement this material I have obtained
figures and analyses from people directly acquainted
with conditions in Russia.
66
\)
ing La} > W 5
emphasize the Hennings report? How explain the pub-
lic's apathy and indifference? We believe that apparently
isolated phenomena made these results inevitable. They
stem from President Truman’s loyalty program; General —
Eisenhower's agreement to strike out a favorable ref- &
erence to General Marshall at McCarthy’s request; Sena- * ’
tor Taft's praise of McCarthy's “great service to the
American people.” Those who deplore McCarthy’s tac- ©
tics while assuming that he is devoted to the service of
democracy themselves undermine the democratic political
process, And there are always those who deliberately
utilize McCarthy’s tactics for their drive to power. These |
people have helped to create an atmosphere in which re |
sistance to McCarthyism becomes increasingly dificult. $= @
The Senate in its surrender to McCarthy has fumbled — ~
the opportunity to provide leadership. President-elect '
Eisenhower has been compromised, and in any case he 4g
does not seem aware of either the issues or the stakes.
In general our political leaders have created the impres- —
sion that the more they talk about the “American Way”
and democracy, the less they respect it in practice.
|:
BY J. ALVAREZ DEL VAYO i er
My choice of 1955 was not merely to strike an average |
between extremes. It is precisely in this year that the
most important parts of the new Soviet Five-Year Plan
must prove capable of fulfilment. No close estimate of
Russian military strength can be made, now or in years
to come, without taking the Five-Year Plan into account.
Its presentation before the Nineteenth Congress of the
Communist Party was somewhat overshadowed by polit- |
ical speculations caused by the simultaneous announce- ~
ment of a substantial shift in Soviet foreign policy.
However, the numerous comments published in the
following months, both in the Soviet press and in the
specialized Western press—the London Economist, for
one—make it easier today to gauge accurately the mean-
ing of the new plan. a
The first important conclusion reached from such an |
analysis is that the Soviet Union is, by the very nature of —
its regime, in a position to carry out its rearmament
program without having to struggle with all the com-. —
plexities of a free economy, Harry Schwartz, drawing up =
the balance sheet of-the past year in the New York Times
(January 6, 1953), reports that Russia is in a Position to @
manage its armaments program on a progressive scale. fm ‘i
He writes: “The Soviet Union’s economy at the end of § “
| y's hi M brever, as he London Economist
ren ids us s (August 23, 1952), “the Soviet economy can
_ Switch resources from civil to military production, from
— = consumer goods to industrial equipment, with a speed,
# ruthlessness, and secrecy that no government in the free
_ world could hope to match in peace time.”
HIS feature of Soviet economy was emphasized in
the presentation of the new plan by M. Z. Saburov,
_ chairman of the Planning Committee. Commenting on
_ this speech, Professor Philip E. Mosely, director of the
Russian Institute of Columbia University, wrote in For-
eign Affairs for January, 1953, ‘The American negotia-
_ tors who dealt with [Mr. Saburov} at the Potsdam
_ conference and later inthe Allied Council at Berlin found
him incisive and efficient, extremely well informed about
- economic and reparations problems, and, in a sense,
‘unideological’ in his approach to concrete problems.”
_ Nor is there any inclination among other non-Com-
- munist students of the new Five-Year Plan to dismiss his
_ figures as propaganda. Experts as little pro-Soviet as the
Geneva economist, Prokopovich, accept them as broadly
accurate. In Professor Mosely’s opinion, the Saburov
figures are “generally in line with the high tempo of
recovery and development which has been shown by the
Soviet economy since 1947.”
The plan adopted by the recent Communist Party
_ Congress lays stress, for obvious military reasons, on the
development of heavy industry. It foresees a 70 per cent
advance for the whole Soviet industrial output, which
means that by the end of 1955 production will be three
times the pre-war figure. The planned increase in the
production of coal is from 260,000,000 to 370,000,000
_ tons; of pig iron from 19,000,000 to 34,000,000 tons;
f and of crude steel from 27,000,000 to 44,000,000 tons.
_ But as the London Economist (September 6, 1952)
observed, ‘The planned increase in
oil production is the most spectacu-
lar target of the plan.”
Figures on the military strength
of the two blocs do not, of course,
o2:~ tell more than half the story. How-
ever, they can be useful both as a
_ warning and for the purpose of calculations, provided
.the inevitable margin of error is borne in mind. No-
- body outside Russia knows the precise size or strength
_,of the Soviet armed forces, but the conventional esti-
_mmate will serve as a basis for comparison. Experts
usually quote a figure of 175 first-line and active divi-
"sions, a third of them armored or mechanized, which
_ would give the Soviet army a total of 3,100,000 men.
_ Adding a navy of 600,000 and an air force of
> 800,000, we arrive at a minimum figure of 4,500,000.
January 24, 1953.
are
eres Shes.
most serious studies o oO Deicasiin ailiars power, do not
take into account the almost unlimited possibility of ac-
cumulating trained reserves by accelerating the flow of
men through the services, The population of Russia was
put at 200,000,000 at the end of 1949 and is increasing,
according to Deputy Premier Beria, by 3,000,000 a year,
To get a more precise idea of the balance of forces,
let us consider one of the most acute danger spots in
the present cold war, Germany. Until recently, Western
planners assumed that the Russians no longer had the
margin of superiority in Germany necessary to make a
successful attack without substan-
tially reinforcing their garrison in
the Soviet zone. They counted ‘
on eighteen NATO divisions in
West Germany: six American, five
French, four British, and the others ,.” never.
composed of Canadian and other EEE AEBS
European forces. Suddenly, only two weeks ago, the
highest French military commander, Marshal Juin, de-
clared that if the Russians were to march today, they
would be in Paris within twenty-five days. Other West-
ern experts dispute this. In any case, concepts of a line
on the Elbe or on the Rhine, derived from the First
World War and proved disastrous in the Second World
War, are by now completely “ent ieetaies Besides this,
with war becoming ever more “total,” the state of mind
of the masses has become a vastly more important factor.
The pro- and anti-war sentiment of the people, which
the Russians are able to exploit prone many avenues,
has created a new situation.
Nor is Marshal Juin the only pessimist in NATO.
Western statesmen and experts, in the process of urging
a greater rearmament effort on the part of the West, talk
of Russian strength with seemingly more conviction than
the Russians themselves. On November 27, 1952, in an
illustrated booklet “Let Freedom Ring,” the American
State Department estimated that the Russian bloc mus-
tered a total of 491 army divisions stationed in Europe
and Asia. At a press conference held in Paris in October
the United States Secretary of the Navy, Dan A. Kimball,
said that the Soviet Union had now about 300 sub-
marines, four times as many as the Germans had at the
outbreak of World War II. With regard to aviation,
General Vandenberg has been repeatedly quoted as
stressing Russian superiority. According to a recent of-
ficial American estimate the Soviet Union produced
probably twice as many aircraft in 1951 as the United
States did in 1952. “The Soviet and satellite armed
forces will add more trained men to their reserves in
two years than Britain and the United States will add in
three,” wrote a British military expert in the London
Times of October 7, 1952. ;
Figures on the strength of the entire Soviet bloc are
67,
‘strength of Russia itself. However, a eee exam-
ination of all the published material, as well as of the
data I have obtained by talking to experts, reveals a
minimum total of 9,000,000 men under arms. This in-
cludes an estimated 1,130,000 men in the armies of the
_ Eastern European Communist nations outside of Russia,
as well as an estimated 2,300,000 in the field armies of
Communist China.
As regards aviation, the current annual output of
Soviet military aircraft is estimated at 11,000, that of
armored fighting vehicles at 5,500. The Russians have
apparently not yet been able to match United States and
British designers in the development of jet-powered
military aircraft, but they are reported by European ex-
perts to be working feverishly in that direction. Again
figures are lacking. The Russians do not publicize each
new advance in tactical and atomic weapons, as is cus-
tomary in the United States. For example, they pointedly
refrained from exhibiting their entire strength in the
military parades held in Moscow on May 1 and in last
fall’s celebration of the October Revolution.
N COMPARISON to the Soviet bloc’s 9,000,000
men under arms, Western man-power consists of the
- 3,600,000 in the armed forces of the United States, plus
the 2,400,000 (Hanson W. Baldwin’s estimate) in the
combined armies of the NATO countries in Europe. To
this must be added a few hundred thousand troops rep-
resented by the South Korean army and various Allied
forces in the Far East. Yugoslavia’s 400,000 men should
also be counted in.
But it is in divided Europe that the disparity between
Eastern and Western man-power is most dramatic. As
against the minimum of 230 divisions which the
Soviet bloc could muster in Europe, the most the West
could today put in the field, according to Baldwin, is
approximately sixty full-strength divisions backed by
some thirty-five weak reserve divisions. As for aviation,
the number of planes assigned to NATO, plus others
operating in Europe or from carriers in European waters,
totals little more than 5,000, or the equivalent of a half-
year’s production by the Soviet Union.
Baldwin and others recognize Western naval supe-
riority in over-all quantity and for certain types in quality.
But Admiral Denfeld has warned: “Except in aircraft
carriers, Russia is building to match us in surface ships.”
On the basis of these figures and comments, all of
them from Western sources, and given the political dif-
ficulties which the recent French political crisis has
ae abundantly demonstrated and which will considerably
retard the creation of a European army, it is quite im-
possible to see how within two years, or even three or
four, the proportion of forces can be fundamentally
altered in favor of the North Atlantic coalition. In the
68
said th no way of “m ian figures
not only maintained but Delia ‘Cheatty he i mek
share the hopes of General Ridgway, who believes that
aviation, and in particular tactical atomic aviation, offers
a means of filling the gap between Western rearmament
and that of the Soviet bloc. Hanson W. Baldwin, writing
on the NATO crisis in the New York Times (January
12), seems to agree with Juin: “A
sustained NATO defense,” he says,
“would be extremely difficult in the
near future if not impossible, for
nearly all of NATO's strength is in page y
its show window.” But most serious 3=s=ai
of all was Marshal Juin’s comment &®
that he was unable to see how this state of affairs could ‘ q
be remedied by 1955 if NATO pursued its present 7
course. The only available way “to fill the gap” would be
by using American divisions. Since this would make the
United States carry the heaviest military burden in
Europe, as it already does in Korea, it is not a very enti-
cing prospect for the American people, Again, Baldwin.
makes the point well:
Some of the principal nations of Europe are now
claiming that even materially reduced objectives are be-
yond their capabilities. Others are still planning to
achieve their original objectives by late 1954, But for
many there is no firm completion date. Thus the future
shape and complexion of the NATO armed forces are:
subject to major doubt. The military shoe is pinching
Europe, and she does not want to wear it.
It is not only a question of numbers and of man-
power, The new Five-Year Plan, the basis of Russia’s
military strength, makes an unprecedented effort to over-
come the shortage of skilled labor which has consistently
hampered Soviet plans in the past. Already trade, rail-
road, mining, and factory schools are turning out about
500,000 workers yearly. This will be reflected both in
industrial output and in the increased efficiency of the
army. One of the weaknesses which plagued Russia in
the war against Germany, that in radio and wire com-
munications, is now being remedied. Intensive effort is
also being made to build up the fire power of Soviet
army units in terms of accuracy. New arms are being
created: for example, Russian-made 57-mm. recoiler
rifles, recently observed in action in Korea, give evidence
of considerable improvement over the 1944 model.
In the light of these facts there seems to be no reason -q
to believe that by 1955 the balance of military power
will be so altered as to permit the Western bloc to dic-
tate the terms of a general agreement to Russia. If the
crucial date is put off to 1956 or 1957, the situation may
be even less favorable to the West; it is more likely te
The NATION ©
! o_fittle « tein Saintes big atom bombs, the hydro-
gen bomb, and the as-yet-unnamed super-bomb which
may be invented and made by that time. It is not my in-
tention to base any conclusions on sensational guesses,
but various reputable observers have warned the West
against falling into the error, for the second time, of
We underestimating the Russians in the field of atomic pro-
I) duction. One interesting report of this kind by the Ger-
man atomic scientist, Dr. Paul Vossinger, appeared in
the Swiss journal Die Nation of December 17, 1952.
___ Vossinger, who recently fled from Russia via Manila and
| Colombo and is now in Trieste, described on the basis of
| considerable data Russia’s atomic-war preparations in
Kamchatka. This Swiss report is in line with the recent
: series of articles by the Alsop brothers on the hydrogen
i bomb.
HE paramount ethical problem facing scientists
Pa. is what moral stand they should take in the
crisis of freedom of thought and expression. I do not
' pose the problem in terms of civil liberties in general,
| __ for everyone is surfeited nowadays with talk about the
virtues of freedom. I wish rather to stress the evils of
our twentieth-century intellectual slavery, to analyze the
background of the trouble in which scientists find them-
selves, and to consider what they must do to get out of it.
_ While the more literal-minded may object to my use
of the term, I think we live in a psychotic world. I shall
not try to prove that a majority of Americans, or Rus-
| - sians, are psychotic in a legal sense—we do not have
- enough insane asylums for the obviously psychotic, to
say nothing of those who would be committed by my new
_ definition. The really insane people, by my definition,
t + are found in vociferous minority groups, and the great
|, masses of people are putty in their hands, or, to mix the
| . metaphor, sheep being stampeded by wolves.
! _ The insanity abroad today is a sort of schizophrenia.
| _° The psychiatrists define that disease as “a psychosis
| _» characterized by lack of affect, inappropriate mood, un-
| | MAURICE B. VISSCHER is chairman of the Department
| of Physiology of the University of Minnesota and has held
| important posts with various national and international
scientific bodies. This article is based upon a speech he de-
| ~—_— Sivered before the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science.
| = , ary 24, | 1953
het Tels 5 é
ee de
> rd
oe Ag!
ae ae
fe emair ns the, hope of the “only to the Apocalypse, to a future of nothingness, a
' West has considerably increased its strength since 1950. ~
- ment through negotiation. Once that chance is lost, we
| Scientists in a Mad World.
a Te " , a Wy ‘ i " an y Ait
EPS i. .
De EA edsuy of, pi shies implicit in the
this sort of Pong looks
new s Per explose .
world in ashes; it has nothing to do with diplomacy or
negotiation. If there is still any intention to negotiate
some day, it is preferable to do so in 1953 rather than in
1955 or 1960. As we have seen, it is futile to hope that
by waiting the proportion of strength between the Soviet —
bloc and the Western bloc will permit the West to settle
the cold war by means of an ultimatum. Certainly the
Obviously it will be very much stronger in 1955. But the
Soviet bloc will also be very much stronger by then.
And if the balance of forces is not to shift decisively
in favor of the West, the growing tension of the cold
war will progressively reduce the chance of a settle:
shall have to think about the Apocalypse in sha
earnest,
BY MAURICE B. VISSCHER
predictable behavior, and disintegration.” They say fur-
ther that it “frequently terminates in mental regression, _
total withdrawal from reality into fantasies, and para- ,
noid formulations.” The schizophrenic is a split or dual
personality. He is frightened because he is never sure —
which of his mental processes are related to reality and
which are hallucinations; since he cannot distinguish
between dream and reality, the two have equal validity,
and both therefore are worthless. )
In the world today there are fairly large minority
groups who show typical paranoid behavior. What is a
paranoid like? A paranoid fixes upon some mere shred
of reality or some pure fiction and builds up around it —
a great structure of threat to himself. He may imagine
that some individual who he thinks dislikes him is plan-
ning to kill him. Or he may convince himself that the
F. B. I. or the O. G, P. U. is tapping his telephone or —
has wired his room for sound recording. Or he may be-
lieve that some group of persons is “out to get him.”
The paranoid personality fabricates an unreal picture of ©
a threat and reacts in violent and anti-social ways.
Numerous supposedly patriotic organizations and in-
dividuals in the United States are displaying paranoid __
behavior toward scientists. They are inducing large
sections of the public to believe that the country is ~
gravely threatened by the widespread disloyalty of its
scientists and other scholars. Some have personal motives
for falsifying issues; others are genuinely paranoid, They is
note that a few scientists—Dr. Alan Nunn May, a ©
Rtn
69
ws
-
pronoek for Tey
BY GABRIELA MISTRAL
Peace can be born in the schools. As an old teacher
I send you a few suggestions that could be applied in
schools everywhere.
Pictures make a lasting impression on the minds —
of children under fourteen. Let the teachers collect
photographs of the games children play in foreign
countries—in North and South America, in Europe,
Africa, and the Far East.
Have pupils sing the folk songs of other peoples—
but not their war songs. A teacher should explain the
words and talk about the historical events to which
they are related.
At school fétes let the children dress in the cos-
tumes of other countries, sing their songs, and play
their games.
Devote one day each month to a foreign country.
Tell the pupils stories of its real heroes—its peace-
time heroes. The older children should also hear
about some of the horrible instances of genocide and
zenophobia,
_ Give a prize for the best ‘Hymn to Peace!”
{Gabriela Mistral is a Chilean teacher, diplomat, and
poet. She has taught at Vassar and Columbia and has
béen attached to various Chilean consulates in Europe.
Her poems have been published under the title "A
Gabriela Mistral Anthology.’ |
Canadian; Klaus Fuchs, a British subject; and two or
three Americans—have been convicted of betraying
atomic-bomb secrets. Ignoring the fact that these four
_ or five men are about a thousandth of one per cent of the
scientists, technicians, and engineers in the countries
concerned, they build up a case of imminent danger so
great that to meet it they propose to destroy freedom of
thought and expression for all scientists, and of course
ultimately for everyone else. This is to be done by driv-
ing from their positions or discrediting all scientists
and other scholars who express views out of harmony
with those considered orthodox by the paranoid clique.
Among the prominent scientists who have been treated
in this way are Edward U. Condon, Linus Pauling,
_ Harlow Shapley, and Kirtley Mather. I mention these
names because the attacks upon them have been front-
page news. Literally hundreds of others have been
aN exposed to abuse without their cases getting headline bill-
a ing. The consequence, as intended, has been to dis-
and expressing independent opinions,
No American scientist in a really responsible position
___ has been shown to have been disloyal to the country. A
small number of minor technicians have been convicted
, of the crime. It was the scientists themselves who set
70
_ courage others from committing the folly of holding
cata an exhibition of | paranoia unless the persons —
ee ties
bringing the charges are totally dishonest, and I do not
believe this is true of the majority. .
The stigmata of insanity in the United States are un-
mistakable. What is the situation in the rest of the
world? In Russia and its satellite states the disease is
apparently in a much more aggravated stage. In those
countries instead of unreasoning fear there is panic.
While here non-conformists are in general simply being
intimidated, there they are likely to be liquidated. How-
ever, the less violent case is not necessarily less insane
or less subject to progressive deterioration. That, in-
deed, is the great danger. -
Schizophrenics suffer from mental regression, They
lose their minds, to put it bluntly. We in this country are
losing our minds as a result of our hallucinations, de-
lusions of danger, and general withdrawal from reality.
In our insane desire to remove the imaginary threat to
our security offered by the imaginary perfidy of our
scientists, we are adopting the worst features of a totali-
tarian state and are stultifying our scientific free entet-
prise, In other words, we are proceeding along the road
of insanity to suicide as a nation of free men.
F ALL this is true, what can scientists do to arouse
I the paranoids from their nightmares before it is too
late? Time is flying, and our cherished freedoms
of thought and expression will not last long if the hallu-
cinatory states of powerful minorities persist. Moreover,
the quality of our scientific professional work is bound
to suffer, since few intelligent men or women will choose
a career that is in disgrace or under suspicion. Even now
some of the best brains cannot be used because they are
unjustly suspected of potential disloyalty.
One thing is clear: scientists should use the scientific
method in their own thinking about the problem. They
should discover and present verifiable facts, They should
demand to be heard, and they should take the offensive
rather than accept a false defensive position. The current
paranoia is not going to be cured by false admissions of
guilt. Such “confessions” are supposed to. be the spe-
cialty of dictatorships, not of democracies, And our de-
mocracy will not long survive if Americans accept
supinely the methods of dictators. Scientists and all
scholars have a special obligation to society in these
matters, Scientists in particular are devoted to the task of
advancing verifiable knowledge. Are we going to allow
our. country to deteriorate into an asylum for regimented
psychopaths? Are we so fearful that some paranoid may
attack us individually or collectively that we will submit
to permanent loss of freedom?
The scholars most likely to get in trouble in the
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t are * economic theory.
_ Any apportee of See of even of consumer coopera-
tives must expect to be labeled a Communist and thus a
person to be purged. Another area is that of philosophy.
_ Any scientist or other scholar whose views on the
nature of the world and man lead him to an agnostic
or non-theistic position is linked with dialectical ma-
| ‘terialism and therefore damned. A third area has to do
with attitudes toward war and peace. Pacifists and_per-
sons seeking alternatives to war are accused of being
promoters of Russian imperialist aims and so discredited.
None of these areas are the concern of scientists only.
Why then, one may ask, should scientists, as scientists,
be singled out for persecution? For the very simple
reason that modern warfare is essentially applied science.
Scientists are being attacked because secrecy is so im-
portant in atomic, biological, and chemical warfare, in
radar, jet propulsion, guided missiles, and space-ship
design—to mention a few of the pleasantries of modern
methods of warfare.
Science as an enterprise cannot flourish when scientists
fare looked upon with a mixture of awe and distrust.
f| ‘The strength of the Western world surely is based
f upon superior technology, which in turn rests upon
scientific development. In a world of slaves there is no
obvious reason why one set of slaves should be more
#. productive than another. Lack of freedom, wherever it
i exists, promotes mediocrity, and mediocrity means stag-
nation and weakness.
A catalogue of the measures used to intimidate scien-
tists and other scholars makes dreary reading, but it
should be recounted. First, there are the dragnet activi-
_ ties of the federal and state un-American-activities
committees. These depend on the power of suspicion and
unsupported charges, the fear of unintended perjury,
and the téchnique of condemnation by accusation. Sec-
ond, there are the so-called loyalty tests to determine
fitness to hold positions in teaching, research, and ad-
ministrative work. Third, there is the refusal of pass-
_ports for foreign travel, a new development but one
_ | which under the McCarran act will probably be much
_ more widely used in the future. Finally there are the
entirely extra-legal measures which are as dangerous as
the legal ones. Some flag-waving scandal sheet, wishing
» to attack certain individuals or institutions, suggests that
they are subversive, and millions of people assume that
i the charge is valid. Under American law individuals
, have almost no protection against insinuated libel.
i
|
|
of
'
_
:
:
;
|
|
What can be done to stem the rising tide of anti-
intellectualism in America? (I assume that we are
powerless to do anything about the even worse situation
in Spain, Russia, and some other. countries.) Individuals,
I am convinced, can do little or nothing; only large and
: eee. 24, 1993
és =
Re. a ye ~
ic ae ee at ee may an a Te = 7
can. mee,
¢ ted _ Orgs nizations can get results. I sefer to such
Oe aren: of Science pl the National Academy of
Sciences. The A. A, A. S, has allowed several of its past
presidents to be slandered without adequate reaction.
The National Academy as an organization has been
silent while many of its members have been vilified and
the body of scientists at large harassed. To be sure, its
officers have worked hard in various ways to influence
government officials, but their efforts have not been
effective. The problem is too deep-rooted to be solved
by conferences between a few scholars and a few well-
meaning officials.
I would urge that the A. A. A. S., speaking for all
scientists, and the N. A. S., speaking for the elder states-
men of science, make the problem of anti-intellectualism
their concern. I feel sure that if they attack the virus
with all their strength they will succeed in checking its
inroads. Soft talk will not be enough. A resolution of
censure solemnly passed by the A. A. A. S. or the
N. A. S. would be laughed at by the paranoid fringe.
The only language they understand is action. The
A. A. A. S, and the N. A. S. will have to undertake an
educational campaign among the people. Spearheaded by
organizations of great prestige, an educational drive
might yet save the day. A few years ago the American
Medical Association assessed its members $25 apiece to
finance an educational campaign against socialized-
medicine legislation. While self-interest played a large —
role in its popularity with physicians, the venture
achieved its objectives in large part,
Would there not be much more support for an educa-
tional campaign to protect the principle of free-enter-
prise in ideas? Who but a schizophrenic or a criminal
could possibly condemn it? Our country is great, the
Western world is great, to the degree that such free
traffic in ideas is a reality, I suggest that one method of |
preventing the destruction of free thought would be for _
the A. A. A. S. to impose an assessment on its members
for an extensive educational program to enlighten the
public about the case for freedom. I would call it the
A. A. A. S. Fund for Education in Free Enterprise in
Scientific Thought.
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IL The Permanent Sabotage =—
DO tie $340,000,000 appropriated by Congress for
the current fiscal year for economic and technical
aid to Asia, the Near East, and Latin America, Point
Four today is more than a phrase in an inaugural speech.
At the same time the technical-assistance program of
the United Nations, although its budget is only
$20,000,000 for the same period, is becoming so im-
portant that David Owen recently relinquished his post
of Assistant Secretary General for Economic Affairs to
spend all his energies on coordinating it with the paral-
lel activities of the specialized agencies.
The enthusiasm generated by these programs is under-
standable, but it is also dangerous, for it obscures the
fact that the gulf between the world’s haves and have-
nots is widening every year. Technical assistance is only
a relatively minor aspect of economic development. The
demands of the underdeveloped countries for concerted
action by the great powers to provide the substance as
well as the trappings of progress have been consistently
repulsed. Public indifference to these demands is indica-
tive of our present shocking habit of being interested in
issues chiefly for their relevance to the fight against com-
munism. We ignore Iraq’s opinion of the World Bank
because it tells us nothing of the strength, if any, of Iraq’s
Communist Party; Chile’s pleas for a campaign against
world poverty are dismissed because they do not presage
the defection of that country into the enemy camp. For
the past five years Congress and our representatives in
the United Nations have told the spokesmen of the less
fortunate members of the world community that they
sympathize with their plight but can do nothing much
about it until the Russian menace is somehow disposed
of. Piecemeal, palliative measures have been substituted
for a real attack on the problem.
The open debate on economic development began in
the United Nations in 1947 after various efforts to pro-
vide aid ona large scale had failed. First, the United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was
scuttled by the United States and England in 1946.
UNRRA by then had won the loyalty of millions of
human beings around the globe. It had, furthermore, be-
‘come the nucleus of a world development agency. Its
PETER WEISS is a lawyer who has closely followed the
history of the International Development Fund in the
United Nations. His article is the second of a series on eco-
nomic aid for underdeveloped countries. .
72
BY PETER WEISS
relief functions were admittedly temporary, but the line”
between rehabilitation and development is tenuous. Its ©
Chinese program, especially, was paving the way for a
general attack on economic backwardness. Had the or-
ganization been continued, it would naturally have taken
over the execution of an international development ~
program.
Second, the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, which only the most unsophisticated ob-
servers consider international in control as well as in
name, sorely disappointed its Asian and Latin American
members by appropriating, during the first two years of
operation, $497,000,000 for Europe and only $16,-
000,000 for all the underdeveloped regions. The pro-
portion has changed somewhat since then “in favor of the
underdeveloped countries, but it is clear that the World
Bank is first and foremost a bank and intends to remain
that way.
Third, plans to establish in 1949 an International
Trade Organization were abandoned, In this country the
proposed I, T. O. was regarded mainly as a kind of inter-
national anti-trust division, but to the representatives
of underdeveloped countries who participated in its.
organizational meetings it meant more than that. Article
III of the final version of the charter declared that the
I. T. O. should assist member nations in the formulation
of industrial and general economic development plans
and cooperate with the U. N. Economic and Social Coun-
cil (ECOSOC) and other inter-governmental agencies
on all phases of such development, and particularly in
respect of finance, equipment, technical assistance, and
managerial skill. This was not the least reason for the
failure of Congress to authorize American participation
in the I, T. O. Like the World Bank, the I. T, O. was a
potential instrument for carrying out a program of world
economic development; both were prevented from doing
so, largely by the United States. er
In March, 1947, the Economic and Social Council re-
quested its newly established Economic and Employment
Commission to consider international measures to speed
economic development, and the commission assigned
that task to a Subcommission on Economic Development,
four of whose seven members came from underdevel-
oped countries, After a month of deliberations the sub- “
commission reported that it considered industrialization
the’ key to economic development. While recognizing the
important contributions the underdeveloped countries
The NATION —
4 ay
fron
COUL
me ise
Bil
Bien
Bite
the
“the
B for
Bit
ue
“Unt
Bis
men cates that the total volume of funds is
entirely inadequate to the needs. If economic develop-
‘ment is to progress more rapidly during the next few
years, a larger and better-regulated flow of foreign funds
f| than is currently available will have to be promoted by
_ and through international agencies working within the
_ framework of the United Nations.” The subcommission
alse sharply criticized the World Bank for its failure to
_ make the funds at its disposal available for development
projects and recommended that “immediate interna-
_ tional provision be made for . . . underdeveloped
_ countries by way of finance, food, and equipment.”
:
ia
,
fF
4 HESE views proved extremely unpopular among the
i Western members of the Economic and Employment
} Commission. Instead of accepting the subcommission’s
} feport as that of a fact-finding, non-political body of
} experts, the delegates of Australia, Belgium, Canada,
France, the United Kingdom, and the United States dis-
' sented vigorously from its conclusions and particularly
} from its emphasis on industrialization and the need for
international financial action. Since the underdeveloped
| countries were in the minority, the commission confined
J itself to urging that individual member countries with
{| adequate productive capacities take steps to speed the
economic development of underdeveloped countries.
_ The subject has been debated in countless sessions in
} half a dozen other U. N. agencies and has produced no
| fewer than sixteen resolutions urging further study of
_ the question of how to finance development plans, but
the arguments have remained substantially unchanged.
The underdeveloped countries have called attention to
their plight and warned of the consequences of inaction
_ for world peace and stability. They have taken turns re-
citing the catalogue of inequalities until the figures have
lost their power to shock. Having resigned themselves to
the idea that they will get no financial help from the
West until defense expenditures begin to taper off, they
are now fighting a holding action, defending the prin-
ciple of international action for economic development
‘until those with the means to implement the principle
will no longer have an excuse for disregarding it.
Under the leadership of the United States the West
thas used these debates as training in the fine art of
evading an issue while appearing to meet it. It has
| evolved a store of procedural devices—the subcommis-
- sion-to-make-a-detailed-study-, the referral-back-for-re-
_ examination-in-the-light-of - new - recommendations, thie
_ request-to-the-Secretary-General-to-report-next-year-on -
_ steps-to-be-taken, and the resolution-approving-in-prin-
ciple-but-urging-caution-in-fact—and displayed such in-
genuity in their use that one is forced to wonder whether
_ the new diplomacy is any improvement over the old.
‘ “ze E = "a . ‘ ; :
ve.
per
el All th talk, howeve
oans for
ile: eal
1 ‘not been in vain. The U. Ny
- much to the discomfort of its Western members, is now
on record as indorsing the principle of an International
Development Fund. How this indorsement was obtained
is an interesting story, confounding all who take a too
simple view of the U. N., whether it be the Americans
who think it represents the free world united for peace,
with a few noisy obstructionists in its midst, or the Rus-
sians for whom it means Uncle Sam bullying a covey of
obedient slaves, with none but
the people’s democracies to
speak up for justice.
The proposal was first
made by V. K. Rao of India,
chairman of the Subcommis-
sion on Economic. Develop-
ment, In the subcommission’s
third report to the Economic
and Employment Commission
in 1949, Mr. Rao offered a ~
fairly detailed plan for the es-
tablishment of a new interna-
tional agency, to be called, ap-
propriately, UNEDA (United
Nations Economic Develop-
ment Authority), whose main.
function would be to grant
and administer long-term de-
velopment loans for non-
-self-liquidating projects. The Economic and Employ-
ment Commission, with its majority of developed coun-
tries, was so outraged at this idea that it recommended
to ECOSOC, not the establishment of UNEDA, but
the abolition of the Subcommission on*Economic De-
velopment—this was continued, however, for two more
sessions,
Mr. Rao’s proposal was revived in October, 1950, by
Mr. Ali of Pakistan, who suggested in the Economic ©
and Financial Committee of the General Assembly that
the recently established Technical Assistance Board —
should be complemented by a Financial Assistance
Board which would administer funds raised from three
sources—long-term government loans, contributions by
private foundations, and the sale of long-term, low-
interest bonds to individuals all over the world. Mr.
Ali’s plan was enthusiastically approved by India,
V. K. Rao
Mexico, Chile, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq, and Yugo- aia
slavia. The response from Europe and the United States
was such that Mr. Ali did not even submit a formal
resolution. :
On May 21, 1951, Western double-talk was stopped
by the U. N.’s publication of the now classic report on
Measures for the Economic Development of Under-
developed Countries. The authors were five experts
appointed by the Secretary General, among whom were
73
®
ens ee
~ ae
#2 Sa a een oe s “a
ae. :
nee renee
Die tan ae
ok a Son Tg ae Oe ee
es
a ee
York and Washington.
i democracy in the world...
_ free nations of Asia is likely in the long run to be of .
hardly less significance to the outcome of that struggle.”
peakee Asthor Levi WE tie Unive si
{author of the next article in this ‘series—eprrors}
and Professor Theodoze Schultz of the University of
_ Chicago. They estimated, with apologies for rough
guessing, that to raise the national income of under-
_ developed countries by 2 per cent a year would require
an annual investment of $19 billion, well over half of
which would have to be, and could be, furnished by
the more developed countries. They also recommended
the establishment by the U. N..of an International De-
velopment Authority to assist the underdeveloped coun-
tries in carrying out their development programs and to
distribute to them grants-in-aid for specific purposes.
The experts’ report drew sharp criticism from the
representatives of developed countries on the Economic
and Employment Commission, which was finally re-
named Economic, Employment, and Development Com-
mission in gracious recognition of the problem. But it
“encouraged Mr, Santa Cruz of Chile, who was the |
chief spokesman of the underdeveloped countries in this
fight, to depart from diplomatic precedent in his open-
ing address as president of the thirteenth session of
ECOSOC, July 30, 1951. Instead of indulging in
meaningless generalities Mr, Santa Cruz pictured
the “utterly depressing” economic and social outlook
before the world caused by the switch-over from peace-
ful endeavor to a vast war effort. He went on to recall
that for two years the underdeveloped countries had
_ been offered only “preliminary studies” emphasizing the
gravity of the problem and recommending that they put
their own houses in order and encourage the influx of
foreign capital. The work of ECOSOC, he said, had been
Socialist Bridge to Asta |
for implementation. D in
compromise solutions,” Mr. ‘Santa Cruz submitted hi
own proposal for the establishment of a “United Ned
tions Authority for Production and Plenty,” designed ~
to increase consuming power by giving technical and ~
financial assistance to member nations and to facilitate "~#
the interchange of products,
ECOSOC went on record in its thirteenth session |
as neither approving nor disapproving the principle of
an International Development Authority. At the follow- 7
ing session of the General Assembly in January, 1952,
a resolution favoring the authority was lost by a narrow
margin, but another one, indorsing the principle of an
International Development Fund to administer long- ~
term loans and grants for economic development on 7
terms more liberal than those of the World Bank, was
adopted by a vote of thirty to sixteen, with the United
States and the NATO countries opposing and the
Communist bloc abstaining. The underdeveloped coun-
tries consider this a substantial victory and attribute little
importance to the change in nomenclature,
At its fourteenth session, which ended in New York
last August, ECOSOC directed the Secretary General to
appoint a committee of nine experts to draw up a blue-
print for the new International Development Fund and
submit it to ECOSOC’s next session, scheduled for April,
1953. These-experts have just begun their deliberations.
The task they face is nothing less than to devise a way to
mobilize for peace the energies and resources now being
spent on preparations for war.
JS
London
IVING his comment the revealing heading
“Asians Need That Attlee Touch,” Francis Wil-
liams, News Chronicle columnist, rated the Attlee visit
to Rangoon as important as Churchill’s visit to New
“If the policies that the United
States follows in the next four years or so,” he said,
“are of predominant importance to the struggle for
the course taken by the still
The words have weight coming from Attlee’s former
"public-relations officer, an authoritative labor publicist.
ANDREW ROTH is a contributing editor of The Nation
now writing from London.
74
BY ANDREW ROTH
Attlee’s visit to Rangoon was important on two counts.
First, as the man who transferred sovereignty to India,
Pakistan, Ceylon, and Burma, he had the ear of many
South Asian leaders and succeeded in strengthening their
ties with the West. Second, his influence helped to keep
the Asian Socialists linked with the European Socialists.
Thus they can serve as an alternative channel for West-
ern policy when other channels are drying up.
In a memorandum prepared three months before —
Attlee left for Rangoon, Morgan Phillips, British chair- —
man of the Socialist International, warned against the. ~
possible emergence of “two Socialist Internationals di-
vided, in effect, on racial lines.” He expressed the hope
that “from the forthcoming Rangoon conference of
Asian Socialist parties an Asian growping will emerge as
the focus of socialism in Asia.”
| . "
c si a an Asian Sietillat organiza-
| tion which would “establish liaison
! with the Socialist International.’ The
ie resolution specifically provided that
Ie ‘members of the-new Asian organiza-
le ‘tion could also be members of the
: international body. Three Asian groups
—the Israeli Socialists and the right-
| wing and left-wing Japanese Socialists
| —have been members of the Interna-
i tional for some time and under the
i new set-up will remain so.
_ In dealing with the difficult ques-
~ tion of “neutralism’”—favored strongly
by some of the left-wing groups—
4 the conference after lengthy debate
: adopted a carefully worded resolution
i etic read in part:
The independent position of the
Asian countries and their freedom of movement with
regard to the problems of world peace do not mean
ideological neutralism or any policy of sacrificing the
liberty of other peoples or nations to one’s own selfish
interests.
eS _
yy
" Other parts of the resolution strongly supported democ-
i racy and the basic freedoms as against totalitarian
"systems.
_ A TILEE’s trip is a measure of the new regard in
ie BAN sich Asian Socialists-are held in the West, partic-
ularly in Britain. Only a few years ago the prevailing
feeling was very different. At the end of 1949 when I
© was in Bengal, Jai Prakash Narain, the Indian Socialist
eader, told’ me sadly that the British Labor Party had
ie “repulsed the Indian Socialists’ request that it send a
_ delegate to their annual conference, The Labor Party ex-
- plained this “brush off” by saying it did not want to
jeopardize its friendship with Pandit Nehru by sending
a representative to a meeting of what had become an
_ opposition party. Little more than three years later the
‘Labor Party asked its seventy-year-old leader, described
by Francis Williams as “the most trusted of all European
leaders,” to make a strenuous 18,000-mile trip to gain
e friendship of Asian Socialist parties once rebuffed
or ignored.”
' This new interest in overseas Socialist parties has de-
B veloped among such insular British Laborites as Herbert
Morrison, the former Foreign Minister, for quite practi-
al reasons. During the crisis in Iran, Britain’s traditional
ues there—the army and the palace—proved inade-
7
Ee eee See ee
a a aa
Clement Attlee
yate. Finding he must choose between Dr. Mossadegh ©
~ moaneé s plleeiuet “If only
there were a Persian Labor Party!”
That Britain could profit from the
growth of Socialist parties in South
Asia was stressed in a dispatch from
Hongkong which was prominently
displayed in the London Times of
January 5. The Times correspondent
said that while democratic socialism
no longer had a.chance in China,
Korea, or Indo-China, where political
forces had polarized into right and
left extremes, in Japan and particu-
larly in South Asia it was “a political
philosophy which ‘still has the field
before it.” He continued:
There is one distinction which
must be made for socialism in Asia,
in the present world context. Its
sources are exclusively European, it
is not linked to Russia, and it does
not look for nourishment to the
United States... ... It seems, 2:
to many observers of the Asian scene that the only
workable solution for the development of economic re-
sources in the newer nations of East Asia is, broadly,
a Socialist one, for such a solution offers a desirable
satisfaction to nascent nationalism, while avoiding the
sometimes inefficient and sometimes undesirable prac-
tices of an immature capitalist class.
Mr, Attlee, then, can be said to have been reinforcing _
Britain’s second line of defense. All British leaders —
have some grasp of the decisive importance of South
Asia. It is not only a major market and source of raw
materials; it is also an area of influence which enables
Britain to describe itself as a world power and which it
can use in bargaining with the United States. Thus when — } |
Britain does not want to accept an American policy it can
always say, “Nehru won't swallow that.” The loss of —
South Asia would mean the immediate decline of Britain —
from its present second-class to third-class status and tip
the world balance of power.
Both Labor and Conservative statesmen feel that one
of the great weaknesses of South Asia is the lack of con-
- structive leadership. Ruling groups to which it would
have been “safe” enough to transfer power in 1947-48
have not been able to retain popular support. The Cone a:
ference of Economic Experts convened by the Socialist —
International in Vienna in November, 1951, complained
that “‘difficult problems are raised by the existence of
corrupt and reactionary governments in some of the
independent countries” in the so-called underdeveloped
areas.
tive-nationalist governments in office in most of South
The
In view of the mounting opposition to the conserva :
SR as ees Te ‘ rg ay
3 a e Se ao
“beet
Asia, British leaders of both parties want to see a safe
alternative party emerging. With regard to India, they
feel little confidence that Pandit Nehru will succeed in
faising living standards, and if the Congress government
falls, they hope to see a moderate Socialist regime take its
_ place. The Manchester Guardian said on Januaty 6:
| ’ Nationalist ah religio 13 ers 0 be ei aoe k {
the hard and sustained effort which will be needed [ir “@
the field of} technical education and assistance to the
peasant . . . by the temptation to appeal to the super-
stitions and emotions of the masses,
I Have a Thing to Tell You
BY RUTH ELIZABETH CRAWFORD
[The author of this article was for five years a public-
information officer for the United Nations International
Children’s Emergency Fund and before that served in a
similar capacity in the United States Children’s Bureau. Im-
mediately after her appearance before the McCarran com-
mittee, described in the article, she offered to resign her
United Nations post, an offer which she subsequently with-
drew in order to establish, through a proper hearing, -her
legal and moral fitness to continue in her job. This hearing
was denied her by the United Nations administration, which
urged instead that she again offer to resign. When she re-
_ fused, she was formally dismissed on January 7 by the Sec-
retary General in “the best interests of the United Nations.”
Miss Crawford is appealing her dismissal on the ground
that she is being made to suffer for her political opinions. As
part of ber defense she plans to invoke for the first time in
such a case Article 19 of the United Nations’ own Universal
Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the vight to
freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes free-
dom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, re-
ceive, and impart information and ideas through any media
and regardless of frontiers.”
Miss Crawford’s name did not appear on the list of Amer-
ican personnel in the United Nations upon whom the State
Department had made adverse comment.}
N THE night of October 14 last I was ordered by
telegram, along with other Americans employed
by the United Nations, to appear the next day before the
McCarran committee to answer questions about my past
employment and political affiliations.
By noon of the fifteenth I had answered—or admitted
or asserted, as the interpretation may be—that seventeen
years ago I had been for a year or more a member of the
Communist Party of the United States, that I was at the
moment a member of the Progressive Party, and that I
received the publications of several specified organiza-
tions and was in sympathy with their objectives. I had
further described eleven years of employment with the
United States government and five years with the United
Nations.
It seems to me now that all that had ever happened to
me was brought together at the moment when I had to
answer the fateful question: “Are you, or were you ever,
76 ;
a member of the Communist Party?” At that moment I | |
joined the ever-growing number of Americans who have J.
been brought to account for their political beliefs. Of us,
to borrow from Thomas Wolfe, I have a thing to tell
you. That is the title of a story Wolfe wrote about his
experience in Germany among the hunters and the
hunted in the years just before the Second World War. ;
I chose to answer the questions put to me in the court-
room. I know that I might have invoked the Fifth |
Amendment. I think those who do so are protecting a
great principle: the Fifth Amendment, I learned in my
need, is the only barrier between you and the invasion of *
your constitutional rights. Perhaps I was tired, tired of
being asked a question which I thought no one had the 7 f
right to ask me in the first place. For as an American did
I not have the right to belong to any legally constituted
party I chose? So I answered, “Yes.”
“TI never felt so American,” I told a friend after I
left the witness stand, “as I did answering those ques-
tions.’” And to myself I said, “They don’t need to be
ashamed of me.” By they I meant all the living and dead
who have influenced my life and made me the person
who answered the questions as I did that day.
There was my father, an old man now, whose people
have been in this country since before it was a country.
One of his ancestors, “a man named Stowe or Stow,”
cast the Liberty Bell. “I admired you for not giving any
names,” my father wrote me. There was my mother,
who had tried to teach her children “to do what was
right.” There were the public-school teachers who had
taught me about my American heritage. There were the
Methodist Sunday School teachers who, believing,—had
taught us the Golden Rule. And there were those I
knew through books—Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson,
William Cullen Bryant, and in later years Dreiser, Sher-
wood Anderson, Alfred Kreymborg, and Carl Sandburg.
a
Oa
In the courtroom with me were the men and women I. ©
had known as a young reporter on the newspaper in
Terre Haute, Indiana, Eugene Debs, home from prison,
was a fellow-townsman; some of my friends had been
his friends. “I missed much in life that other men have
had,” one of them once wrote to me, “but this much I
| The NATIO: Nv 4
‘In this ja naa i come now to the 30's. Many
ho today are being asked the crucial question were
yyoung adults then with backgrounds similar to mine. We
ta ers, and Communists—the last drawing their recruits
i om the other groups. Roger Baldwin came to our town
and spoke of civil liberties. We knew and admired
‘Clarence Darrow. We knew people who had been in the
fight to save the lives of “the good shoemaker and the
oor fish-peddler.” (It was the Sacco-Vanzetti case that
fi st taught me that even the courts can be tragically
| Wrong. )
_ Then came the depression. In my home state of Indi-
ina deep veins of coal lie under rich farm lands, but
ninets’ children went hungry while farmers burned corn
in their kitchen stoves. In New York a newspaperman
i
ihe
My
1
down the leaders of a demonstration of the unemployed;
“The place looked like a battlefield,” he said.
PEAHE McCarran committee asked who had “invited”
_ fL me to join the Communist Party. The truth is that I
invitéd myself, moved as I was by anger and frustration
the things that were happening. I wanted to help
those who were doing something to stop these outrages.
L The day I stepped from the curb to join unemployed
} _ demonstrators was the day my decision was made. My
j oining the party was no secret. I registered as a Com-
_ munist—the party was then on the ballot in New York;
“I served as a watcher at the polls. “You ought not to
_ have put down that you were a Communist,” the Demo-
“cratic watcher said. “You might get in trouble over that
some day.”
1 3 Common Sense from Canada
4 Ottawa, January 9.—Hon. Lester B. Pearson, Sec-
. fetary of State for External Affairs, at a press confer-
| | ; ence today was asked if Canada intended to do as the
|| United States is doing in screening some forty of her
|. United Nations employees.
| “We have never taken the position in this country
| | ‘that a Canadian working for the United Nations is the
I aq responsibility of Canada,” Mr. Pearson said. ‘‘It is the
| | ‘responsibility of the United Nations. We don’t recom-
| mend Canadians for United Nations appointments.
| | They aze not appointed with our knowledge or consent,
which is quite proper. We have never been asked to
|| screen Canadians who are taking United Nations jobs
}
,
_ for security purposes.” —From the Toronto Daily Star.
|
q
1
|
ie
i
7
|
1
os “during this period I have beer
IK: Bicscribed to me how mounted police clubbed and rode »
n able to work at jobs for
which I was qualified by my training and talents and to
which I could apply myself with zeal and conviction.
What I did as an employee of the United States govern-
ment and of the United Nations is an open record, but
no one now thinks to ask how well I did my work. Oa
the contrary, that I should have been so employed at all
is now part of the offense: I was “undermining” my
government by working for it, and I was disloyal to my
government by working for the United Nations. The
truth is that for my government I worked with a sense
that nothing less than the best was good enough; my
coworkers were some of the finest men and women I
ever knew and shared my sense of responsibility. As for
my employment with the United Nations, I counted it
the greatest privilege possible to work for something in
which the world has placed so much hope.
. Lalways knew that one day, somewhere, somehow, my
time would come as it had come for so many others who
had been members of the Communist Party and for
many who had not been. There is nothing you can do
but wait. So I waited, and when my time came I saw in
horror that my past affiliation was going to be used as
part of an attack upon the United Nations. Whatever
the intent, that has been the result. The hearings and |
their aftermath are now a matter of public record, and
included is the suicide of the chief counsel of the United
Nations, an American who was obliged to see one after _
the other of his associates take the witness stand and
walk out of the courtroom with his work at an end.
For myself, my greatest immediate worry after the
hearings were over was their possible effect upon my
parents. I called them, and they told me the news was
coming to them over the radio. Someone—may he ever
be thanked—had come to be with them. “It will soon be.
over,” he had reassured them. “It’s just the politicians
making trouble.”
I thought of my colleagues at the United Nations and
of my former coworkers in the government. I thought
of the people who had given me jobs and of what might —
be brought down upon them through me. Would they
understand?
That night I received the first of many telegrams and
letters. “Cheers and sympathy!” it read. Perhaps I had a
not done too badly, after all. And indeed, of all the
communications I have received only two attacked me;
‘the others conveyed support and offers of help. A
lawyer, a stranger to me, wrote forcefully of the “terrible
consequences that result from failing to stand up for
principles, from hesitating to assert and advocate one’s
opinions. ” A Quaker friend wrote: “Please tell me if
there is anything I can do to help so I won't feel so_
guilty. For the thing is, as everyone must be telling you,
77.
o
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ee ee oy Ee ee
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Cn ie ee a & dm
Py
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0
y
at —
we = ci wake a
hs sora ri = oe ? 7 “=F,
ie Sr
A
~
there but for the grace of God go J; any of us of liberal. =H
tendencies might be there in Foley Square.”
Many of the letters expressed fear for the future. And
well they might. I have much to fear now. How will I,
as a writer, now make my living? To use a pseudonym
means starting all over again. And suppose I were found
out? Where shall I live? I must always be careful not to
embarrass friends. One message, sent through a mutual
friend, requested me not to come there any more—“I
hope she will understand . . . if I could do her any
good .. . but I have my job and the children to- think
of.” I must think of many things in order to protect my
friends and acquaintances, I mustn’t put my name and
address on a letter. Better not give a check. Better not
leave my name with a telephone message. Is my mail
being watched? It must be, else how did my questioners
know what kind of publications I was receiving?
These are fears that I, as a free-born American, have
come to know. Nevertheless, I am a free-born American,
and in a strange way I have been given back the freedom
which I, like many others, was letting go, surrendering
to this monstrous thing that is trying to tell us what we
may read, what we may hear, what political party we
may belong to, and with whom we may associate.
I shall fight that fear with affirmation, for I have a
great birthright, the value of which I never really knew
until I stood with only that birthright as my protection.
Yes, I did belong to the Communist Party, as was my
right. I now belong to the Progressive Party, as is my
right. In future years I shall belong to the political party
of my own choosing, as I hope will still be my right.
Yes, I do receive the publications of organizations that,
in the opinion of some, are subversive, but I have given
no one the right to make that decision for me, My right
so to decide, I believe, was given me by the First Amend-
ment—the first of ten amendments, it is well to remem-
ber, that were put there by the people to protect their
rights against the Congress. Congress shall make no law
—these are the opening words.
So I do not apologize. I apologize to my fellow-Amer-
icans only for the times when I have not fully exercised
those rights, when I kept silent though I might
have spoken, when I stayed away from protest meetings
because it was not safe to go, when I read furtively what
someone had the courage to print openly. Like them, I
was afraid—and because we were afraid this thing has
happened which threatens our free America. That Amer-
ica to me is the realm of the mind which is free to follow
after truth wherever it may be found, whether it be in
the field of government, of science, of education, or the
arts. For it is only by seeking the truth and acting upon
it that we are free to serve the best interests of our own
country and the world. So acting we shall find that the
interests of the two—the United States of America and
the United Nations—are the same.
78
* cf hen u ‘ e a a Pro» Fatih Te er ay ie LA pig:
_ Giving Wolves an Appetite |
BY ELMER DAVIS
’ PROMISES to be a merry winter for our colleges
and universities, for at least two and probably three
Congressional committees are going after them . . . and
the competition will be lively. The winner, of course,
will be the one who can put the finger on the largest
number, not of Communists, but of people who he says — |
are Communists or something like it... .
McCarthy has broadened the field; he says he would
rather say he is looking for Communist thinkers than
for Communists. This of course is a conveniently vague
phrase; you don’t have to have any proof that a man is .
a Communist, only that you think he thinks like a
Communist... .
All these committees are aware that their investiga-
tions may meet with objections on the ground that they
are interfering with academic freedom. Not if they hit
real Communists; as Senator McCarthy correctly says,
a Communist has no freedom of thought. But when
you go after people whom you choose to regard as
Communist thinkers—perhaps because they believe in
public housing or have failed to manifest sufficient en-
thusiasm for Chiang Kai-shek—then there may be
protests in the name of academic freedom. Well, what
is academic freedom? The McCarran committee today
publishes a definition by J. B. Matthews, a specialist
on communism for the Hearst newspapers, who has
been around as a denouncer for some years past. Aca-
demic freedom, he says, is something under which a
very large number of our colleges and universities per-
mit the employment of men who are subversive in their
activities. Who says their activities are subversive?
Matthews. He has told the trustees of their universities
about them and apparently the trustees didn’t believe
him. Which raises a dreadful suspicion; could trustees
be subversive, too?
Now, nobody wants Communists teaching in uni-
versities, But these procedures promise to hit, not Com-
munists, but people whom somebody doesn’t like and
chooses to call Communists. It would be a tough
winter for American education if there were even one
investigation operating on the principle that Congress _
must see that colleges and universities implant only
what Congress regards as sound ideas. But with three
sets of investigators competing for the headlines, and
measuring their success by the number of people they
can name as Communist thinkers, it will be a very
tough winter. If we come through it without too much
damage, it will only be if university presidents realize |
that you never get anywhere with people like this by _[
running away from them; that it is no good throwing -
one innocent.man to the wolves to save the others.
You only give the wolves an appetite —Excerpt from a
broadcast over ABC on December 29, 1952.
The NATION ff
*
j
f
The Auman
t Afterwards he may take thought
; And Praise, who now may not
- _ Move farther than the moment’s jot.
Afterwards who lives may dare
To stop and spit and backward stare
Up at the proved and friendly air.
: But not now, no, not now: who knows
i Which moment falls the forward rose?
What hole may open at the feet
Of him who boasts himself complete?
Or whose the mercy, whose the might:
Sustains the tight-rope of his flight?
ie His armot’s to be unespied,
ee Therefore he strips off all his pride,
4 Assumes the cerements of air
he That has no here, and owns no there.
Then should death meet him it will see
Nothing but clear neutrality,
oe And, gazing still, its eyes will pass
a" Purely through him as if through glass.
| e And yet, compulsive and complete,
His fate caves darkly at his feet;
| . Far in the bottoms of the world
: _- _His path is smoothed, his pit is curled.
~ Oh, long the flight but short the spill
That lands the cock on his dunghill.
a Balanced on searchlight-tip his plane
- May glint like tinsel, fall like rain:
a Wadded in fluffy salvos he
| ——- May see the silent blood flow free:
And look! Out of the blue unrolls
me His vapory bandage, scrolls on scrolls
Of lightest linen following fast
iy As if to fold and overcast.
Then praise not now his skill or nerve
Who knows how errors made him swerve
| - From his dead reckonings that must
_. Have milled and ground him into dust. -
- _He knows the smooth handrail of flight
Has stuttering verticals of fright;
Lives by death’s negligence and not
By any guards the gods allot.
To meet with all but go with none
That is his fate whose single fun
*These poems by Mr. Rodgers will appear in a volume entitled
POEMS - - - BY W. R. RODGERS*
~ Nor smile compliantly when he
- Fobs-off applause, for yours may be
And only ease is to be found
Upon the bosom of the round
And randy air: to it he'll give
Up everything that he may live,
Then keep your praise, nor ask him why
He pierces you with pin-sight eye;
The grin that will precipitate
The gravelly avalanche of fate.
Gravely each night he raises -hell,
And he has seen great Gabriel
Jog God’s elbow, bid Him look
Up from His absorbing Book
To—absentmindedly—admire
The rhododendron banks of fire
Flowering from roots that upward point
Their pleading hands, all out of joint,
Till God, replete with sacrifice,
Rubs planes like motes out of His eyes.
Afterwards he may take thought
And praise, who now may not
Move farther than the moment's jot.
Meanwhile within the mindless deep
Of his humility he'll keep
A waking seed of self that will
One day dance on every hill.
These are dead men; like seed they fly
Widely on every wind, and die
Into their pride that there may grow
More humility below:
Not till that tuberous trumpet breaks the clay
Will they rise up, their resurrection day.
The Fall
O Angel of the ledges of our dread
On whose jellied edges each joy is dandled
Gently, like danger—now, like daws on trees
Unbalancing, turn our dread into ease
And let the fall open our wings’ eyes wide
In wonder at ourselves who were so slow
To float out on the rootless raft of air
With flowing hold.
The fall! the fall, from that safe tree
Of love we so much feared to leave, elates
And lifts our other selves to life. Only
By daring do we learn our manyness.
Sactery stints us, Gas ‘us to stone, to one.
This always-gibbering between fear and wer Spe =
Doubles our life, and is the bloody pulse
Of every vein. O angel of our dread,
Delicately cater for us rough feeders
Who ask a stone; and duly give us bread.
‘take up “up “first.
Carol
Deep in the fadinz leaves of night
There lay the flower that darkness knows,
Till winter stripped and brought to light
The most incomparable
That blows,
Rose
that -blows.
The flashing mirrors of the snow
Keep turning and returning still:
To see the lovely child below
And hold him is their only will;
Keep still, keep still.
And to let go his very cry
The clinging echoes are so slow
That still his wail they multiply
Though he lie singing
So low, so low.
now below,
Even the doves forget to grieve
And gtavely to his greeting fly
And the lone places that they leave
All follow and are standing by
On high, on high.
French Democracy
DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE: THE
THIRD AND FOURTH REPUB-
LICS. By David Thomson. Second
Edition. Oxford University Press. $3.
FRANCE UNDER THE FOURTH RE-
PUBLIC. By Francois Goguel. Cornell
University Press. $3.
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN
ITALY AND FRANCE. By Mario
Einaudi and Francois Goguel. Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press. $4.
HE Fourth French Republic has of-
ficially been in existence for six
years. Actually it has been operating for
more than eight—ever since the libera-
tion of the country in the summer of
1944, This is a span long enough to con-
stitute a comprehensible historical pe-
riod: it has seen the full five-year course
of the first legislature elected under the
new constitution and more than one dra-
matic regrouping of political forces. It
80
was time for the historians and political
scientists to give form and sense to what
had happened. This they have under-
taken in three studies that have appeared
in the past few months. Two of them—
those by Messrs. Einaudi and Goguel—
are successors to the extremely useful
volume “Communism in Western
Europe” that a year ago inaugurated the
publications of the “French-Italian In-
quiry’”sponsored by Cornell University.
The third, by the well-known British
historian David Thomson, is a revision
of an earlier work on the Third Repub-
lic. These three, plus the Cornell volume
on communism, may be combined with
two of last year’s books, ““The United
States and France,” by Donald C. Mc-
Kay, and “Modern France,” edited by
Edward Mead Earle, to form a sub-
stantial shelf of guides to the recent de-
velopment of the most important of
America’s Continental allies.
Mr. Thomson’s book offers a con-
venient starting-point. It is the least
S) Shee “thy o igi in
cation in 1946, it has ranked as th
standard brief account in English ¢
French democracy since 1870. Less 3
complete history than an analysis of
background and operation of Frend
democratic procedures, it is a model o
compactness and coherent exposition. Of
particular value are the chapters it
which Mr. Thomson analyzes the wal
in which the structure of French socie
has found its logical expression in con=9
stitutional arrangements that might
otherwise strike the Anglo-Saxon .
senselessly anarchical. Ultra-individual-
ism and a love of symmetrical order, Mry
Thomson argues, are both legitimate
products of the French tradition: they”
could be adequately reflected only in ay?
hybrid constitution—combining admin-
istrative centralization and continuity
with parliamentary effervescence and
ministerial instability—such as Francege
lived under for the two generations from!
1875 to the Second World War.
Now Mr. Thomson has projected this §*
thesis from the fall of the Third Repub-§
lic in 1940, through the Vichy -hiatus
and the founding of the Fourth Republi¢
in 1946, up to the present. He has done !
it in a single chapter of twenty-seven ff!
pages, which replaces a chapter in the f
earlier edition, entitled The Future Out-
look, of precisely the same length. Be-
sides being a curious revelation of the #
ptohibitive expense of typesetting at the §*
present time, the new chapter ranks §%
as a tour de force of compression. §#
Despite the obvious handicaps under
which he is laboring, Mr. Thomson suc-
ceeds in telling us all we need to know. ff
Essentially he informs us that the §
Fourth Republic is nearly an exact rep-
lica of the Third. After a gallant start
in a new direction, it gradually slid back
into the familiar routines established by
its predecessor. And presumably-it did ff
so because the old procedures still ex- fj
pressed the basic character of French ff"
society. Although recognizing the
changes that modern industrialism has §
brought—changes that even under the ff
Third Republic gradually turned “all 4
original assets . . . into liabilities’—
Mr. Thomson sticks to his thesis of con- |
tinuity. There is still, he concludes, an
amazing resiliency in the old country. 4
Yet he grants that one great politica 4
The Na TION
)
eae
This is where Mr. Goguel’s book
comes in. Narrower in scope than Mr.
(Thomson's, it is a political history of
t he Fourth Republic, with particular
mphasis on the problems of organized.
parties. These are questions on which
Mr. Goguel is a recognized expert: he
is 5 both a permanent official attached to
ib he Council of the Republic (the post-
a f quasi-Senate) and the author of a
mas ssive study, “La Politique des partis
sc la Troisiéme République,” which
"3 become a classic for students of
rs
i ‘rench politics.
:
. GOGUEL'S central thesis is that
the peeditional division of French parties
into a right and a left is based on out-
worn ideological considerations—partic-
ularly anti-clericalism—that no longer
| correspond to social reality. This he dis-
covers in the cleavage between the de-
mands of the modern industrialized
areas of the country and the resistance
“of the more backward areas characterized
‘by peasant agriculture and small busi-
ness. The former give France its present-
day importance—yet the latter dominate
the political scene. ‘The center of politi-
‘cal gravity in France . . . coincides in
“no. way. with its center of economic
gravity.” The reason for this discrepancy
is that of the six main parties that
nearly monopolize French political life,
“the four that represent the newer areas
ad tendencies—the Communists, the
ocialists, the Catholic Popular Repub-
‘licans, and the Gaullists—are separated
from each other by the traditional right-
left hostility, thereby leaving a dispro-
‘portionate influence to the two groups
at stand for the “retrograde” areas
d interests, the Radicals and the con-
servative Independents.
Excluding the Communists as politi-
cally impossible, Mr. Goguel quite logi-
cally proposes that the other three
“parties that appeal to the “modern”
electorate—the Socialists, the Popular
epublicans, and the Gaullists—should
their differences and unite to. man-
age the state. This he regards as the sole
way out of the impasse of the
“hexagonal” Chamber produced by the
election of 1951. Aside from the rather
obvious objection that Mr. Goguel’s
ations: onbiida parlia- :
be a m4 be the ey mee, In
an epilogue written after the rest of
the book had presumably gone to press,
Mr. Goguel admits with disarming can-
dor that what he had earlier told us was
most unlikely has actually occurred. The
Independents and Radicals have _per-
suaded a minority of the Gaullists and
three-fourths of the Popular Republicans
to go along with them in supporting an
old-fashioned conservative government.
And, what is still more surprising, this
government, under the able leadership
of Antoine Pinay, proved to be the
most coherent and purposeful of the
ministries that have ruled the country
since the liberation. In France as well as
the United States, it appears, political
prediction is a perilous pastime.
The Pinay experiment immensely
clarified the French political scene. It
demonstrated that a responsible conserv-
ative coalition could exist as a function-
ing reality. The fall of the Pinay gov-
ernment did not invalidate this point,
| represents a revival of “the same
coalition. What is now needed is a
similar coalition of the non-Communist
left—the Socialists and the progressive
wing of the Popular Republicans—to
balance it. In this way the hexagon
would be reduced to a quadrilateral,
Two responsible coalitions and two ir-
responsible parties—the Communists
and the proto-fascist segment of the
Gaullists—would offer the voter the
four basic choices characteristic of our
era.
Thus redefined, the terms “right’’ and
“left” in French politics still appear to
have a meaning: within each of them
there is logically room for one—and
only one—democratic and one dicta-
torial alternative. Thus the continuous
elements dear to Mr. Thomson can be
regrouped to correspond to the con-
temporary realities so deftly analyzed by
Mr. Goguel. What is at present stand-
ing in the way of such a regrouping?
Why is the unity of the non-Communist
left still so far from being accom-
plished? Partly the responsibility lies
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with the sterile dogmatism of the French
Socialists. But it rests still more with
the Popular Republicans: the mere
existence of a party based rather on re-
ligion than on a coherent political
philosophy undercuts the whole con-
cept of logical political alignment.
HENCE THE LAST of our three books
—a collaborative study of Christian De-
mocracy in which Mr. Goguel treats the
French party and Mr. Einaudi the
Italian—takes on a particular relevance.
It is a unique and highly informative
volume. Both authors are thoroughly at
home in their subjects; both have con-
siderable sympathy for the parties about
which they write. But that is precisely
where their difficulties begin. Last year
when Mr. Einaudi and two European
collaborators were dealing with com-
munism, they wrote firmly and to the
point. Now the tone has become more
cautious. Such is frequently the case
when Catholic social theory is under dis-
cussion: the very subject matter appar-
ently breeds imprecision. This time both
authors are apologetic about the parties
they are dealing with: neither has turned
out to be what they—and most of the
party leaders besides—would have liked
it to be. This is less true of Mr. Goguel
than of Mr. Einaudi. The former takes
legitimate pride in the fact that the
French Popular Republicans have re-
mained “pure’’ and have shown notable
courage in their attitude toward De
Gaulle. But the Italian Christian Demo-
crats—as Mr. Einaudi admits with more
sorrow than irritation—have bogged
down in the rut of government-as-usual:
standpat, discreetly corrupt, and arbi-
trary by fits and starts, the party threat-
ens to become nothing more inspiring
than a routine clerical-conservative vehi-
cle for remaining in office.
“Christian Democracy,” the book’s
preface explains, “represents the most
important concrete expression of Eu-
rope’s effort to direct its postwar po-
litical life towards democracy and con-
stitutionalism. . . . For developments
since 1945, Christian Democracy must
therefore take a large part of the credit
of, conversely, assume a large part of
the blame.” Messrs. Einaudi and Goguel
have given the Christian Democrats their
full measure of credit. But they are a bit
too gentle when it comes to handing out
the blame. H, SFUART HUGHES
82
ae 1 eS
‘Sandburg’s Middle West
ALWAYS THE YOUNG STRAN-
GERS. By Carl Sandburg. Harconrt,
Brace and Company. $5.
HAVE heard it said by a man who
knows about such matters that the
century of the Middle West in this
country, the hundred years of American
history that were shaped and dominated
by the prairie and the prairie town, has
just come to a close; it lasted from
1850 to 1950. He likes to cite the
many men who exemplified the region
—Lincoln, Veblen, Dreiser, Altgeld,
McCormick, Meade, Dewey, Heming-
way, Sullivan, Field, Haywood, Wright,
Pulitzer, Twain, Beiderbeck. All these
of course and many others contributed
fundamentally to the concept of Amer-
ica, whether it is good or bad, that we
all share and that we have exported to
the rest of the world. Now the locus of
native feeling appears to have shifted
westward, to California and the neon-
lighted desert; but it will be a long time
before the new attitudes engendered
there produce anything as unmistakably
and beautifully—and of course indefin-
ably—“‘American” as “The Killers,”
the New Deal, the Monadnock Build-
ing, or the gasoline-driven combine. We
can hope, I suppose, that it will be
equally long before the West produces
anything as ugly as the World’s Fair
or the Chicago Daily Tribune.
Perhaps the dilemma—idiotic but in-
escapable word!—of the contemporary
intellectual in America can be put in
terms of his embarrassment over these
hundred years. Are they rich or poor, a
waste land or a treasure house? We
Middle Westerners from New England
and the South, shall we admit the
beauty of that level land with its mighty
arc of sky? Or shall we condemn the
dust and bitter cold, the primitive twang
of the voices? More profoundly, what
shall we do with the material of mate-
rialism in its greatest social, artistic, and
even topographical expression?
Fortunately, a few, a very few of our
critics and social scientists are begin-
ning to realize that the interdisciplines
of cultural anthropology and the soci-
ologies of art, religion, and politics can
be put to good use in the study of re-
cent American civilization, and soon
perhaps some theories and attitudes may
emerge rvith which the artist and the
Young Strangers” v Ww!
evidence for the study.
Already in the Bewapapers the book kK
has been called a “masterpiece” and a 7h
“classic.”’ Such talk is beyond my com- 7 §
prehension. The book is mot a master- J
piece. It creaks with bad grammar,
formlessness, and an unfeeling use of }
language. It contains some appalling J.
juxtapositions, as when Sandburg”
quotes part of Franklin’s address to the J
Constitutional Convention in favor of ©
ratification, an impressive specimen of J).
eighteenth-century rhetoric, and then}.
says of the book in which he read it, “It J)
was a honey of a book.’’ Furthermore,
Sandburg is loquacious; sometimes his
stories are tedious and unnecessary.
“Always the Young Strangers” is not J,
an autobiography. One learns very little "J
of Sandburg himself—the main impres- 7}
sion is of his engaging and genuine ~
modesty. Instead, one reads hundreds of ~
remembrances and observations of
Galesburg, Illinois, during the ’80’s jf
and ’90’s. Sandburg’s parents, brothers”
and sisters, classmates, neighbors,
people in the town, even dogs and cats
and horses, all are remembered in boun- —
tiful detail. He remembers the cigar “J
his father was given each pay day when J.
the family account was settled at the |
grocery store: “He smoked an inch or y
two each Sunday and it lasted him till | ,
the next pay day, when he got another —
cigar.” He remembers the advice on ©
marriage given by one drunk to another, “J
overheard on the public square one sum-
mer night: “You'll never get what you a
want and if you do it won’t last.” |
The hard ideal of respectability in 7
spite of poverty, an unfailing loyalty — :
to the Republican Party, a severe piety, ©
whether Lutheran or Catholic, a fear J,
of the rich, distrust of anything ©
“impractical,” and with it all a curious, ”
naive humor—these are some of the §
qualities of the Middle West, where
everyone was an immigrant, if not from 9
Sweden or Ireland, then from Pennsyl- jf.
vania or Massachusetts. From Sand- ff
burg’s roundabout and sometimes vexa- ff
tious memoir these qualities stand forth
in full; and it is important to have them ©
on paper, now. that the era of the" §
Middle West has been gone long §
enough for us to begin to notice its 9
departure. HAYDEN CARRUTH
The NATIO: N
?-P ROPHETS announcing various
+ dooms and salvations are today a
id ime a dozen. Not even the ancient
| Hebrews produced quite so many or
| anything like so great a variety. Jehovah
| usually spoke in much the same voice,
) and there was only one Law to appeal
| to. We have thermodynamics as well as
| history, physics, psychology, economics,
and a dozen other sure guides—all of
| which can be made to point in different
| directions. No wonder we may take our
| choice and have what looks like good
| ground for assuming that either Utopia
or utter calamity is just around the cor-
ner. Those in search of either clarifica-
| tion or further doubts should, however,
by no means miss the present book. For
| one thing, its author is both a distin-
guished scientist in his own right and
the grandson of Charles Darwin. More
importantly, his line of argument is as
novel-as it is well sustained. It will ex-
| asperate end-of-the-worldists only a
| little less than optimists of every variety,
and it supplies a bewildering assortment
of knockdown arguments to be used
against all and sundry.
_ In the course of ten or a hundred mil-
lion years, says the author, radical
j changes may take place. Our knowledge
does not permit us to predict what a
‘sufficiently long period of time may
bring. But the history of mankind dur-
ing the next one million years will be
f very much what it has been during the
| last five or ten thousand. There will be
| ups and downs as there have always been.
| There will be occasional local golden
ages, such as the one which Western
‘Europe enjoyed during the nineteenth
| cehtury. But these will continue to be,
[sas they have always been, rare excep-
| tions. The human race will survive, but
hie
_ it will never for long succeed in doing
much more than that.
This prediction—and Mr. Darwin in-
“sists that it is not a speculation but
| analogous to the kind of prediction
which science has learned to make ac-
‘cutately when dealing statistically with
aggregates without taking account of
the individual behavior of a single per-
on or a single atom—he bases upon the
“contention that the two determinants
ry 24, 1953
a
5
neither of which will be signifi-
y modified during the period under
consideration.
_ The new species of man upon whom
the Shaws and the Wellses pin their
hopes cannot be produced by evolution,
since it is demonstrable that not one
million but many millions of years are
required for evolution to modify a spe-
cies significantly. On the other hand, a
new man cannot be produced by “‘educa-
tion” or ‘‘reconditioning,” since no edu-
cator or dictator can set goals which
transcend the limitations of his own
nature and cannot, therefore, even will
anything significantly different from
what he himself is. Moreover, since ac-
quired characteristics are not inheritable
while inborn tendencies are, everything
that can be learned dies with each gen-
eration, leaving the next with only what
nature has given it. Thus, to take an ex-
treme example, the reeducated crimi-
nal’s children will inherit whatever
propensities made him a criminal in the
first place without inheriting any effects
of the reconditioning. Even eugenics
can produce no tadical change, for se-
lective breeding is possible only where
the animal is submitted, as man cannot
be, to the control of some species
“higher” than itself.
So far as population pressures are
concerned, Malthus’s law is still, in the
long run, inexorable. Improved tech-
niques for food production give tempo-
rary relief and are as a matter of fact
largely responsible for the occasional
brief golden ages during which whole
populations seem to have escaped want.
But population at last always catches up
again, because there is always a limit to
what any technique can produce, never
a limit to the power of the species as a
whole to multiply until the food supply
is barely able to sustain it. Any class
and any nation which voluntarily or in-
voluntarily fails to keep pace will sim-
ply be overwhelmed by one which does.
Speaking of a project which spread out
the waters of the Indus River and
turned a desert into a garden, Mr. Dar-
win writes: “According to the universal-
ly accepted standards this was a great
benefit to the world, for it made pos-
sible the adequate feeding of a people
previously on the verge of starvation.
But—after a few years -the effect was
only to have a large number of people
Lien ! PAD
Pepa iy "Ad Rye! pie , :
on the e of starvation instead of a
small n imbe i : rt
Though only a few more than two
hundred pages in length, “The Next
Million Years” manages a singularly
cogent presentation of various other
dilemmas only somewhat less funda-
mental than the two central ones, and to
many it will seem to constitute a for-
midable attack upon every conceivable
proposal for a better world. Yet Me.
Darwin disclaims any such intention,
and it is perhaps worth pointing out
that even if one accepts all his theses,
one may, if temperamentally so inclined,
dismiss them from every consideration
of what ameliorations of the human lot
may be attempted for a limited period
of time and over a limited area of the
earth, A golden age may last for cen-
turies and may be succeeded by others
equally golden. It is both permanent
ptospetity and temporary perfection
that are declared impossible, Within the
next million years there can be no City
BOOKS AND from the
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In English
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614 pp. — $1.50
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302 pp. — 75¢
MY APPRENTICESHIP
683 pp. — $1.25
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83
aiid anil _eeeedtenstenenateees dean ideamneetetmace ena
mene ae A ¢ eS
a ik ed ae aaa ht A te ee ee ede
Perma mt
ad
J
* Ps
COS
—i
a)
of God destined to an eternity of per-
fection.
Taking an even broader and more
philosophical view, one may wonder
whether the real significance of a scien-
tific prophecy like this one may not be
the same as that of a book as different
in method as, say, Reinhold Niebuhr’s
recent ‘The Irony of American His-
tory.’ Fundamentally unrelated as Mr.
Darwin’s theses may seem to‘a reaffir-
mation of the doctrine of original sin,
both might, nevertheless, be interpreted
as attempts to give rational form to the
loss of faith in that desire for and belief
in perfectibility which underlies so
much of recent political and social
thinking. Perhaps neither is, in one
sense, “true.” Perhaps both are only
very elaborate ways of saying what
many once and few now believe: ‘The
‘remedy for the ills of life is palliative
rather than radical.”
JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
Books in Brief
ANNAPURNA. By Maurice Herzog.
Translated from the French by Lea
Morin and Janet Adam Smith. Carto-
graphic and Photographic Documenta-
tion by Marcel Ichac. Dutton. $5. The
exciting events and something of the
mystique of a mountain-climbing ad-
venture as set down by the leader of a
French Himalayan expedition which in
1950 reached the summit of the first
peak of more than eight thousand
meters ever to be conquered. The
ein of the ee sep ibe ae the
top the leader lost his gloves; the party
was overtaken by a blizzard; and two
men had to suffer repeated amputations
of toes and fingers at the isolated base
camps. Both were then carried through
a monsoon over the long route to the
Nepalese capital. Mr. Herzog, dictated
his narrative from the American Hos-
pital in Paris, to which he was still
confined a year later. Not all readers are
likely to be persuaded by his account
that the self-imposed torments of what
he calls an acte gratuit result in a sepse
of liberation which justifies them to the
sufferer. But perhaps his explanation
will bring less Dionysian spirits as close
as they are ever likely to get to
comprehension,
THE WYNNE DIARIES, 1789-1820.
Passages Selected and Edited by Anne
Fremantle. Oxford. $2. The first one-
volume abridgment (551 pages) of the
diaries kept by three long-forgotten sis-
ters and first published in three volumes
about a decade ago. The Wynnes—who
began journalizing at a tender age—
were English girls who grew up on the
Continent toward the end of the
eighteenth century and amid a round
of receptions, balls, and masquerades.
They touched the fringes of history
when the principal diarist married a
Captain Fremantle who served with
Nelson’s fleet during the crucial years
and through him they got glimpses of
Trafalgar. The jacket’s inevitable invo-
cation of Pepys and Boswell is some-
what beside the point, since the Wynnes,
dangers and difficulties of the ascentthough likable, vivacious, and intelli-
Coming with the February 21 issuc of ...
LVation
THE NEW BOOK SECTION
A book section that will deal with the most important book of the
week of publication, in a full-length, critical review by a leading
and competent critic. Also brief coverage of other books of major
interest to our readers will be dealt with individually in a concise
and pungent fashion.
NOTE TO OUR READERS:
*
Simone de Beauvoir’s new and provocative book THE SECOND
SEX will be reviewed as the lead book for the above-mentioned issue.
for the sense they give one of seeing 1
vanished age ‘ecpuge ordinary eyes.
ERE - SELECT. VE TRAVELLER - IN”
PORTUGAL, By Ann Bridge and Susan
Lowndes. Knopf. $5.75. Anyone think-
ing of a’vacation in Portugal will find
this book by two Englishwomen both ©
useful and irritating. One is the wife of ©
an erstwhile British ambassador, hel
other the daughter of the writer Mrs. ©
Belloc Lowndes, and married to |
Portuguese journalist. Together they |
know more about flowers and baroque 4
architecture than about economics or &
politics; so that anyone interested in % ;
finding out what Premier Salazar has Jf
done or how his people regard him will,
have to look elsewhere. These two,”
friends have run up and down they
toads of Portugal, delved into its his-,
tory, looked with a critical eye at its ‘J
major and minor works of art. One may ff
not agree with their taste or theit ”
prejudices, but at least they have visited
and described the things not to be @
missed in that minute land where history
lies so thick. Travelers with time, |
and patience may profit from their |
exploration.
THEY LEARN WHAT THEY LIVE. §,
By Helen G. Trager and Marian Radke
Yarrow. Harper and Brothers. $4.50. @
This is the account of an important jj
project in intercultural education carried
on in the Philadelphia public-school —
system. From six schools in areas where —
intergroup tensions existed, teachers and §
children were selected for an experiment
in measuring and changing attitudes. |
The first job was to reeducate a group
of teachers who had the usual emotional |
vested interests in old ways of teach-
ing and at the outset failed to recognize ff
the problems of prejudice existing in ff
their own classes. Through tactful and ff
patient leadership they were guided to a Bh.
broader social outlook and equipped ff
with the necessary tools of teaching. 9
Social-attitude tests given before and. §
after the experiment showed conclusive-
ly that democracy can be taught. These.
tests throw much light on the nature ff!
and extent of prejudice in young chil- 9
dren. Contrary to current belief, a large
petcentage of these children between -P
the ages of five and eight are Ae |
at
The Nati : iON
ICTURE. A STORY ABOUT HOL-
LYWOOD. By Lillian Ross. Rinehart.
3.50. This 250-page report gives a de-
ailed account, atmospheric as well as
actual, of the actual making of a movie.
F hvins on the day that Louella Par-
z 501 informed her readers that M-G-M
would do “The Red Badge of Courage”
and ends when Mr. Schenck seizes his
opportunity to say “I told you so.” Miss
i Rc follows John Huston, the director,
! from conference, to location, to party,
feporting with dead-pan detachment
‘what everybody said or did. Though she
hever raises her voice or confesses an
9vinion, the total effect is as sinister as
t was doubtless intended to be. In one
Ww a or another every person who appears
ems to be the victim of a group obses-
sion and to live in an atmosphere of
Rarcsolved conflicts, where worship of
the bitch goddess and Oriental self-
basement before the whims of the pub-
i accompany occasional apologetic ref-
"erences to art. According to Miss Ross,
Dore Schary’s office is adorned with a
bi bronze plaque upon which is engraved
'Ruskin’s dictum: “There is hardly any-
‘thing in the world that some man can-
“not make a little worse and sell a little
; pepe. ” But if she knows whose bull
Mir, Schary believes is being gored she
ceeps the knowledge to herself.
CONTRIBUTORS ©
. R. RODGERS, Irish poet, whose
first volume of verse, “Awake, and
Other Poems,” was published in 1941,
lis a script-writer and producer for the
British Broadcasting Corporation. In
a 951 he was elected to the Irish Acad-
vemy of Letters to fill the vacancy caused
“by the death of Bernard Shaw.
" sie
4
fessor of history at Stanford University,
is the author of “An Essay for Our
Tithes” and “Oswald Spengler: A Criti-
val Estimate.”
AYDEN CARRUTH, formerly editor
of Poetry, is on the staff of Intercultural
Publications.
ROBERT E. GARIS is a member of the-
Department of English of Wellesley
., STUART HUGHES, associate pro- -
"Beethoven: Concerto No. 5 ai piano
and orchestra (“Emperor”); Horowitz
with Reiner and the RCA Victor Sym-
phony Orchestra (Victor); slick and
brassy.
Overtures: ‘‘Coriolan,” ‘Egmont,’
and “Leonore” No. 3; Keilberth and
the Berlin Philharmonic (Capitol); fair
performances.
Sonatas for piano, Op. 14, No. 2;
54; 57; 78; 101; Backhaus (London);
never great playing, but almost always
beautifully sensitive in phrasing and
tone, with only occasional fussy man-
nerisms; recordings considerably flawed
by buzzes and cracks.
Sonatas for violin and piano Op. 12,
No. 2 and Op. 30, No. 3; Airoff and
Schneiderhan (Remington); very poor
performances.
Sonata for violin and piano, Op. 47
(“Kreutzer”); Heifetz and Moisei-
witsch (Victor); poor performance; re-
cording shrill, blurred, with rumble.
Symphony No 1; Schuricht and
Vienna Philharmonic (London); excel-
lent performance.
Symphony No. 2; Schuricht and
Vienna Philharmonic (London), Walter
and New York Philharmonic (Colum-
bia); both excellent performances.
(Walter's performance coupled with an
excellent performance of Beethoven's
Fourth Symphony. )
Berlioz: “Dance of the Sylphs,”
“Minuet of the Will o’ the Wisps,” and
“Rakoczy March” from “The Damna-
tion of Faust’; Van Beinum and the
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amster-
dam (London); good performances; re-
cording a bit thin and distant. (With
Handel’s “The Royal Fireworks’ and
Clarke’s “Trumpet Voluntary.’’)
Brahms; Concerto No. 2 for piano
and orchestra; Backhaus with Schuricht
and the Vienna Philharmonic (Lon-
don); excellent performance; recording
reverberant.
“Liebeslieder’’ Waltzes and German
Folk Songs; Roger Wagner Chorale
and Heckman and Neff, pianists (Capi-
tol); pleasant collegiate performances;
recording gritty.
String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51,
No. 1; Vegh String Quartet (London);
good performance.
Symphony No. 1; Kubelik and the
_ Chopin: Sonatas for piano, Op. 35
and 58; Kilenyi (Remington); poor
performances; piano sound cold.
Dvorak: Concerto for violoncello and
orchestra; Nelsova with Krips and the
London Symphony (London); fair per-
formance.
THE NEW
STATESMAN
AND NATION
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With consistent lucidity, it sets before its
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Reviews of new books, literary articles,
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RRRAERARPASK FR : FS CURE
in the
NATION
by B. H. Haggin
This book gathers together. some
of the finest modern music com-
mentary in America of the past |
twenty years and ranges over
everything in our musical life:
symphony orchestras and conduc-
tors; operas and singers; concert
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Pa
jv
aoe ‘
= toe el
a a I a ee Oe ee a .
a
ee esl
SE aan
PR ER: FS
’
a ee are
oe
a
a
iti Rites
¢-
B. H.
HAGGIN
Records
, Be ALBAN BERG’S uncompleted
opera “Lulu,” of which Columbia
has issued a performance recorded in
Vienna, I hear the operation of the
same mastery as in “Wozzeck”; but I
do not hear in the vocal parts—notably
the extravagantly florid part of Lulu—
the expressive relation to the dramatic
text that I heard in “Wozzeck.” And
this—in addition to the fact that
“Wozzeck” is concerned with pitiful
human beings who involve one with
them emotionally, whereas “Lulu” is
concerned with depraved human beings
by whom one is repelled—may be
why I find myself not moved by “Lulu”
as I was by “Wozzeck” (though I can
see that the work might affect me in the
theater as it doesn’t on the records).
I am not in a position to estimate the
effectiveness of the performance in
which Herbert Hafner conducts the
Vienna Symphony and a cast headed
by Ilona Steingruber; but I can say that
the man who sings Alwa has a wobbly
voice that is as painfully inadequate in
this music as it would be in Verdi.
In Urania’s recording of Gluck’s
“Orfeo ed Euridice’ (in Italian)
Margarete Klose’s contralto voice pro-
duces sumptuously beautiful low notes
but tremulous high ones, and Rita
Streich’s soprano is unpleasantly thin
and edged, but there is consistently
good singing by Erna Berger. The
YUL BRYNNER
RODGERS e HAMMERSTEIN'S
The King and I
A New Musical Play
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
§T. JAMES THEATRE, West 44 St.
tilted at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80, Te
ednesday & Saturday at2:25: $4.20to
MONDAY EVES, ONLY: CURTAIN AT 7 sip
MARTHA WRIGHT
GEORGE BRITTON
South Pacific
with MYRON WILLIAM , MARTIN
McC ORMICK © TABBERT ° WOLFSON
d JUANITA HALL
MAJESTIC THEATRE, West 44 St.
Eves. at 8:30: $6.00 to 1.80, Wed. Met, at
2:30: $3.60 to 1,20. Sat. Mat. $4.20 to 1.20.
MONDAY EVES, ONLY: CURTAIN AT 7 SHARP
BG
ay
‘Wena. eee
work I find occasionally ineffective.
A number of bass arias from Mo-
zart’s Operas are sung excellently on a
London record by Fernando Corena
with fine orchestral accompaniments
conducted ‘by Erede and Maag and re-
produced with London’s veiled violins.
Duets from Verdi's “Don Carlo,”
“La Forza del Destino,’ and ‘Otello’
and Delibes’s ““The Pearl Fishers’ are
sung very well on an RCA Victor record
by Bjoerling and Merrill with good
accompaniments conducted by Cellini.
The arias from Bizet’s “Carmen” on
a Columbia record are sung well by
Tourel with excellent accompaniments
by the orchestra under Morel’s direc-
tion. Tourel also sings excerpts from
Offenbach operettas.
Ferdinand Frantz’s voice is harsh in
the excerpts from Wagner's “Die Mei-
stersinger” on one side of a Urania
record. But on the other side are excel-
lent performances of the Preludes to
Acts 1 and 3 and the Dance of the
Apprentices by the Saxon State Orches-
tra under Rudolf Kempe.
One of the second group of HMV
LPs issued by Victor offers the final
duet of Wagner's “Siegfried” sung by
Flagstad and Svanholm with the Phil-
harmonia Orchestra under George
Sebastian, and the finale of ‘Die
Gotterdimmerung” sung by Flagstad
with the same orchestra under Furt-
wingler. In the closing section of the
duet and the ““Gétterdammerung” music
on the second side one hears the Flag-
stad voice of recent years—the lower
notes with the unique lustrous beauty
that is gone from the upper ones, which
are a little tremulous and occasionally
shrill; in the earlier portion of the duet
on the first side the voice is excessively
tremulous, shrill, and edged throughout
its range. Svanholm quavers as usual.
A Victor Treasury series record offers
the “Lohengrin” and ‘Parsifal” duets
that Flagstad recorded with Melchior
in 1940, in which one hears the liquid
splendor of her voice almost to the top
of its range at that time. Another such
record offers, with Toscanini’s 1946
“Siegfried-Idyll,” the ‘Gotterdammer-
ung” finale that he recorded with
Traubel in 1941. This was her best
period, when her voice had freed itself
a a My mt eres o hs
«chorus, and orchestra are ‘those of the
Berlin Civic Opera; the conductor is. acq
Arthur Rother, whose pacing of the.
fully;
Sis shrilleest oy in the “Got ef
dimmerung” performance it rings out
with clarity and power—but with™
nothing like Flagstad’s splendor. And
even in her recent “Gd6tterdimmer-
ung” performance Flagstad’s is still the
more beautiful singing of the two,
Furtwangler’s treatment of the “Gotter-
dimmerung” music is relaxed and]
spacious, Toscanini’s more tightly knit.
The dubbed sound of the Toscanini
performance is very good; that of the §y
Furtwangler more spacious and live. © 91
One thing to mention is that the E
Toscanini record is the only one of §"
these records of opera excerpts that’ is
provided with the necessary text and
its translation—the envelopes of the ff
others providing only the chatter about f°
history and the mere summaries of the
action that are of no use in listening.
Also, my review copy of the Flag:
stad ““Gétterdimmerung”’ record sounds
as though the stylus were hitting a*
stretch of concrete at each revolution;
and I mention this because such noisy 9!
defects have become so frequent—in §
addition to the noises from scratches §
made by grit in the envelopes.
When I was able to check London's
“Swan Lake” with the score I found fy
that it offered only part of Tchaikov-
sky’s music—presumably the part used
in the Sadler’s Wells production, with ff
an additional cut in the so-called “Black
Swan” pas de deux. Urania’s “Swan §
Lake” also offers only a part of the
score (with the same “Black Swan” cut) ~
that is less well selected, less well
played by the orchestra of the Prague jj
National Theater under Krombholc, §
and less well reproduced. yt
London has issued Tchaikovsky's
wonderful score for “The Sleeping
Beauty”—with cuts and a major re-—
arrangement which lead me to suppose J
that what is offered is again what is f
used in the Sadlet’s Wells production, '
with again an additional cut in the |
final pas de deux. The Paris Conserva- :
tory Concerts Orchestra plays beauti- |
Fistoulari’s handling of thé
music is less impressive—with the coda J
of the pas de six in the Prologue, for
example, much too slow, and Nos. 12 a 1
and b in Act 2 much too fast. The re- ff
corded sound is excellent except for
the London veiled violins. r
The Nation N
a ——
—_>
«
ee ae ee
~ DURING enauae YOUTH WEEK © JANUARY 30 and 31, 1953
THE BILL OF RIGHTS—SUBLIME RISK OF FREE MEN
Wars and emergencies have always been acid tests Americans to attend a conference in New York on
_ for democracies. Unfortunately we now face the January 30th and 31st, 1953. ; :
" prospect of endless emergencies. The Emergency The conference will re-emphasize the importance
’ Civil Liberties Committee agrees with President- of the Bili of Rights in our society. Distinguished
"elect Eisenhower that all our problems can be speakers will recommend ways of regaining the
solved within the framework of our Constitution full protection of individual liberty guaranteed in
_ but we hold that they will be so solved only if the our Constitution. The conference will also draft a
people actively insist on their traditional rights. petition of grievances to be presented, in accord-
~ ance with the First Amendment, to the President
be It is to meet the challenge of our generation, so of the United States, the Secretary of State, the
nobly stated by Judge Learned Hand, that tie Attorney-General and the Congress.
_ Emergency Civil Liberties Committee has been “Long may our land be bright
organized. The Committee now calls liberty-loving With freedom’s holy light.”
FRIDAY EVENING, JANUARY 30, 8:30 at t Carnegie Hall Forum [iI—The Political Use of Fear
| “The First Ten Amendments”...........--.-...- Dramatization oe eere logical please
ee pane Bill of Rights”. ree ate Set a fire = pelea Number What we can do to hold to our constitutional rights.
_ “The Bill of Rights in American History”....An Address Participants: Rev. Malcolm R. Evans, Carey Me-
td Williams, Editor, Canon Robert D. Smith, Tae
Forums at Stone, Author, Dr. Lawrence J. Roose, Psychiatrist.
THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Forum IV—Loyalty and the Fifth Amendment
let 12 West Twelfth Street, New York Loyalty tests in government service, unions, profes-
sions and private enterprise.
= reree eee es eee ot ee The Fifth Amendment as a protection for the innocent.
i Forum I—Academic Freedom Participants: Judge Hubert Delaney, Prof. Thomas
Report on current infringements of academic freedom. I. Emerson, Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, Educator,
; Who is behind the attacks on public schools ? SATURDAY 12 noon-1:30 P.M. Buffet Lunch
| What can we do to maintain freedom in education? SATURDAY 1:30 P.M
EE Participants: Prof. Derk Bodde, Dr. Scott Buchanan, a aR
iB, Prof. Robert S. Cohen, Prof. H. H. Wilson. General Session—W hat We Can Do to Uphold the
ik Bill of Rights
_ Forum 1i—Freedom of the Arts Religious and moral foundations for the Bill of Rights,
| Current limitation on the arts. _ : Religious and moral necessity for freedom of
Cultural cost of censorship and blacklisting. beeen Pitta ko 1
; ° itutional limits to Congressional inquiry.
es What eau be done to restore freedom in the arts? Organized expression of support for the Bill of Rights.
Participants: Matthew Josephson, Author, Merle Participants: Rev. Prof. Paul L. Lehmann, Frank
Miller, Author, Ben Shahn, Artist. Lloyd Wright, Architect, Walter White.
Pror. Pau L. LEHMANN Rev. Matcoum R. Evans JAMES IMBRIE Secretary-Treasurer
Chairman Chairman, Program Committee Dr. CLARK FOREMAN Director
Rabbi Michael Alper, Prof. Stringfellow Barr, Dr. Scott Harper, James Imbrie, Rev. Prof. Paul L. Lehmann, Leo
pbuchanan, Rev. George A. Buttrick, Prof. Hadley Cantri, Lionni, Care McWilliams, Rev. John A. Mackay, Clarence.
‘Rev. J. Henry Carpenter, Rev. C. Lennart Carlson, Dean E. Pickett, Rev. Edwin McNeill Poteat, Rabbi Joachim -
Frank Carthy, Rev. Rufus Cornelson, Rev. Henry Hitt Prinz, Rev. Prof. Paul Scherer, Rev. Robert W. Searle,
le Earl Dickerson, Prof. Aibert Einstein, Rabbi ne Ben Shahn, Rev. Guy Emery Shipler, William L. Shirer,
| Eisenstein, Rev. Phillips Packer Elliott, Prof. Thomas I. Canon Robert D. Sinith, I. F. Stone, Rev. Gardner C.
Emerson, Rev. Malcolm R. Evans, Prof. Henry Pratt Foir- Taylor, Rev. Prof. Paul Tillett, Dr. J. Raymond Walsh,
_ child, Rev. Milton A. Galamison, Jess Gitt, Prof. Fowler Walter White, Prof. H. H. Wilson, Frank Lloyd Wright.
*Please designate here the Forum which you wish to attend
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the Saturday Conference* January 31, including lunch............ $5.09
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| THE EMERGENCY CIVIL LIBERTIES COMMITTEE A ee ee
fie Seventh Avenue, 7 York 1 Tel. OXford 5-2863 ADDRESS.
87,
ei
Hm.
oe.
ie
oh
ait tol ae
Eisenhower and Korea
Dear Sirs: The change of Administra-
tion in Washington affords an opportu-
nity to review the situation in Korea.
General Eisenhower cannot be oblivious
of the fact that his campaign offer to go
to Korea was the most significant factor
in winning the election because it was a
promise of peace.
To get a cease-fire the United States
will have to recognize the Republic of
China and withdraw opposition to its
admission to the U. N. Eisenhower's
background may make it possible for
him to agree to a settlement along these
lines. Having had some experience with
European public opinion which heaps
criticism upon statesmen who fail to
follow the principles of Realpolitik,
Eisenhower may be more prone to com-
promise than Truman, who hasn't had
the benefit of his successor’s education.
Eisenhower must be conscious of the
fact that only by negotiating with Peking
can the frightful alternative of an ex-
panded war be avoided. Even if the
American people can stomach this, it is
clear that.our allies will not.
The task for those who for two years
have petitioned earnestly for peace in
Korea is to keep before Eisenhower his
obligation to use every means to accom-
plish this end. Instead of calling for an
immediate cease-fire or a five-power
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conference they should urge the new
Administration to negotiate with Pe-
king. They should also rally to Eisen-
hower’s support and defend him from
the distasteful word appeasement if
he takes a tentative step in this direc-
SITUA nis 's
Eisenhower's remarks on his return
from Korea about a threatening slaugh-
ter may not mean he plans to extend the
Korean war. It may well have been
meant to soften up the American public
by warning it of the alternative to nego-
tiation. Since Mr. Dulles is of a more
flexible disposition than Mr. Acheson,
as his variable opinions collected by Mr.
Rovere in a recent issue of the Reporter
shows, it may be hoped that he will try
to do by diplomacy what his rivals have
failed to bring about by force .
Chicago ROBERT MORSS LOVETT
Was Orwell Shrewd....
Dear Sirs: Of the many comments that
might be made on Herbert L. Matthews’s
article, Homage to Orwell [The Nation,
December 27}, I should like to make
two:
1. George Orwell’s ‘Homage to Cat-
alonia” advances the view that the
Spanish Loyalist cause was fatally in-
jured by the dominance of the Stalinist
policies in the Loyalist government. Mr.
Matthews undertakes in his article to
correct this view by advancing the dia-
metrically opposite view. Mr. Mat-
thews’s position is, I suppose, arguable;
and certainly it is a very familiar posi-
tion. But in 1939, when Orwell wrote
“Homage to Catalonia,” the position
was just as familiar as it is today, far
more widely held, and it was to correct
it that Orwell wrote his book. He did
not write it, I may add, as the politically
naive person that Mr. Matthews implies
he was and that Dr. Negrin says he was,
but as one of the shrewdest, as well as
one of the most honest, political ob-
servers of his time.
2. Mr. Matthews remafks that there
is no evidence that I was aware, when I
wrote my introduction to “Homage to
Catalonia,” that “Orwell became ac-
quainted with some of the Spanish Re-
publican exiles in London in the early
years of World War II.” Mr. Matthews
is correct in his supposition—I had no
knowledge of this fact. But I cannot see
what bearing the fact has on the validity
of Orwell’s views. Nor am I in the least
7) y
enlightened by the letter from Ds
Negrin which Mr. Matthews subjoing
to his article. Dr. Negrin characterize:
Orwell in terms which add up to: a de
cent and honest but stupid, mentall
lazy, morally strict, individualistic, an
all too candid Englishman. He implie
that Orwell, as a member of the
P. O. U. M. brigade, was under the i
fluence of Nazis and of people “allergic’
not only to Stalinism but even to ideas
of unity and discipline, an influenc
which presumably accounts for the opin-
ions expressed in his book, And Dr,
Negrin tells us that Orwell questioned
him about the policies of his govern
ment and gives it as his “impression”
that “Orwell was satisfied with [his]
explanations.”
I take it that Dr. Negrin wishes to
say that Orwell changed his mind about
the conclusions of “Homage to Cata-
Jonia,”” and that Mr. Matthews, in pubs
lishing Dr. Negrin’s letter, implies the
same thing. Dr. Negrin and Mr. Mat-
thews are agreed on, and make a great
point of, Orwell’s supreme honesty. Or-#f
well died in 1950; Dr. Negrin says that)
he met Orwell in 1940. If Orwellff
changed his mind as the result of
his conversations with Dr. Negrin, there
was the opportunity of a full decade for¥
him to repudiate his book or correct it.
He did not do so. Either he did not}
change his mind or he was not a su-|
premely honest man. But I believe he
was a supremely honest man. And I be-
lieve that it is not becoming in anyone,
least of all in men who disagree with
him, to tell us what he really thought
but did not choose to say.
New York LIONEL TRILLING
... Or Ill-informed?.
Dear Sirs: Professor Trilling argues en-
tirely ad hominem, the idea being that
since Orwell was shrewd as well as hon-
est he must have been right. I believe
I proved that Orwell’s judgment was
based on inadequate knowledge and that.
his “‘facts” were. sometimes wrong.
Professor Trilling has no facts to dis-:
prove my thesis. He seeks to impale me
on a false dilemma, since obviously Or-
well was under no compulsion to write
any more about Spain, Besides which,
his acquaintance with the Spanish exiles
in England was not confined to Dr,
Negrin and did not end in 1940,
New York HERBERT L, MATTHEWS |
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ACROSS
3
1 If I ever act it, you’d hardly 4
recognize this as coming from an
opera! (10) 5
7
8
~
NS
Sounds like what’s a with
Wynken, Ben and Nod. (38, 7, 4)
A rough pelt around 8 Mean is
just to step on. (7)
Spoils his belongings, reputedly. (6)
These might get hot and break out
| 6 See 19 down
_ 10 The delusicn of overlapping sound
fs and time? (7) into the rash, (7)
| 11 Emerson said coal is a portable one. Appear to bring back the extremes
4 (7) of 27. (4)
9 What the safety is for? (4, 10)
B12 C r
ane ound, ‘perhaps. (6, 8) 13 Endorses how some think we’re all
_ 14 Turn seed into this—the time spent
I; evidently wasn’t easy. (8) born. (10)
_ 15 Crion’s quite logically OY ected to 17 A main support of the settler? (7)
heaven! (6) 19 and 6 You'll have to get the
- 16 Get in a present form of 11’s end attention of the Navy speaker for
(7) this. (3, 4, 4
18 Ali creation sounds as though it 20 You'll find him dour, with an
* should have but a single piece of element of silvery whiteness. (7) |
| .. poetry about it. (8) 21 You might get a bit attached to it,
_ 22 Openings at the financial center 23 it one rp an ae ASF
X suggest where gossips h : It implies the end of a composition
; ae I gossips hang out is good? (4)
_ 24 Said to be one way to convert a den.
(7) eae Cam, SB Sam,
| 25 Passing over in silence. (7)
» 26 Range animals found in the west. SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 499
i (4) * “ACROSS :—1 NONCOMBATANTS; 10 BUZ-
_ 27 Sounds like underground people ZARD; 11 SUTURES; 12 NILW GREEN; 13
t ; with the French underground. RESTS; 14 ORBADS; 6 an 19
‘ SCOFFERS; 20 FLEECE; 22 JAFFA: 23
_ (One gets beat with them.) (10) NAVIGATES ; 25 DECORUM; 26 SUCTION.
DOWN
27 HOUSE TRAILERS.
, DOWN:—2 OUZEL; 3 CHARGE D’AF-
One can’t say such things weren’t AIRES; 4 MADDDN; 5 ABSINTHE: 6 AN-
poset era OP) Pereb one oS cubs: 15 Ee Ore. 2
One who aspires to be slightly more ig’ aa
GREASING; 18 TRANSMIT; 21 AVESTA;
than supple. (7 22 JADE; 24 TRIDR.
bo re
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's ‘ground rules."’ Address
_ requests fo Puzzle Dept., The Nation, 20: Vesey Street, New York 7, New York.
24, 1953
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oN al in the White House Brice Cotton
/
a
January 31, 1953
a The Red Purges —
A Decade of Party Decay
BY MARK GAYN
POPOL OF
law ee
Why the Jews?
BY FREDA KIRCHWEY
5 PEM SF
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Josephson’s Sidney Hillman—Reviened by Frances Perkins
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0 CENTS A COPY -: EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865 -: 7 DOLLARS A YEAR
“at
Private School No. 1
Indianapolis
LLEN ZOLL’S dream school, or an
approximation of it, went on trial
. recently before the Indiana superintend-
ent of public instruction.
Private School No.
Pupils of
1 at Geneva in
_ Adams County took turns at answering
questions in hearings held to determine
whether the instruction they received in
their Amish school from an unlicensed
teacher was equivalent to that offered
by the public school in their commu-
nity. Little Amish girls in prayer bon-
nets and Amish boys with page hair cuts
spelled words, solved arithmetic prob-
lems, and read from a primer. But their
testimony was in vain; the decision was
based on the number of hours of in-
struction and the licensing question, and
was adverse.
The school was founded last year by
a group of Amish families who objected
to the public-school practice of passing
all pupils to the next higher grade in-.
stead of failing the slow learners. The
Amish Mennonites do not send their
children to school after they are sixteen
or beyond the eighth grade if they can
avoid it. Other Mennonites keep less to
themselves and the young people go to
school and college. The Amish succeed
in remaining aloof from their neighbors
largely because they deny their children
schooling and ‘‘worldly” contacts be-
yond the eighth grade.
The curriculum of Private School
No. 1 consists of the three R’s, history,
geography, Bible study, spelling, and a
cappella singing in a vernacular which
is neither high nor low German. There
is no physical training involving gym
suits and shower baths, no home econ-
omics, no farm, shop, or industrial train-
ing, no general science, art, instru-
mental music, or hygiene. Most of the
books used are those approved for public
schools, but in method as in curriculum
there are no frills—no motion pictures,
no field trips, no clubs or class plays.
The schoolhouse is an isolated frame
building, a converted “summer kitchen,”
heated by a stove, without electricity or
plumbing. No Washington Crossing the
Delaware hangs on the walls; no flag
is displayed. These people, like Jeho-
vah’s Witnesses, require no salutes. Con-
trol rests in a board which says it will
try to meet state requirements rather
than emigrate to southern Tennessee or
elsewhere in search of religious freedom.
The state has nothing particular
against the Geneva Amish. It has pro-
The.
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ceeded with the hearings sur
pressure of a Citizens’ Committee made |
up of a dozen or so business men, |
The committee is preoccupied, as citi- -
zens’ committees often are, with patriotic
symbolism. The lack of a flag in the
schoolhouse makes its members uneasy.
They are distressed by the Amish rected
on conscription, According to their
spokesman, who puts out a weekly paper
devoted to attacking the sect and distrib- | |
uted free, they want to liberate the. ?
Amish young from the ways of their be-
nighted parents and secure for them frees |
dom to study, to choose a vocation and
to pursue it. Citing a Supreme Court ©
decision against multiple marriages for |
Mormons, the spokesman contends that |
enforced ignorance is as inimical to the *)
public welfare as polygamy. ae)
The Citizens’ Committee has suc- +
ceeded in getting a similar committee a
organized in nearby Jay County. Fed by
its propaganda, the resentment which+"!
crystallized in an attempt to burn down ©
Private School No. 1 is spreading. i
The quarrel of the Citizens’ Com- ©
mittee with cultural dualism is probably
due as much to economic grievances as
to religious intolerance. The farm coun-
try around Geneva has seen an influx of
Amish until the township now contains
about four hundred of them, In spite of - ]
old-style equipment they prasper and be-
ing exceedingly thrifty always have ready
cash for large purchases, chiefly live-
stock. They are not customers for cats,
gas, tires, electrical appliances, hhouse-
hold furnishings, or, to any great extent,
for clothing and food. Consequently they =
are regarded in some quarters as a. 4
blight on the town. Their womenfolk @
are satisfied to live without electricty ©
or other modern conveniences. Some
people say it is better in the Amish
country to be a horse than a woman.
The Citizens’ Committee maintains
that the Amish, for all their pious
forms, are no more righteous than other
people. Such judgments are of course:
no business of the state. But the state
has to decide whether it will compel a —
religious minority to conform to educa- if
tional standards repugnant to their
beliefs. ELIZABETH TOOHY
[The author is a-free-lance writer who
contributes occasionally to The Nation.} ~
- VoLuME 176
_ AMERICA "S LEADING LIBERAL WEEKLY SINCE 1865
NEW YORK + SATURDAY + JANUARY 31, 1953
NuMBER 5
; The Shape of Ibings
Due Process and Political Offenders
The conviction of thirteen Communist Party leaders in
~ New York and the Supreme Court’s refusal to review
the convictions in the Baltimore Smith act cases—Jus-
tices Black and Douglas dissenting—make it painfully
_ clear that in the present climate of opinion fair trials and
the right of appeal do not provide adequate safeguards
_ against miscarriages of justice in political prosecutions.
By all accounts Judge Edward J. Dimock gave the de-
- fendants in the New York-<case a fair trial. Under his in-
structions the jury apparently deliberated with care,
painstakingly reviewing the evidence against each de-
fendant. Yet the fact remains that those convicted were
minor functionaries—“Jesser Communists” the govern-
_ ment called them—linked to the conspiracy to overthrow
the government by force and violence by evidence that
was hardly more impressive than that offered in the
Baltimore case (see The Smith Act—Baltimore Version,
by Frank J. Donner, The Nation, November 8, 1952).
Since it*is now clear that even minor officials of the
Communist Party can be uniformly if not automatically
convicted under the Smith act, will the new Republican
Administration proceed next against mere members,
then against members of so-called “front” organizations,
_ and finally against individual dissenters? And if it does,
will the Supreme Court finally decide to call a halt to
the chain-reaction process which it set in motion with
‘its decision in the Dennis case?
De Gasperi’s Life Insurance
After days of violent debate the Italian electoral-
reform bill won the approval of the Chamber of Depu-
ties. The government hopes it will pass in the Senate
__ before the general election scheduled for next May or
June. Not even the eloquence of Premier de Gasperi,
however, could make it a popular measure. To kill it
the trade unions staged a token general strike, bringing
¢ public transportation in Rome to a standstill, and in the
Chamber opposing deputies exchanged insults and blows
ee
3 +
until the President had to suspend the session. In
Bologna, Turin, Milan, Ravenna, and other cities many
huge demonstrations were held against it in spite of
hundreds of arrests.
Neither the government nor its press makes any at-
tempt to conceal the purpose of the bill. Italy is the chief
Communist stronghold in Western Europe. Together
with the left Socialists the Communists will control an
imposing number of votes in the coming elections. On
the right fascism, like Nazism in Germany, is flourish-
ing. De Gasperi fears that a double assault, from left
and right, will bring down his regime. Apparently the
new conceptions of representative democracy provide a
Jarge margin for maneuvering. In its electoral “reform”
of two years ago France provided an excellent model
which De Gasperi has faithfully copied. The trick is to
change the electoral law in such a way as to give a bonus
of additional seats to the party, or group of patties,
which wins more than fifty per cent of the votes. This is
the cheapest and surest form of political life insurance
for the government coalition.
Militant Asian Socialism
British Socialists should have sent Aneurin Bevan
rather than Clement Attlee to the recent conference of
Asian Socialists at Rangoon, writes our London corte-
spondent. In a conference debate on colonialism Mr.
Attlee thought it necessary to express sharp disappoint-
ment with the emotional antagonism displayed by Asian
delegates toward Western policy. He sat down amid
stony silence.
The meeting demonstrated that the issue of colonial-
ism has thrust Asian Socialists, who represent almost 10
per cent of the voting strength of non-Communist Asia,
and the overwhelming bulk of European Socialists into
different camps, On the question of Indo-China, for in-
stance, all Asian Socialists are anti-Bao Dai; Western
Socialists are, at least officially, pro-Bao Dai. Regarding
Tunisia, the Asians found the French Socialists hesitant
and apologetic. And to the Asians, the British Socialists
seemed much too closely tied up with British economic
interests. .
ee
oS ed a ee
ncaa ales
EDITORIALS
"The Shape of Things a
The President’s Prayer 91
Why the Jews? by Freda Kirchwey — 92
} ARTICLES
% a We Can Still Negotiate on Germany
a by J. Alvarez del Vayo 93
| A Decade of Party Decay by Mark Gayn 94
Maharajah in the White House by Bruce Catton 97
Point 4—After Four Years.
The Land-poor Farmer by W. Arthur Lewis 98
An Open Letter to President Eisenhower:
You Challenged Jim Crow
by Margaret Just Butcher 100
BOOKS AND THE ARTS
Rise of a Labor Leader by Frances Perkins 102
MacLeish’s Poetry by Hayden Carruth 103
ar The Communist Infection by Alan Barth 103
he “C'est la Vie” by Albert Guerard 104
% Films by Manny Farber 105
Records by B. H. Haggin 106
ght LETTERS TO THE EDITORS 107
AROUND THE U. S. A.
Public School No, 1
by Elizabeth Toohy opposite 89
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 501
by Frank W. Lewis opposite 108
ree I ELE EEE ea
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Marxism” “ae ‘rejecting ihe ees ng liberalism’ :
vocated by their Western colleagues. Asian Socialists,
moreover, prefer neutralism to alliance with either % i
side in the cold war. The campaign in Korea may have q th
convinced the Kremlin that aggression does not pay, but : _ ih
it has frightened Asian Socialists. They see Korea and a rr
Indo-China being systematically devastated with every- fy
thing short of atom bombs; they prefer, therefore, to q if
handle their own Communists by themselves. Even ex-
posed areas like Burma think it a lesser risk to stand ~
alone.
i
.
Mr. Ferrer and Mr. Chaplin
The Fox West Coast theater chain has canceled a
scheduled opening of Charles Chaplin's “Limelight”
in response to a threat by the American Legion to picket
the film. Since “Limelight” has been showing for three
months in New York and other cities and is not in any
sense a “political” film, the Legion’s action appears to be
aimed not at the film but at Charles Chaplin. It is an |
attempt to force Mr. Chaplin to say and do certain things . ff
that the Legion wants him to do and say. J
A brief review of the related case of José Ferrer will
clarify matters, On December 27 the Legion announced
from Hollywood that it “disapproved” of Ferret's film
‘Moulin Rouge.” This was after the picture’s West Coast
premiére had been picketed by nine Jegionnaires, most of
them members of the un-American Activities Committee
of the Legion’s 17th District. Mr. Ferrer then wired the
Legion’s National Commander that he would be glad to
join in the veterans’ “fight against communism.” A few
days later Mr. Ferrer issued a statement denouncing Paul
Robeson for having accepted the Stalin peace prize. On
january 2 Leonard Lyons printed this interesting item in —
his column: “As a result of José Ferrer’s anti-Red state-
ments, the American Legion opposes any picketing of
‘Moulin Rouge,’ and Victor Lasky has withdrawn his.
Ferrer article written for the Legion magazine.” On
january 16 Mr. Lyons announced that Ferrer had “ironed
out all his problems with the American Legion at a St.
Regis luncheon with three Legion officials.”
Mr. Ferrer knuckled under and the Legion's pickets
were removed; Mr. Chaplin did not and his film will be.
picketed. This is not censorship; it is political terrorism.
It has, of course, a disastrous effect on American films.
“Hollywood,” said Mr. Chaplin from London, “has suc-
cumbed to thought control and the illegal methods of —
high-pressure groups, which means the end of the Amer-
ican motion-picture industry and its world influence, I
am afraid Hollywood is going to need me long before I
need Hollywood.” We agree. : ie
D
w
4
i)
4
ENT
i ~ was een in content hd spol in manner; in
effect, a kind of preachment to the nation and the world.
‘It was more remarkable for what it failed to say than for
what it said. Seldom has an inaugural address so com-
_ was concrete about policy and program. Domestic prob-
lems, so the President explained, are “dwarfed by, and
_ often even created by, this question that involves all
_ humankind”—the question of peace. The inference is
_ Clear that he is satisfied with the state of the home front
or, if not entirely satisfied, convinced that whatever
_ problems exist in this area would be quickly solved if
_ the larger issue could be settled. But this hardly squares
a
with his recognition that we need “markets in the
_ world for the surpluses of our farms and our factories”
_ of with the contention that “whatever America hopes to
| bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the
heart of America.” While emphasizing that freedom is
_ the wave of the future, the President had nothing to say
_ about the curtailment of civil liberties in this country.
_ “Strength,” “stamina,” “faith,” and “production” were
_ words which kept bobbing up, “moral stamina” being
iF curiously equated with “more energy and more produc-
i tivity.” The emphasis on production coupled with the
_ failure to mention the possible need for more effective
_ distribution and for measures to check inflation imply
é _ that President Eisenhower is pleased with the state of
_ the nation.
| More troubling is the evangelical certainty with which
| Mr. Eisenhower described the “forces of good and evil”
now locked in mortal combat in the world. His attempt
to picture this “time of tempest” as a struggle between
' moral absolutes provided little encouragement for those
" who believe the alternative to general war is a willing-
ness to negotiate differences, It is unfortunate that the
_ President either did not see or failed to heed some of
_ the comments in George F. Kennan’s remarkable address
_ to the Pennsylvania State Bar Association on January
' 16. The author of the “containment” thesis conceded
that where “great human differences” are involved, as
in Russian-American relations, “it is usually safe to con-
_ clude that there has been fault on both sides.” It is also
- tactful to voice this conclusion occasionally when address-
_ ing the other side. One can wish that General Eisen-
hower rather than Mr. Kennan had seen fit to quote
: John Quipcy Adams: America “goes not abroad in
~ search of monsters to destroy.” .
The President made an eloquent plea for unity be-
_ tween America and its allies. But here, too, we wish that
_ he had recognized with Mr, Kennan that the question
_ of unity exists on two planes, international and domestic.
“If we are to have the right kind of domestic unity,” Mr.
January 31, 1953
‘>
eal
pletely ignored the domestic scene or said so little that.
Bertone: and te canes oe: life... . As much as
twenty years ago some of us who were concerned with
Soviet affairs at posts abroad began pointing up the
evidences of Communist exploitation of our civil liber-
ties, and urging vigorous action to keep it under con-
trol... . Today I must say, again looking at it from the
standpoint of one who has been on the Moscow firing
line, that my greatest worry has been just the opposite,
namely, that through exaggerating the dimensions of
this danger and failing to put it in proper perspective
with the other problems before us, we may be creating
weaknesses in our society greater than anything Com-
munist penetration itself ever was likely to achieve.” Nor
is there any question but that the domestic aspect of this
problem has important international bearings. How cal-
culate the damage the McCarran-Walter act and similar
measures have done to the cause of unity abroad?
Ik RETROSPECT it may be thought that the most
~
striking aspect of the President’s address was his rec- —
ognition that we have now reached a period in history
where “science seems ready to confer upon us, as its
final gift, the power to erase human life from this
planet.” For the atomic era really dawns with this Ad-
ministration. Roosevelt may have fathered it and Truman
was doubtless its midwife, but Eisenhower will be its
nursemaid. Yet the President said nothing about the
atomic revolution or the bid for control of atomic power
that private industry will lay before the new Republican
Administration, which is itself so largely dominated by
big-business interests. It is this perspective which gives
point to Joseph E. Evans's shrewd comment in the Wall
Street Journal that “the overwhelming question of the
industrial development of atomic energy” may provide
e “bridge” between the domestic and international
aspects of the Eisenhower era. Properly developed and
applied, atomic energy could make possible a fantastic
compression of historical processes of growth and
change; on the other hand, as Mr, Evans suggests, atomic
power could suddenly end the Eisenhower era with “a
thermoculear bang.”
However, the most interesting part of the President’s
inaugural performance was thé “prayer” which pre-
ceded the address, The prayer was as clearly Mr. Eisen-
hower’s own composition as the address was not. Unlike
the latter, the prayer had a touch of humility about it.
The President prayed for “the power to discern clearly
right from wrong.” He prayed also that cooperation
might be “permitted”—-McCarthy please note!—and
might be the “mutal aim” of those who, under the con-
cept of our Constitution, “hold to differing political
beliefs.” This “little prayer of my own,” as the President
characterized it, is, we hope, closer to his intentions _
feelings than the address,
Sts
BY FREDA KIRCHWEY
HE spreading influence of Communist-inspired
anti-Semitism has swelled the flood of refugees pour-
ing into West Berlin and led to the arrest of Jews in
East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania. In
the West reports multiply of defections from Communist
ranks, not only by Jews but by thousands of other mem-
bers who regard anti-Semitism as a basic betrayal of party
tenets—a ‘‘deviation’”’ more flagrant than any charged
against the “wreckers” and “traitors” of recent purge
trials. Whatever its purpose, the Russian attack on Jews
has touched off emotions which may well undermine
whatever forces in the West are still working for peace.
These are facts which the Kremlin must have dis-
counted in advance. Soviet leaders could not have hoped
that the outside world would believe the accusations of
plotting and murder, under British-American direction,
brought against nine distinguished doctors; still less that
it would regard the attack on Jews and Zionists as merely
new manifestations of the established practice of the
purge. For the singling out of Jews, identified as such,
-has added a new dimension to the old pattern. Not only
does Communist doctrine forbid such discrimination, but
Russia’s best claim to world approval has been its han-
dling of the many national minorities in its vast area.
Purges and repressions, however ruthless or unjustified,
have been carried out for political reasons, and Soviet
sympathizers have found excuses for them in the harsh
dialectic of communism,
By the same logic, no distinctions are allowed within
the camp of the faithful: Jew, Mongol, Great Russian
all are equal—at least in theory. But the moment the
word Jew is placed after the name of an accused man,
the theory falls to pieces and with it a large part of the
structure of Communist dogma. That this was in the
mind of the Kremlin leaders is shown by their use of
“Zionist” and “Joint” as tags of identification. But since
no informed person believes that Zionists or representa-
tives of the Joint Distribution Committee, as such, are
degenerates, murderers, or spies, the labels only exposed
the anti-Semitism behind the attacks. And there was no
subterfuge in the comment on certain arrested men pub-
lished last week in Ukrainian Pravda of Kiev: “The pro-
- found hatred of the people is aroused by all these Kahns
and Yaroshetzkys, Greensteins, Kaplans, and Polyakovs.”
There are other reasons why the evil effect of the new
purge must have been foreseen in Moscow. Chief among
_ them is the horror with which the left, in Europe and
_ throughout the world, together with intelligent people
of every political grouping, reacted to the Nazi extermi-
nation of the Jews of Europe. The genocide accomplished
by Hitler’s executioners in the human slaughterhouses
92
' mae S es es x
> Yas ese Pa
sible era of mass . On this issue ;
civilized world are raw. ‘For Stalin to coajoke up images
of new Auschwitzes and new Dachaus would seem
sheer recklessness; yet that is what the current anti- —
Semitism in Russia and its satellites has done.
What motives led Moscow to invite the shocked re- .
action already becoming evident? Why was the attack i
launched against the Jews? ss
No doubt Stalin wants to win the good-will of the’ g
Arab states and check any progress there may be toward — 1
an eastern Mediterranean pact under NATO. An attack
on Jews as Zionists and on Zionists as agents of Western
imperialism is well conceived to please the leaders of
Arab states still hoping for ultimate victory over Israel. ©
No doubt he hopes to capitalize on the growing anti- | 3
Western feeling in Germany, marked by the recrudes- ©
cence of Nazi activity on both sides of the line. The 4
announced purge of “cosmopolitans” in the East German
Communist hierarchy may foreshadow a closer tie be-
tween the party and the “reconstructed” Nazis.
N ANOTHER page Mark Gayn analyzes the mo-
tives underlying the purge as a general method in |
dictatorships. Some of these motives apply today. There
may have been rivalries and top-level plotting that led to
Zhdanov’s death—and now to the arrest of the nine
doctors, That some such dark doings are being concealed
behind trappings of “Zionist conspiracy” is possible, but
outsiders can only guess.
In addition to these factors there is the mounting fear
of war in the whole Soviet area—a fear which has its
obvious counterpart, with comparable though milder
results, in the United States. Security measures designed
both to root out and to arouse fear of subversive elements
are evidently on the increase. Moscow’s top officials and ~
its trusted agents in the satellite capitals may be em-
barked upon a purge of all who stand even a little apart 7)
from the regime, who have interests, relatives, secondary —
allegiances outside the Communist state. Girding for a
war, fearful of spies acting under the orders of Washing- ~
ton—spies financed, perhaps, by that famous $100,000,- 4
G00 voted for counter-revolutionary operations in East- —
ern Europe—intent upon establishing an impregnable
bloc of states ruled by hard-core Communists, the Krem- —
lin may well be using anti-Semitism for its historic pur- |
pose, The Jews, or selected Jews, become scapegoats, q a
symbolizing those genuine “cosmopolitan” qualities —
which in normal times and democtatic countries are rec- 7
ognized as the finest ingredient of patriotism. 7
_ We have no desire, at this infinitely dangerous mo- 7
ment, to fan existing hatreds or sharpen heartbreaking
anxieties, Many are using the occasion to do both who, —
by their records, have never defended either the Jews or 7
The Nati
the 3,000, 000 or more Jews of —
Eastern Recope? We may guess.that the Russians do not
intend to set off a chain-reaction of pogtoms or to insti-
tute a mass purge of Jews. We may hope that Communist
_ discipline will be applied to curb excesses in case official
_ acts against Jews reanimate the traditional mass anti-
__ the ruling Communist groups intend to put on the brakes
| _ or could do so if they tried—once the infection spreads.
_ We cannot be sure; and we recall all too vividly the re-
& fusal of all but a handful in the West to credit the first
_ feports of anti-Semitic outrages under Hitler. The civ-
__ilized skepticism of the outside world was largely respon-
_ sible for the slaughter of millions of European Jews.
_ Dare we rest on our doubts today?
On the contrary, it is essential that just those groups
__ and persons who have urged, and still urge, a negotiated
_ settlement with Russia must take the lead in pointing
| out the dangers implicit in these first open acts of anti-
Semitism, Only a protest joined in by leaders of liberal
thought everywhere stands a chance of bringing home to
the Russian leaders the international price they will have
_ to pay if they pursue their present course.
| We Can Still Negotiate
on Germany
BY J. ALVAREZ DEL VAYO
READER has written me: “You talk of negotiat-
: ing with Russia; but Mr, Vishinsky rejected the
_ Indian proposal on Korea, Do you really think there is
any subject left on which we could still negotiate?” I
_ think the answer to this; question is still—Germany. I
have said this often in the Jast three years and have
| found support in many indubitably anti-Communist and
| authoritative quarters. In World Politics, published by
_ Princeton University (Volume V, Number 2, January,
_. 1953), for instance, this suggestion is proposed and dis-
_ cussed by S. Bernard, a Belgian, strongly pro-Western,
who served under Paul-Henri Spaak in the Belgian
_. Ministry of the Interior, At the moment he is at work
_ on a report on the Schuman Plan for the Institut des
a Relations Internationales in Brussels, which will be pub-
| lished in book form in Paris early in 1953.
_ MM. Bernard is a right-wing Socialist. His point of
__ view differs fundamentally from mine, inasmuch as he
_ believes that the present superiority of the West in
_ atomic power should be used now to place before Russia
_ the alternative of negotiating or risking a full-scale war.
_ But this difference apart, his argument supports a basic
_ position I regard as unassailable.
a 72 ae cae
ey
iGre e
Semitism of Eastern Europe. But we cannot be sure that —
the es “6 ne war, ” he writes, | “the balance of
ngs. i. between the East and the West has definitely
shifted in favor of the Communists, It is for this reason
that security for the West cannot be found in the re-
ciprocal balance of the two huge military establishments.
Experience has shown that Europe as at present consti-
tuted is incapable of a military effort great enough to
withstand the initial shock of a massive invasion.” M.
Bernard sees a definite peril in expecting that a parity of
strength between the two blocs will eventually be
reached, first, because “time is working on the side of
the Soviet Union” and, second, because, as one year
after another goes by in an unavailing and economically _
exhausting arms race, the West might be tempted to
force a showdown at the worst possible moment for
itself. Since, as he sees it, the West now has atomic
superiority over Russia, he believes that Russia should be
approached—in a most direct way: “Do you want
negotiations or do you want war?”
But M. Bernard lays down two basic conditions for
the West, if it is to follow the course he proposes. First,
the Western leaders must cease to “draw the wrong
conclusions from their analysis of the present state of
affairs.” They must “moderate their demands” and “take
the real situation into account.” “Politics,” he adds, “i
the art of the possible, and there is no possibility that we
can wrest from the Russians what they have taken.”
Without mentioning Mr. Dulles by name, he repeatedly
pronounces himself against the policy of “liberation”
from without. The second condition is that the West
should attach its proposal of negotiation to an issue
which would be tempting to the enemy, M. Bernard
believes Germany is that issue.
“It is impossible,” he says, “to formulate a program
for the settlement of the cold war without taking a clear-
cut position on the German problem, no matter whether
the reunification or the definitive division of the country
is favored. For several reasons German reunification
constitutes necessarily a condition of an amicable settle-
ment of the cold war, Whether the cold war comes to an
end will depend on whether Germany can be reunited
with the consent of all interested powers and on a basis
which is without peril for all.”
M. Bernard recalls that the late German Socialist
leader, Kurt Schumacher, shortly before his death de-
clared to a group of American reporters: “The partition
of Germany is the trump card of Soviet foreign policy.”
Schumacher used this enigmatic phrase to indicate that
the incompatibility of German unification with Ger-
many’s integration in the West offered the Russians an
‘opportunity for political and psychological pressure that
the Western powers had no possibility of counteracting.
Or, as M. Bernard puts it: “Russia in theory could at any
time rupture the military and economic ties binding
West Germany to the Western coalition by offering to
93
_ West Germany.
ite the Gekaiea “Comuntsist "Panty %
devices.”
In M. Bernard’s opinion the achievement of German
unity remains the prerequisite of a general settlement of —
the East-West conflict. Russia will never give up East
Germany of its own free will, nor will the West give up
“On the other hand, it goes against all
sense of reality to base world policy on the permanent
partition of a great nation.” But this very antagonism of
interests in itself suggests a solution—the political neu-
tralization of Germany. If the rearmament of Germany
and its integration in the European army and NATO are
Moscow’s biggest worry, then Russia should be willing
to pay the price of neutralization for Western abandon-
A Decade of Party Decay
issues of the cold war, This, in ‘turn, ould make —
possible a start toward genuine disarmament, for all at- —
tempts at arms limitation are doomed as long as the ff
German problem remains unsolved.
M. Bernard enumerates what are, in his view, the in-
dispensable conditions of an acceptable peace treaty with
Germany. They include the establishment of a demo- —
cratic form of government in Germany, admission of 7
German exports to the markets of East and West, and
the reduction of German armaments to a level fixed in a
general disarmament agreement. But, he insists, “it is
urgent that this be realized before it is too late.”
Paris
HERE is an air of gro-
tesque unreality about
the purges now sweeping
the Red world, The court-
room tales of cloak-and-
dagger intrigue have never
been more lurid, the propa-
ganda more strident, the
confessions more abject.
Never have so many coun-
tries been affected. And
there is every sign that the
peak of terror is not yet; when it comes, it may ovet-
shadow the Yezhov purges of the thirties. The terrible
Yezhov, after all, confined his attention to the Soviet
Union.
The new purges have other novel features. In Hun-
gaty “pacifism,” occasionally coupled with “apathy,” has
been added to the list of deadly sins. In Moscow the
“Zionist doctors” are charged with a plot to kill off the
Red high command, thus blunting the Red Army’s
effectiveness, A Prague journal notes that the exposure
of the Slansky conspiracy liquidated those elements
books on the Orient.
which might have weakened Czechoslovakia in the next
war. Slansky’s codefendant Sling, in an outburst of
frankness that must have been carefully rehearsed, de-
clared: “I'd like to,say that our conspiratorial center. . .
in case of war would have supported American aggres-
sion and would have worked for the defeat of the
Czechoslovak people’s democracy.”
94
To interpret current dramatic developments in Com-
munist Europe, The Nation has chosen Mark Gayn,
who over the years has built up a remarkable reputa-
tion for independent and accurate journalism, Few
Americans can match his first-hand knowledge of the
Communist world, including both Russia and China.
He has made a number of extended visits to the
Soviet satellite countries and is the author of four
This article is the first of two on the Red Petes
the second will appear next week.
course rate in Communist history, Not in the bloodiest
BY MARK GAYN
This is probably one of
the keys to the new purges.
For some reason—perhaps
not unconnected with the
election of General Eisen-
hower—Soviet Russia is
tightening up its defenses,
and the purges are as much
a part of the process today
as they were in the thirties,
when Stalin awaited the
Nazi attack. But for the
first time there is over-
whelming evidence that the Russians and their satellites
are including Jews, per se, among their victims.
The use of anti-Semitism for political ends is of
days of the twenties and thirties, when Stalin was elimi- —
nating the Trotsky-Zinoviev-Kamenev-Radek group, was q
the word “Jew” ever used. Even today. satellite spokes- |
men deny any anti-Semitic intent—“we're against Zion-
ism, not against Jews.” But if there is no attack on the oa
Jews as a race, there is very strong emphasis on the Jew-
ish origin of the wrongdoers, In the Czech trials defend- 7
ant Sling noted the traitorous appointment of “five Jews” |
as regional party secretaries, defendant Svab named “the |
Jewish bourgeois nationalists Frejka, Goldmann, Loebl,
2
etc.” as agents of the “American spy” Noel Field, and a
defendant Fischl accused “Jewish religious communi-
ties” of cheating the state. This exchange between the
presiding judge and ex-Communist Fischl was oil
The Nation |
Judge: Why?
Fischl: 1 am a Jewish bourgeois nationalist.
Of course there is other evidence of officially sanc-
tioned anti-Semitism. The world press has carried the
story of the “Zionist doctors” in the Kremlin and re-
ported the fear sweeping Jewish communities in most
satellite countries, It is less widely known that there has
been a round-up of “Jewish nationalists and Zionist
agents” in Poland, that a “documentary” movie with a
curious anti-Semitic slant has just been produced in Slo-
_ vakia, that a big anti-Semitic courtroom drama is about
to be staged in Rumania, Recent anti-Semitic statements
in the satellite press bear a striking resemblance to Nazi
exhortations and are bound to have an electrifying effect
on the latent anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe and Russia.
NOTHER significant feature of the new purges is
that they involve the party in Russia as well as in
the satellite states. Moscow has thus far disclosed
formally only the arrest of the nine doctors and a
thorough purge in the Leningrad area. But a study of the
Soviet press since last September, when the regional and
republican party congresses indulged in an orgy of de-
nunciation, reveals that the Russian Communist Party
_ is going through its biggest shake-up since the mid-
_ thirties. The congresses exposed not only scandalous cor-
i ruption and nepotism but a dangerous rash of “national-
ist” —meaning anti-Russian—deviations, all the way
from the restless Baltic republics to Stalin’s own Georgia
and the Moslem republics of Central Asia, It would be
naive to assume that all these large-scale deviations, and
even occasional conspiracies, went unpunished. In some
curious way all the purges form a pattern which binds
Russia and its satellites together in a common and
mysterious fear, and connects the Russian campaign
against, say, Kazakh nationalists with the Czech drive
against the Jews. Can it be that the Red world is pre-
. paring itself for the coming global crisis by horsewhip-
ping its non-conformist or laggard minorities?
There is one more point to make, The widely publi-
| cized cases, such as Slansky, Dertinger, and the nine doc-
» tors, tend to obscure the broader drama of which they are
| only minor episodes. For every Slansky put on public
trial, a thousand other Communists are tried in camera,
| ~ often without even their families being informed, and
_ tens of thousands are thrown out of the party and their
| jobs and, perhaps, imprisoned.
Figures help to place the headlined eyents in a proper
"perspective, In Hungary roughly 200,000 Communists
_ were eed from the party in 1949, and another 100,-
January 31, 1953
Czechoslovakia _ be-
tween 1949 and
1951 the purges
shaved the party
rolls by more than
600,000. Only the
other day Rade
Pravo in Prague tre-
joiced that Slansky
had been arrested a year ago and his associates as
much as two years ago, The time elapsed, it explained,
“has enabled us to make a thorough cleansing of the
party and state apparatus.” It is safe to estimate that
in a “normal” year half a million Communists are
purged in the European “people’s democracies.” The re-
sult is a vast uneasiness that sometimes borders on hys-
teria. Some parties find it necessary to issue reassuring
statements. Boss Istvan Kovacs in Hungary called the
purges “a very serious and intricate task, which cannot
be accomplished in a day. While performing it, we must
not become panicky, or allow panic to arise. . . . Excessive
haste and rashness will only create confusion.”
But the assurances are futile. Everyone knows that
expulsion from the party usually also means demotion or
dismissal from his job, penalties for his family, or even-
internment, Thus the instinct of self-preservation takes
over, and the purges are accompanied by savage and
imaginative competition in back-stabbing.
What I have been trying to suggest here is that if the
purges generate anxiety, they are also a product of
anxiety. Party literature is filled with outspoken doubts
that most members would remain loyal to the Soviet
Union in case of war, At party headquarters few things
are watched more carefully than the graphs of the party’s
“social composition.” All members except the workers
and, to a lesser degree, the poor peasants are suspected as
fair-weather friends who have joined the party for the
fat benefits thus obtainable. In a crisis they are expected
to desert in droves. There is also a deep fear of native
nationalism, which is probably the only force that could
solidify opposition to Russia in Eastern Europe.
BOVE all, the purges are a symptom of the rot eat-
A ing into all the Communist parties in power. When
the party is underground or when it is a party of protest,
it attracts few opportunists, A sizable part of its mem-
bership may consist of men of faith, ready to sacrifice
themselves for the cause. But as soon as the party seizes
power, it becomes a vast bureaucracy. Instead of voicing
protest, it penalizes it. Instead of faith, it demands con-
formity and discipline. Inevitably it becomes subject to
the corruption of spirit and morals bred by power.
Abundant support for these generalizations is supplied —
from Communist sources. My favorite bit of evidence
ioe
~
the palpate Communist Party We via n n | years
(1925-44) in Russia and marriage to Gauge Dimitrov’ 3
daughter. In a brutally frank speech before his Central
Committee some time ago Chervenkov suggested that the
e party leaders had winked at the anti-Soviet acts of the
liquidated Traicho Kostov because some of them had
themselves served the Bulgarian fascist police as stool
pigeons. Now, Chervenkov said, he intended first* to
- screen the leaders and then move down the party hier-
archy until he caught all the agents provocateurs.
He accused his fellow-leaders of being pocket-sized
czars in their spheres of activity and of creating an atmos-
phere of “irresponsibility, impunity, and megalomania.”
The party leadership still ~has “chatterboxes, dreamers,
and people with excessive ambition who pretend that
they know everything and can do anything.” As an ex-
ample, Chervenkov offered the party’s chief economic
planner, who had apparently made the mistake of oppos-
ing him in intra-party squabbles. This man, he said, had
devised a magnificent Five-Year Plan without bothering
to determine statistically the meeds or the possible
achievements; he had appropriated billions without find-
_ing out whether there was any money in the till and had
ignored fabulous thievery of materials.
“Did we punish him?” demanded Chervenkov. “Did
we beat him for it? No. We spared him!” And his
listeners, he added, were no better than the luckless plan-
net. They stagnated in good nature, in mutual forgive-
ness, abided by the petty-bourgeois rule of “live and let
live.” He himself, he stressed, intended to screen out all
who wavered in their loyalty to Moscow. “Nationalism,”
he cried, ‘“‘must be sternly uprooted as a hostile fascist
ideology.”
ESTIMONY on the infection in the lower party ech-
elons is furnished by Hungary's Matyas Rakosi, a far
subtler operator than Chervenkov. Local leadership, he
reported to his Central Committee, has been taken over
“mainly by elderly comrades who participated in the
Communist movement prior to liberation.” They feel
they are entitled to all the plushy jobs in the state, the
party, and the economy. Many see their jobs merely as
_ stepping stones toward something more profitable. New-
comers, and especially women and younger men, are
frozen out. The local leaders do not bother to hold party
meetings, give no accounting of their work, and run
their critics out of the party. On the excuse that the
Communist state is a dictatorship of the proletariat they
“use force instead of persuasion,” with the result that
an even the poor peasants are antagonized by the repressive
steps taken against the rich kulaks. These symptoms,
Rakosi noted, are apreaciey and “more than once taking
the form of corruption.”
But in the rank and file as in the leaders, nationalism
96
race . pride. . The virus of nationalism per
the working dase: A significant part of our intelligentsia a
is steeped in race prejudice; it kotows to evety demon- — {
stration from the West and deprecates Soviet achieve-
ments. The attempt to hide the successes . . . of the ff
Soviet Union is another form of nationalism.”. %
Anyone who has lived in the people’s democracies ©
will reproach Rakosi and Chervenkov only for their re-
straint. Out of my own experience with Communists
I could cite dozens of instances of thievery, kickbacks by
officials to their bosses, bribery, nepotism, perversion, and ©
vice that show remarkable kinship in techniques to the
gangster rule of New York’s water front, 3
Perhaps the most significant thing about the inner rot 7
which Chervenkov and Rakosi declaimed against is that it
does not differ from the type of deep decay exposed by
the Soviet press last fall. Corruption, nepotism, Russifi-
cation of the non-Russian republics (and resistance to 7
it), official high-handedness, and total lack of democracy |
—all these are common features of Communist life, ~
along with the purges that seek vainly to arrest the
spread of the gangrene. It should be noted that ideolog-
ical conflict is seldom at the root of a purge—almost
never in the satellite countries. Ideological debate was
extinguished together with the last Russian dissenters
in the mid-thirties. If anyone voices a dissenting opin-
ion in Russia today, he either vanishes, as did Vozne- 7
sensky, or is subjected to Stalin’s Olympian scorn, as’ 7
were some obscure theoreticians last fall. In the satel-
lite countries philosophical disagreement is simply im-
possible. Any argument within a satellite Politburo
is solely over administrative detail. And to a degree not ©
even imagined by the West, these debates—and the 4
major purges—are colored by personal vendettas. Few |
Czechs have been unaware of the feud between Slansky 7
and Gottwald, few Bulgarians have not known of the |
merciless struggle for power between Chervenkov and a
Kostov, and few East Germans ate not convinced that |
sooner or later Ulbricht will do away with his two Polit- ~~
buro colleagues, Dahlem and Rau, around whom he q
has already begun to spin a murderous web. q
Personal hatreds add to the savagery of the purges. I~
was in Hungary at the time of Rajk’s arrest, and I am
not likely to forget the mass-meetings which demanded
“Rope for-Rajk,” or the telephone operators on the
interurban lines who chirped sweetly, “Death to Rajk! —
What number do you wish?” Today, judging by the |
monitored radio reports before me, the same kind of ° |
hysteria prevails in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and 4
Rumania. The Communists may see advantage in this —
course. I am convinced that history will prove them —
wrong. bi
The Nation
He Washington
t O INAUGURAL parade ever had a real elephant
before, which is just another way. of saying that
_ no one before ever went to such great lengths to make a
_ gaudy show out of it. The elephant’s part, of course, was
_ finished when the parade ended, but the spirit of show-
‘manship which dug up the beast in the first place is just
_ getting started. You are going to see a great deal more
| of it.
_ In addition to the elephant, a hint about the course
things may take was dropped at the Grand Inaugural
_ Concert at Constitution Hall on the Sunday evening
e before the big event. A leading item on the program was
_ to have been Aaron Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait,” for
_ speaker and orchestra. At the last minute, however, this
' number was quietly expunged because Representative
' Fred E. Busbey of Illinois lodged a protest, on the ground
| that Copland had been accused of associating with Com-
: munist-front groups. The chairman of the arrangements
E committee said that the number was dropped as soon as
| the protest was made, “because we didn’t want to do
anything to bring criticism.”
"So the Copland number was not heard, and if this
_ was in the end something less than a fatal blow to the
_ evil designs of the men in the Kremlin, it at least saved
_the assembled Republicans from being compelled to lis-
ten to Lincoln’s brooding words: “Fellow-citizens, we
cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Ad-
ministration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.”
At the White House end of Pennsylvania Avenue the
_ eta.of the big build-up is beginning. There will be an
' elephant in ‘every parade from now on. The super-sales-
_tmanship which was so effective during the campaign,
_ which packaged and sold the General as expertly and
: tenderly as if he had been something made by Lever
~ Brothers, is going to continue.
+ The end in view, of course, is to make permanent the
picture of a great, wise, and fatherly man. “I Like Ike”
_was a statement of fact rather than a campaign slogan. If
_ the liking can be fixed in the consciousness of the nation
by a carefully contrived program, it ought to be very
hard for the Democrats to win the next election.
, White House press-relations officers are now talking
- about putting the President, perhaps with some members
a ar tee aes
et
se
aan
ral
“4
_ BRUCE CATTON, journalist, historian, and former gov-
_ ernment official, is the author of “The War Lords of Wash-
_ ington.” This is the fst of bis dispatches on the new
| Washington scene.
|
|
j
:
i
;
|
I
|
i
4
|
|
January 31, 1993
aa ee ~
BY BRUCE CATTON
of his Cabinet, on television once a month or so, Thus
the father image is to be projected into millions of
American homes; the script could, and beyond doubt
would, be prepared under the direction of the canniest
professionals in the field, Almost the single reassuring
note is the assertion last week by James C. Hagerty,
White House press secretary, that the tradition of Pres-
idential press conferences will be continued, and that the —
newsmen will still be free to ad lib
their questions as they face the
President on such occasions. Appar-
ently this represents a victory for
Mr. Hagerty, who is an old-time
newspaperman himself.
: While the executive branch of
the new Administration will rely heavily on the big
build-up, in Congress the emphasis will be on investiga-
tion. Reds in government will be investigated, of course.
So will Reds in schools and colleges, and Reds in labor
unions, and Reds in general; it is not unlikely that in a
couple of years people will be looking back on 1951 and
1952 as years in which the witch hunts were fairly
restrained.
But ordinary wrongdoers will also be investigated.
Practically anybody who did anything in government
during the past twenty years is a fair target, since under-
neath all this investigating more and more one purpose
runs. If enough can be hung on the Democrats, future
elections ought to take care of themselves for quite a
while. Congress may not be able to do very much about
budget balancing and tax reduction in the near future, »
but if it can give enough Democrats a black eye it will
have accomplished its mission. The build-up and the
tear-down can work wonders if properly combined.
As all this gets under way, it must be noted that the
dominant note sounded thus far by the new Administra-
tion is one of sheer arrogance. The perfect example, of
course, is that furnished by Charles E. Wilson of General
Motors, whose like has not been seen around here for a
long, long time. With Mr. Wilson it was not solely what
he said, although that was hair-raising enough in all
conscience; it was also the way he said it. Somehow he
conveyed the impression that it would be a kind of
impiety for mere Senators to press annoying questions on
the head of General Motors. What was good for the
corporation was good for the country; so what earthly
difference could it make if the Secretary of Defense did
hang on to his holdings in the corporation? The divine
right of corporations has not been so unblushingly pre-
ie | 97
But the arrogance runs clear across ov boc It is
behind the proposal for a televised, soap-opera-style
_ Cabinet conference. It is implicit ia the selection process
which has turned the President’s Cabinet into a million-
aires’ dub. (In a glowing profile in Life, Secretary of the
‘Treasury Humphrey is quoted as commenting on Hem-
ingway’s ‘““The Old Man and the Sea”: “Why would
anyone be interested in some old man who was a failure
- and never amounted to anything anyway?’’)
Yet there is a faint sense of uneasiness beneath this
arrogance. It is arrogance on a tight rope, so to speak.
For if the new Eisenhower Administration is sitting
pretty right now, so is Senator Robert A, Taft. And
Senator Taft is sitting up on Capitol Hill, to which the
“=
POINT FOUR—AETER FOUR YEARS
The La nd-poor Farmer
Manchester, England
OST of the people in the world are farmers. In
Mu. United States, it is true, less than 15 per cent
of the people are engaged in agriculture, but in Asia and
Africa the percentage is between 60 and 70, Most farm-
ers ate extremely poor and show all the usual symptoms
of poverty—high disease and death rates, illiteracy and
superstition, poor housing, This poverty is unnecessary;
to end it is one of the major tasks of the second half of
the twentieth century. It is unnecessary because the means
to end it lie at hand. Asia and Africa and large parts of
Latin America remain poor mainly because the infor-
mation about how to increase production which has been
accumulating for two centuries in the Western world
has not yet been applied to their problems.
In Mediterranean countries where rice is grown the
yield is 4,000 to 5,000 pounds per acre. But in most of
_ Asia a yield of 1,500 pounds per acre is considered good.
Agricultural experts assert that it would be possible to
double the yield per acre in many of the underdeveloped
countries by adopting relatively simple practices. Better
W. ARTHUR LEWIS, professor of political economy at the
University of Manchester, is the author of a number of books
on economic problems. He was also one of the fe economists
who prepared the U. N.’s Report on Measures for the Eco-
nomic Development of Underdeveloped Countries. The
concluding article of this series on economic aid for under-
developed countries will appear next week.
98
eth dpiiteance can n perhaps be brol cen. Plenty of -
publican members rode in on Eisenhower's coat tails and 7
can be reminded of it. But still, Taft does dominate up "J
there. Also, it is twenty years since any Republican in J
Congress felt impelled to cooperate with the executive ~
branch or indeed to do anything except make trouble for 7
it. Republicans in Congress have developed a condi- _
tioned reflex about their relations with the White House. —
That reflex can probably be changed, but it will take
some political skill and tenacity,
Tt may be that the real question as the new Adiminis-
tration gets started is simply: “Who won the election,
after all?”
BY W. ARTHUR LEWIS
seed could increase the yield by 10 to 15 per cent—the
governments, of course, would have to establish more
seed farms together with systems for distributing the
seed. More general adoption of crop rotation would
also help. Pests eat much of the crop before and after
harvesting; greater use of insecticides and better storage
facilities would add 15 to 20 per cent to the amount left
for human consumers. Fertilizers would add another 20
per cent or so; most of the farmers in underdeveloped
countries have not yet learned to use artificial manures.
Above all, control of water is important. Wells, drainage
channels, irrigation canals, dams, and storage systems
raise the yield of the land tremendously.
Thus a major item in any program to aid the world’s
farmers must be agricultural education—informing the
farmer of the new techniques. The governments of un-
derdeveloped countries are only beginning to tackle this
ptoblem seriously. A large number of agents must be |
trained in agriculture and also in the inculcation-of 7
modetn methods. It is an expensive undertaking.
Another major need is capital—for irrigation and
drainage works, for roads, for processing, stotage, and 9
marketing facilities, for establishing seed farms and re-
search institutes, and, on the farm itself, for better equip- 4
ment, better livestock, more fertilizer. Some part of the 1 i
capital needed by agriculture can be provided by the —
farmers themselves, and one of the objects of rural credit »
societies is to encourage farmers to save and to invest _ 4
their savings in improving their farms, But farmets cane
a
The NATION
sources, me i
This suggests one of the falla-
cies in current discussions of eco-
nomic aid for underdeveloped
areas. There are those who say
that “backward countries would
get all the capital they needed if
they would clear the channels for
private foreign investment.” But
_ however effective private foreign capital may be in start-
1 . ing mew manufacturing industries in underdeveloped
- countries, the role it can play in the agriculture of Asia or
_ Aftica i is Obviously very small. The initiative in bringing
| mew techniques and new capital to the hundreds of mil-
: lions of small farmers in the world must be taken mainly
by their governments, If the Western world wants to help
| it must help those governments by providing trained per-
sonnel and sufficient material resources. The govern-
_ ments translate their difficulties into money. If they could
only get more money, they could work wonders in the
| villages,
_ JF THE first reason why farmers are poor is that yields
I Jow, the second is that each farmer has too little
land. For every person engaged in agriculture in the
_ United States there are about thirty acres of land under
; cultivation; for every person so engaged in India there
: ate about three acres. Increasing the amount of land per
_ farmer lightens the farmers’ poverty. One way to do
this i is to increase the total area under cultivation. Some-
_ times more land can be made suitable for cultivation by
E draining swamps, providing irrigation, getting rid of the
_tsetse fly, cutting off forests, building roads, and so on.
_ The cost of this work is often heavy, and it falls upon
B specihe governments, most of which are engaged
in such programs to the limit of their resources, Some-
times it is a matter of improving the farmer's equipment.
A family with a hoe can cultivate only two or three actes;
4 one with a plow and beasts can manage ten to fifteen
ie acres, one with a tractor can handle fifty acres and
ie upward. If the farmers are to cultivate more land, a
| prerequisite is a considerable investment in equip-
| ment.
The availability of land varies widely from country
- to country. There is plenty of arable land not yet
i cultivated i in Burma and Tanganyika; there is extremely
| little in India or China. If the cultivable area cannot be
ie enlarged, the way to increase the ratio of land to farmer
ta is to reduce the number of farmers—that is to say,
| provide additional employment off the land, which
means chiefly in manufacturing. In India at least 20 pet
| cent of the population now engaged in agticulture is
FT PEAT
ayo,
SA ae
” _— ¥.
ig ak
land. ‘These people are really unemployed. Put to work
still be done if this 20 per cent were to leave thie
in industry, they would add substantially to the nation’s
wealth, as well as improve the living standard of those
left behind on the land.
Industrialization and agricultural improvement always
go together. Improved methods give farmers more
money and so provide a market for industry; at the same
time the workers released from the land serve as a
labor supply for industry. Industrialization, in turn, pto-
vides a market for farm produce and employment for
surplus labor. To increase agricultural yields and to pro-
vide more employment in industry are the twin goals
of economic development.
But industrialization is as costly as pois im-
provement. There is the same problem of education—of
training the mechanics, the builders, the foremen, the
accountants, and all the other hundreds of skills without
which an industrial community cannot function. And
there is the problem of capital. The private investor can
build the factory itself, but the government must provide
communications, electric power, water supply, and the
whole expensive range of public utilities required for the —
operation of industry.
However you approach the problem of economic de-
velopment, you run up against the fact that most govern-
ments of underdeveloped countries are too poor to do
their part of the job, The governments are too poor be-
cause the peoples are too poor. A man cannot lift himself
by his own bootstraps, and neither can a country. If
you ate too poor to save, perhaps you can borrow. But
everyone knows that it is the rich who find it easy to
borrow, not the peor. Similarly, the flow of international
lending is toward rich underdeveloped countries like —
Canada and Australia rather than toward poor ones
like India and Nigeria.
In recognition of
the low borrowing ca-
pacity of poor coun-
tries, two institutions
have been set up to
enable the govern-
ments of these coun-
tries to borrow cheap-
ly—the United States =
government's Export-
Import Bank and the
United Nations’ International Bank for Reconstruc-
tion and Development. Both banks are well patronized
and do a useful job which is much appreciated, but they
do not fill the whole need. They finance only “self-
liquidating” projects, while much of the money required
for development has to go into projects that are not
2
99
4 - . =
lalate arene i ak Di A ce i Eat aa tac in gelato eo 2 ore ge
Pee ee ms
eee Lal ‘ + \ oats ene
ata il oe Ral ane On ala aces PEARL SE Soir ure, 5 ay
MERE ~
=
Sot eer ce
a
wh i iF
self Siquidanne A et aida project
ducing a commodity or service that can befold at ata price
high enough to pay for interest and amortization of
capital. Such an enterprise automatically provides the bor-
rower with the wherewithal to pay the loan. Thus money
can be borrowed for the construction of a railway, or
irrigation works, or a telephone system, but not for agri-
cultural education or an anti-malaria campaign,
ec, mats and non-self-liquidating proj-
ects, however, must often be developed side by side.
If there is no money for undertakings in the second cate-
gory, those in the first may prove abortive. One of the ma-
jor handicaps to developing backward countries, whether
by private or public, domestic or foreign investment, is
the inadequacy of the public services, Because education,
for example, is inadequate, there is a shortage of people
to devise and carry out development plans. Yet most
governments are too poor to support an adequate educa-
tional program, and they cannot borrow for the purpose
because education is “non-self-liquidating.”
To meet this difficulty the U. N. Report on Measures
for the Economic Development of Underdeveloped
Countries proposed the establishment of a United Na-
tions fund to make grants-in-aid to the governments of
underdeveloped countries for non-self-liquidating proj-
ects. Money from this fund, the report specified, should
be available only for research and education, public
health, farm credit, and rural public works. Initially,
while plans were being made and educational programs
launched, only small sums would be allotted, but the
countries. Its main oppanen in the United Nations has ~
been the United States, whose delegates have said that
while the United States is not averse to appropriating
sums for economic aid, as is shown by its current pro-
grams, Congress would prefer to make any substantial
contribution to underdeveloped countries through United
States agencies and not through an international fund.
The colonial powers also have their own agencies for —
helping their possessions.
Nevertheless, a case can be made for having a U.N.
fund side by side with any national agencies that may
exist. In the first place, the United States and the colonial
powers are not the only possible contributors. Countries ©
like Sweden, Canada, and Australia may wish to and _
should take part in this great international effort. Sec-
ondly, the underdeveloped countries prefer to receive
grants from the U. N. rather than from national agen-
cies. Their governments are anxious to preserve their
independence and are fearful of the strings that might
be attached to grants-in-aid from powerful countries like
the United States or Great Britain. They have expressed
this preference in the U. N. debates, both by their words
and by voting consistently in favor of creating a U. N.
fund. If the United States will agree to channel some
part of its aid program through the U. N., the U. N.
fund will come into existence, since most of the other
developed countries will follow its lead. If the United
States holds out, there will be no U. N. fund,
A LETTER TO PRESIDENT EISENHOWER
You Challenged Jim Crow oe
BY MARGARET JUST BUTCHER ~
Washington
URING your recent campaign, Mr. President,
D you were perhaps understandably cautious about
committing yourself on various specific civil-rights issues.
After all, you were trying to hold together many diverse
elements in your support. But the caution you exercised
in other directions served all the more to emphasize one
concrete commitment you did allow yourself to make—
your pledge to do all in your power to end segregation
in the District of Columbia.
Indeed, so strongly—and so repeatedly—did you ex-
ptess yourself on that subject that Senator Wayne Morse
MARGARET JUST BUTCHER is associate professor of
English at Howard University in Washington.
100
sponsored in the Senate a “District of Columbia
Civil Rights Bill” designed specifically to énd racial
segregation here. Introducing the bill, the Senator said:
“The President-elect has given his solemn ward time
and again that his Administration would stamp -out
segregation in the District.”
Now I know there have been disquieting reports that
you have changed your. mind on this issue since the
election returns were tallied. I prefer not to believe
these reports. I prefer to believe that you see Washing- =
ton, as many of us do, as a show window of our great —
country and hold. that as such it should represent the
best in American life and American democracy.
It will not be easy for you to redeem your pledge.
The prejudiced will work against you. Few of the reins 4
The NATION:
Af
‘ re he bo
4 ate
ae
Ive ashington’ s top social el
JN THE first place, it is your duty to appoint the three
—BDistrict of Columbia commissioners who by virtue of
Reorganization Plan Numbet 5 have direct control
over a number of boards, commissions, and agencies that
_ exert tremendous influence on the life of the District.
oem can see to it that the appointments go to men or
women whose prime concern will be to, insure equal
BE opportunity and privilege to ali whose welfare comes
under their jurisdiction. You can instruct them specifi-
Feally that you wish them to take an unequivocal position
| on all matters relating to civil rights.
: _ The District commissioners, for example, have direct
control of Washington’s welfare institutions and agen-
le cies. You could instruct them to eliminate segregation
i in the training schools for juvenile delinquents and
| otder the separation of the youngstets, not on a basis
r of color, but according to age, sex, and degtee of de-
' linquency. The commissioners could issue a direct order
: for the elimination of segregation in the Fire Depatt-
ment. They could investigate promotion procedures in
: the District Police Department, where at present no
_ Negro, in any precinct, holds rank above that of a pri-
iE vate except for a single corporal assigned exclusively to
_ boys’ dub work. |
' Using their power to issue licenses to restaurants, the
' commissioners could require non-discrimination pledges
F from the proprietors. If, as a recent Appeals Court de-
! | cision may have indicated, such action were declared
) illegal, you could still ask Congress for a law expressly
De eise the revocation of the license of any restau-
ie rant which deriied setvice for the reason of race ot
|
|
' color. i
| Your commissioners could be instructed to see that
if their-own appointments to vatious District boards and
| commissions were in line with your anti-Jim Crow policy.
; . Representatives of minority groups of persons with ¢s-
ie tablished reputations as fighters for minority rights
| should serve on such agencies as the Cosmetology Board,
D the Batbers’ Board, the Dental Board, the Accounting
|
Board—to name but a few. The fact that a Negro has
| served as chairman of the Parole Board should suggest
| to you that qualified local Negro citizens are available
be for appointment and can setve without ees dis-
turbance i in the community,
' In the light of your avowed stand against segregation
- in the District, Mr, President, your commissioners could
| be expected to see that no discrimination was practiced
~ in hiring, If they failed, it would still be possible for you
3 draft an F. E. P. C. act for the District and to submit
PN eiicdies a wholesome change of attitude in the medical
of ic public. 4 cael:
aacthhag of Neale the local medical society
profession. While neither you nor the commissioners can
interfere directly with the hiring practices of such public
utilities as the telephone company or the Capital Transit
Company, the District Public Utilities Commission might
investigate the effects of discrimination in hiring on rates
and service. The transit company, for instance, goes to
great expense to hire operators from as far south as the
Carolinas, while refusing jobs to local Negroes. Surely _
such policies ate reflected in our constantly inc ieok i
transit fares. ;
Si ALAS Apes bt is :
eet Se ED rere set Se Ee ee oe ee ete iid
HE District Board of Education is independent —
both of your control and of the commissioners’.
Moreover, the issue of school segregation is now before
the Supreme Court. Even so, it should be possible for you
to encourage, directly and indirectly, inter-group gather-
ings designed to prepare the community for the possible =
collapse of Jim Crowism in the District school system, =
While it is wrong to argue a moral case on the basis of =
expediency, I cannot forbear to remark that Washing-
ton is the center of America’s “Sell Democracy to the
World” program, and that what happens in our District _
schools happens, so to speak, in a fish bowl in which all _
the world can look. Thus we hope that the Supreme |
Court will remember this city’s vulnerability to world
censure when it rendets its decision. acer
I hope, Mr. President, that your Administration will
make every effort to hold the notable gains made in-
Washington under the last Administration. Secretary of
the furecioe McKay, for instance, could do no better than
to look for guidance in civil-rights matters to his distin-
guished predecessors, Mr. Ickes, Mr. Krug, and Mr,
Chapman. The fact that this department can administer =
a national-parks system without racial restriction suggests an
that non-segregation can work well in the District.
Recently a distinguished Wasaingiontan, presumably a -
candidate for public office, remarked: “I am for gradual
elimination of segregation.” What does he mean, I
wonder? Ten years? Ten generations? Ten millennia?
Or ten playgrounds, say, at a time? I hope, Mr. President,
that you will not succumb to the lure of that magic word
“gradualism.” We should be better off, I think, risking
a single violent reaction by removing Jim Crow simul
taneousiy from all playgrounds than risking a whole |
seties of disturbances by transforming playgrounds one _
at a time.
A prime necessity today i is first-class citizenship rights
for America’s minorities. I hope, with the hope tradi-
tional to American optimism, that in your new and
challenging role you can translate to living reality the |
principles to which all true Americans subscribe.
101
BOO OKS a and
Rise of a Labor Leader
SIDNEY HILLMAN, STATESMAN
OF AMERICAN LABOR. By Mat-
thew Josephson. Doubleday and Com-
pany. $5.
ATTHEW JOSEPHSON’S book
about Sidney Hillman is probably
as complete in its coverage of the de-
tails of Hillman’s life as any biogtaphy
could be. Certainly a most 4nteresting
life was led by this Lithuanian-born boy
who utilized his great native intelli-
gence, his basically sound education,
and his practical mind to become an
important labor leader in the United
States and in his later years played a
part in some of the political crises
which accompanied the great depression
of the ’30’s and the Second World War.
Mr. Josephson’s book is very thor-
ough; large parts of it appear to be
based on notes kept either by Hillman
or by those close to him during his
years of political activity and his strug-
gle for trade-union leadership. It gives
detailed information on how the prob-
lems must have appeared to Hillman
and those working with him at the time.
In reading this book many will find
themselves wishing that Hillman could
have lived to write his own memoirs
from a detached post-activity point of
view; his long-term evaluation of the
situation would then have emerged.
For the reader concerned with the
rise of the new type of labor union in
the United States this book is invalu-
able. The account of Hillman’s first
years and of the beginnings of the new
clothing workers’ unions is realistic and
well documented and offers a convinc-
‘ing picture of the attitude of the
general public, of industry, and of the
working people themselves toward the
union movement in the early 1900's.
Perhaps the most appealing section of
the book is that headed Boyhood and
Youth, a period which most of Hill-
man’s later acquaintances knew nothing
about. The picture of the Jewish com-
munity in Lithuania and Russia, of the
struggles of some young idealists to
escape from oppression, gives the reader
an understanding of the basic drives
102
a
‘aaa
iat
which were to carry not only Hillman
but others into the larger labor move-
ment of the United States. One realizes
from the beginning that Hillman’s life
in the labor movement was one of con-
stant warfare. The abortive labor move-
ment in Russia, Hillman’s flight under
the assault of reactionaries, the early
conflicts in Chicago, when his efforts to
found a union outside the domination of
the old A. F. of L. garment workers’
unions led to the death or injury of
several participants—all were marked
by violence and intrigue. The author
uses the phrase “contained excitement”
in several places to describe what others
also recognized as an element in Hill-
man’s courageous energy.
Although the warfare of the early
days appeared to subside as the new
unions gained strength and public recog-
nition of their usefulness, Hillman was
constantly involved in struggle, first
with the Reds or extreme radicals within
the union and later with the racketeers
who crept into the union and made alli-
ances with gangs on the outside. This
was real warfare with guns and street
fighting, shocking to the general public
and only now described from the point
of view of the Amalgamated unions and
Hillman himself. Basically, the fight was
to prevent the non-union shops from
infringing on the jurisdiction of the
Amalgamated and its contracts with em-
ployers. The affiliation of some union
members with racketeers was perhaps
the hardest blow ever dealt Hillman.
The whole era in which Hillman
worked to get public support and under-
standing for the labor unions is one of
great interest. His almost intuitive un-
derstanding of publicity and of the way
to obtain the attention and cooperation
of elements of society not connected
with industrial problems is well de-
scribed here. Hillman won the approv-
al of intellectual groups throughout
the country by his development of
services for union members which
proved to be a binding force for union
loyalty as well as a method of improv-—
ing their standard of living.
The setting up of banks in New York
and other centers of the garment in-
I the -
dustry—not just saving accounts but 1
real banks which took commercial ac- fe
counts and lent money on good security’ —
—the entrance of unions into the field ©
of building and operating housing |
projects for their members, the de- |
velopment of educational and other
welfare programs with union funds, all 4
these brought benefits to the Amalga- ‘
mated unions. The author credits Hill- 7
man with the introduction of these §.
ideas. The action of the union inlending fj
money to a depressed employer so that
he might stay in business and give em- ff
ployment to union members was, of
course, one of the brilliant uses of the *§
union’s banking facilities. The author |
stresses the fact that the Amalgamated
banks did not go under in the great de-
pression and that they paid every cent
to their depositors in the bank holiday.
The second half of the book, dealing ~ 7
with Hillman in his Washington or po- |
litical period, will arouse more contro- —
versy among trade unionists who did not
agree with Hillman. The abortive effort
to affiliate the Amalgamated with the |
A. F. of L., the formation of the —
C. I. O., the conflicts that developed in —
the C. I. O., and the battle between the 7
C. I. O. and the A. F. of L. are sketched 7
but not so completely developed as
Hillman’s earlier life and union activi-
ties. Hillman’s entrance into the federal
government and involvement in ad-
ministrative matters explain the meager
documentation of this sectioa. Undoubt-
edly he had no time for the notes and
analytical comments which made the
first half of the book so illuminating.
Mr. Josephson has discharged his task
well and the book will be widely read.
It will be of great value to students
of the labor movement and will be in-
teresting to persons who are concerned
only with an understanding of history.
One could wish there had been more
material available on the very last phase
of Hillman’s life and his reasons for -
taking part in the formation of the —
World Federation of Trade Unions.
Hillman’s ideas with regard to this and |
the degree of his understanding of the
great hazards of association with Rus- —
sian “‘trade unionists,’ with Sailliant of
The NATION, :
activity will some
day be made clear to Hillman’s inter-
"ested colleagues. FRANCES PERKINS
Hy.
_MacLeish’s Poetry
“COLLECTED POEMS, 1917-1952. By
| Archibald MacLeish. Houghton Mif-
E flin Company. $4.
. F)EADING for the first time the
‘+ collected poems of any poet—the
»span of his achievement, with all the
‘false starts and wrong directions—is
| often an awakening and rather hum-
“bling experience, and I think it is
especially so in the case of Mr. Mac-
Leish’s “Collected Poems.” There is, in
the first place, the volume, compact,
thick, fat with poetry—a real accom-
plishment in itself, to write so much.
For poets who last long enough to
a their collected poems are real
_ professionals, writers who have stuck
a to their desks over the years, and like
all professionals they are not ashamed
to offer their work in impressive quanti-
ies. Yet they have, too, the profes-
ie ional’s critical sense; they pate their
| volumes clean of surplusage. Mr. Mac-
" Leish has done these things admirably.
His book contains 407 pages of poetry
| and not a verse that shouldn’t be there.
_ Which is not to say that all the poetry
in this book is good. One can scarcely
ask Mr. MacLeish to erase great chunks
~ of himself. That is for us, the readers,
tee remorseless surgeons, to do. And
“we have hacked away at him pretty
i successfully during the last ten or fifteen
) years, amputating poems—major pieces
at that!—with unembarrassed abandon.
ii Mr. MacLeish made this easy for us by
- failing in his attempt to write affirma-
ie tively public poems, patriotic poems,
poems inspired by liberal enthusiasm.
_ Be succeeded, it is true, much better
fan many other poets who, during the
| depression years, were trying to do the
| satne thing, but still he failed. It is
| easy for us to cut away these poems,
| for if they are good sense, they are not
| good poetry. They seem to be almost
_ propaganda, frothy and bombastic, with
a forced folkishness and a loss of con-
| trol. I mean such poems as “America
wary 31, 1953
y,
.
“has left many poems fr
om this period
out of his book, but he has left enough
in to give the full flavor of the time.
It has been easy also to criticize other
of Mr. MacLeish’s long works. ‘The
Pot of Earth,’ “The Hamlet of A.
MacLeish,” “‘Actfive’’—these and others
seem to have been hung on a structure
outside themselves, usually a well-
known work of literature. They contain
within themselves no narrative ot dra-
matic content, and though they are
often brilliantly written, one’s interest
flags from such continuous reference to
a source outside the poem. In “Con-
quistador,” which remains excellent
treading, he broke away from a reliance
on previous structures and composed a
self-contained narrative without literary
references beyond itself. But one still
feels that there are tricks and unneces-
saty devices: the ellipses, the broken
phrases, the curious punctuation.
I said that treading these collected
poems is a humbling experience, and it
is true. For all those amputations, for
all our rusty scalpels and contrary diag-
noses, the patient lives. We are left
with little to say. Perhaps there wasn't
anything wrong with him in the first
place.
Mr. MacLeish’s short lyrics ate his
best poems. “You, Andrew Marvell’’ is
famous, but the other lyrics on time and
death, with the recurrent image of our
turning planet, seem to me, many of
them, just as fine, including such poems
as “Bahamas” and “The Old Man to
the Lizard” that are contained in the
section of the most recent works. The
love poems, and there are many of them,
written during every phase of the poet's
career and in every aspect of feeling, are
all excellent; they are composed with a
restraint and an exactness of language
that make them songlike, Elizabethan.
Among the latest poems are several that
challenge with vigor, bitterness, and yet
with good taste the cheapness and
stupidity of public life today in the
United States. And there is one, a reply
to T. S. Eliot, which makes the replies
we have had from younger poets look
like childish tantrums by comparison.
Finally, at the end of the book is
Mr. MacLeish’s latest Iong work, a
verse drama for radio éntitled “The
- Nation readers can avail themselves of 2
our offer to send them any book at the _
regular retail price post-free if payment _
The Bollingen Prize in Poetry, which
has become in a few years very obviously
the highest honor an American poet can
obtain, has just been awarded to Mr,
MacLeish. Thereby he joins more or
less officially the company of which his
“Collected Poems’ show him to have
been a member all along.
HAYDEN CARRUTH
The Communist Infection
REPORT ON THE AMERICAN
COMMUNIST. By Mortis L. Ernst
and David Loth. Henry Holt and
Company. $3.
ORRIS ERNST and David Loth
believe in combating communism
with the techniques of freedom. They —
have faith in the democratic process—in
the common sense of the people and in
the triumph of reason. They seem alto-
gether unafraid that Americans gener-
ally, given a choice, will choose the
gospel according to Marx and Lenin
“Explaining... with admirable warmth
and scientific precision...
the paradox of a man who
was at once
misunderstood and worshipped...
an extraordinary man
who had been called
everything from an idealist
to a demon.""—Saturday Review:
The Scalpel, The Sword
The BIOGRAPHY of Dr. NORMAN BETHUNE
By TED ALLAN & SYDNEY GORDON
At all bookstores $5.00
LITTLE, BROWN & CO., BOSTON 6, MASS.
Buy Your Books
through ““Vasion
is received with the order, or at the
retail vane plus postage if the book is
sent C.0.D. No C.0.D.’s outside the
United States. When ordering, please —
give name and author and publisher, if
possible.
Please address your orders fo
Miss Le Pach
THE READERS' SERVICE DIVISION
20 Vesey Street New York 7, N. Y._
a ee We geet ae ot eee ?
a = 7a >
ng a fe
in preference to the gospel according tof
Jefferson, that they will prefer totali-
tarianism to self-government. These are
old-fashioned ideas, but it is hearten-
ing to find them reasserted in a time
when, as the authors observe, the fight
against communism “‘has been a fight
based on fear and unfamiliarity, very
much like the fear and ignorance which
governed medieval reactions to the
dreaded plague.”
Messrs. Ernst and Loth undertook to
find out how people became infected
with communism, and how most of
those infected were cured, by question-
ing some three hundred former party
members. They discovered, among other
things, that the party is made up over-
whelmingly of native, white young
people with comfortable, middle-class
backgrounds and _better-than-average
education who joined, usually, for ideal-
istic reasons. The average duration of
patty membership is no more than two
or three years—about a quarter of this
time being spent in trying to get out.
The ratio of ex-Communists to present
party members is estimated at twenty to
one.
From the data they gathered, the
authors obtained some pretty shrewd
insights and formed a number of sound
but rather superficial generalizations.
Their book suffers a good deal from
their obligation to conceal the identity
of the ex-Communists whose cases they
present to illustrate their points. The
individuals are designated Edna E. or
Paul J. or Daniel H. and they never
come alive; like so many of the cases in
psychoanalytic texts they seem mere
purposes. They are difficult to ¢
guish from one another, and they af-
ford altogether inadequate support for
the sweeping inferences sometimes based
upon them. Many of the points made by
the authors seem entirely valid to this
reviewer, but it cannot be said that they
are proved by the case material.
One point which the case material
does seem to demonstrate incontrover-
tibly is that Communists and anti-Com-
munists combine to make an exodus
from the party extremely difficult. Mc-
Carthyism, it appears, is a Communist
technique; anyone who “deserts” the
party is likely not only to be ostracized
by his former associates but anony-
mously denounced by them as well.
And given the reluctance of the out-
side world to employ former Commu-
nists at any occupation other than
informer and _ professional witness,
withdrawal from the party has exceed-
ingly painful consequences.
Messrs. Ernst and Loth think that the
duration of party membership could be
appreciably shortened “if we could
create safely a climate in which it
would be as painless to give up the
party card as it is to drop a magazine
subscription.” To this end, they urge
repeal of the McCarran Internal Secu-
rity Act, abandonment of efforts to out-
law or drive the Communist Party un-
derground, compulsory disclosure of the
financial backing of the Communists and
all other groups striving to mold public
opinion, the addition of “a few clergy-
men, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociolo-
gists, and teachers’ to Congressional
Coming with the February 21 issue of...
/Vation
A NEW BOOK SECTION
designed to keep our readers abreast of all important new books as they
appear. Each week a well-known critic, chosen as an authority in his
field, will deal with what we consider the major book—or books—of the
wack in a full-length review. Other important new books will be dealt
with in thumb-nail reviews which will yet be complete enough to answer
the question: Do I want to read this book?
Featuring the first appearance of the new section, Simone de Beauvoir’s
new and provocative “The Second Sex” will be reviewed by C. Wright
Mills, author of “White Collar’ and other books.
* 104
against former Communists : save in sen-
sitive positions, a program designed to —
promote the rehabilitation and redemp- |
tion of Communists. =
The rank-and-file Communist re-
vealed by the Ernst-Loth study is not a
spy or saboteur; he is not even very
sinister. Generally speaking, he is a
deluded idealist or neurotic, seeking
submission and dedication, capable of
devotion to socially more useful and
humanitarian causes. This study offers
an important introduction to under-
standing the American Communist. And
such understanding is essential not alone
in dealing with the Communist problem
but in maintaining the patterns of
American democracy. ’
ALAN BARTH
“C’est la Vie”
THE LITTLE MADELEINE: THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOUNG
FRENCH GIRL. By Mrs. Robert
rigas E. P. Dutton and Company.
rps is the story of my girlhood. No
fact has been altered. Each char-
acter bears his, or her, own name.” I
take Mrs. Henrey’s word for it that this
record is true. But the authentic is fre-
quently dull and not invariably convinc-
ing. “The Little Madeleine” offers the
higher kind of realism: it deepens our
sense of life. Now I know Madeleine so
well that I could not define her. I know
Milou, her father, muscular, hard-
drinking, choleric, affectionate; Ma-
thilde, her mother, no patient Griselda,
with fairy fingers creating masterpieces —
of lingerie in the most squalid of the j}
Parisian slums; I know their relatives, |
their friends, their neighbors, their cas-
ual acquaintances by the score, every
one of them individual and unforget-
table; I know the noises and the smells,
the modest joys, the heartbreaking
struggles, the sorrows, the tragedies, of
Montmartre and Clichy, of La Grand’
Combe in the South, and Marais, and
Blois; and a French convent in England,
the queer cosmopolitan world of Soho,
the dinginess of the Seven Dials.
Realism worthy of the name—the
slice of life, the humble truth—is mi-
raculously rare. Céline, who describes
The NATION — |
en
| Journal d’une Ee de oops
tt hooses to horrify or to titillate. Mar-
uerite Audoux, in “Marie-Claire,”
ilters ugliness away. France, in
““Crainquebille,” cannot overcome his
| irony and pity. Flaubert never ceases to
ist be a conscious artist and a satirist. Only
| Maupassant at his very best, Katherine
re Mansfield, Colette, attain the same
purity. And even with them we cannot
| f elp thinking: ‘What fine observers!
! What masters of style!” No such words
} ae come to our minds in this
a language are TS one. hn
| with Montaigne, we were expecting a
book, and find a human being.
i. ; The outskirts of Ja Ville-Lumiére,
} some forty years ago, were strangely
| - dark, Books, drama, monuments, mu-
“seums, politics are never mentioned.
Religion—oddly enough, the Gals were
vaguely Protestant—hardly counts at
vali. A Franciscan is an aristocrat: es-
‘pousing poverty raises him above
‘worldly cares; the grinding destitution
* of the slums, on the contrary, has-ao
> place for spiritual luxuries. Madeleine's
parents are not degraded or brutish;
they might even be called good, Milou
is but a rough laborer; Mathilde is
» more refined. Yet her code is rudimen-
|. tary: do not get into debt, and do not
be seen on the streets without a hat.
| There is no righteous indignation
against the rich. The best customers of
a lingére are cocottes; they are
| daughters of the people who were
pe and clever; if successful, they
eserve admiration. “Elles font marcher
le commerce”: they are good for the
uxury trade. A grande cocotte,
Yvonne, is Madeleine’s heroine, be-
‘cause she possesses a marvelous collec-
tion of delicate underwear. Yet there
is no trace of cynicism in the book, no
salaciousness, no pornography. It is not
'maidenly, but it is healthily girlish;
| aware of the slime but unsullied. It is
profoundly moral in the classical sense,
moral as La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyére,
La Fontaine were moral, It is not in the
least disenchanted or morose. Ma-
| thilde and Madeleine would shrug their
_,shoulders at “Ecclésiaste,” that weary
31, 1953
and bhivid opens,
This world of Madeleine’s, I knew
it at close range, and indeed from with-
in; detached enough, however, to feel
from early childhood the holy wrath
from which she is so blissfully free. I
believed then as I do now in the funda-
mental Christian doctrine that wealth
is a presumption of. guilt. So I became
an educator and a reformer. Morally,
I chose the better part; or was chosen:
I could not otherwise. Artistically, how
gladly I would give my twenty serious
volumes for this one warm and lumi-
nous book! ALBERT GUERARD
MANNY
FARBER
HOUGH
“The Member of the
Wedding,” Catson McCullers’s
prize-winning play about the last days
of childhood, betrays its stage origin |
on the screen, it has been made into
a somewhat amusing, and moving,
sometimes improbable picture. Stanley
Kramer has a trick way of opening his
productions with a pastoral scene fol-
lowed by a sustained shot of the star
walking toward the camera: this one
starts at a fishing wharf, follows Julie
Harris home,-and anchors itself in an
ugly Southern kitchen where a small |
social circle—a tomboyish girl, her
seven-year-old cousin, and the family
cook—is viewed battling loneliness in a
way that sometimes harks back to Sar-
oyan or Tarkington types of humor. One
of the funnier scenes has to do with a
three-handed bridge game; they sit
around the table with much concen-
trated clumsiness and dreamy domestic
relaxation, with two of the players
moaning about the “rotten hands”’ until
it develops that the solemn little boy
cut up the picture cards because they
were so “cute.” Eventually, melodra-
matic things begin to happen—the boy
dies, the cook’s nephew is sent to the
pen, the girl runs away from home—
and then, for no reason at all, the movie
ends.
An interesting feature of the film is
that it makes use of a television-type
MAD SAM a ad ema, octet ;
, ae M2: ‘sate \F
; oi Ae a i
LISHERS COUNCIL !
© THE AMERICAN
BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION
© THE BOOK
MANUFACTURERS INSTITUTE
take pleasure in
ANNOUNCING
the Winners of the
1953
NATIONAL ;
BOOK AWARD
GOLD
MEDALS
ere. : Noe Saw
@ SV re SEAT SO Ee at ee
> ~~ aim Sinden
FICTION
° RALPH ELLISON
for INVISIBLE MAN
NON-FICTION iat
* BERNARD DeVOTO
for COURSE OF EMPIRE
POETRY
° ARCHIBALD MacLEISH
for COLLECTED POEMS:
1917-1952
The winner in each field was
selected by the following judges:
FICTION NON-FICTION -
Saul Bellow Francis Biddle
Martha Foley Julian P. Boyd
Irving Howe Marchette Chute
Howard Mumford Jones Ralph L, Rusk
Alfred Kazin
George N. Shuster
POETRY r
Leonie Adams John Malcolm Brinnin —
Oscar Williams Howard Moss
William Carlos Williams
The National Book Award is an annual
event in which the American book
industry has united to honor
American authors.
< Lert
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106
ie bee
pate very close «
“YL BRYNNER oes
breathless face ag
background such as turns up in Gillette’ 3
prize-fight programs. With intimate, re-
vealing image-maneuvers like this, the
movie attempts both to break its bond-
age to the play and to penetrate a
visual sphere new to movies. It starts
drifting in a strange sea made up simply
of motion and anatomy on a super-
realistic level; you are practically on top
of the human figure when, trapped in
the most intense motion and feeling, it
is cut off from the surrounding things
that make life seem ordinary and fairly
secure. And you are devoured by a
rather plain twelve-year-old girl, her
bound-in misery, her perspiring inten-
sity, her boniness and impulsive hair
cut.
This is a good example of a “direc-
tor's picture,’ crammed with vivid de-
tails none of which falls quietly into
place. The main character, the gawky
girl, is an unspectacular sort who suffers
from every stigma known to childhood,
and Director Zinnemann allows Julie
Harris to play the role in the manner
of a cannibal chewing up a rare hunk
of beef. Along with her flexible voice,
which blends Baby Snooks with a sour,
muted violin, she has an elegantly active
pair of hands which clutch, pluck,
drum, and posture in a rhythm that is
peculiarly out of key with the rest of
the acting, talk, and atmosphere. While
Miss Harris eats a bit of stew like
Marlon Brando playing an eccentric
Bennington College student, Zinnemann
brings out a small, select group of weird
people. Among them are a smooth Har-
lem-type dresser who doesn’t feel con-
spicuous carrying an unboxed silver
trumpet through a small town and asilly
child who minces-about the room like
the most professional Mae West im-
personator.
When the more normal characters en-
counter abnormal behavior (the girl’s
determination to .go along on her
brother’s honeymoon), they provoca-
tively shift into the unreasonable—that
is, the father brutally yanks the girl out
of the car and throws her on the side-
walk, where she is stared at unmercifully
by queasy neighbors. It is as though
Zinnemann, along with a lot of his
sensitive colleagues—Kazan, Wilder, et
al—tried to show only the oddest
members of the human race.
ee soloists in the performance of - |
Handel’s “Israel in Egypt’ issued by
the Bach Guild are not as good as they
should be; but their arias and duets are
fewer and less important than the —
superb choral sections, which are sung
well by the combined Berlin Chamber
Choirs with good playing by the Berlin 9
Symphony under Helmut Koch's direc- «
tion. We are informed that some pas- ~
sages are omitted that were not original- “ff
ly composed for the work, and others |
omitted “in accordance with usual prac- |
tice’; and I would question the omis- —
sion of what Tovey describes as “a great
burst of slow eight-part harmony” to ©
the words And Israel saw that great ©
work ... The original English text and
the German of the performance are
supplied.
The Bach Guild offers Schiitz’s St.
Matthew Passion with the same com- ~
bined choral groups and for the most ~
part better soloists, including the tenor |
Max Meili as the Evangelist, cenducted
again by Koch. I have found the long
stretches of recitative with brief choral
episodes uninteresting; but the Sym-
phoniae Sacrae Nos. 9 and 10 sung by #
Meili with strings and organ on the #i
fourth side are more engaging.
Of the Bach Cantatas Nos. 122 “Das
neugeborne Kindlein” and 133 “Ich
freue mich in dir’ on another Bach
Guild record I find the second moder-
ately engaging, the first not. The soloists —
and Vienna Kammerchor and State
Opera Orchestra under Michael Gielen’s
direction are excellent.
Bach’s Ascension Oratorio, the Can-
tata No. 11 “Lobet Gott in seinen ©
Reichen,” of which there is a perform- —
ance in English with beautiful singing jj
by Kathleen Ferrier on a London récord, jf!
is now to be had in German on a Lyti-
chord record. Again it is only the choral
passages, and especially the closing cho-
rale fantasy, that I find impressive. The
soloists, except for the tenor whose - |
singing lacks force, the Swabian Choral J}
Singers, and the Stuttgart Bach Orches- of
tra under Hans Grischkat’s direction are Jit
very good. q
The Motets for Christmas and other §
The NATION, |
Chorale get to be fatiguing.
i S has issued a group of lovely
canzonets by Farnaby, sung well by the
Oriana Singers under Charles M.
‘Hobbs’s direction, and several charming
Farnaby pieces for virginals, played very
seautifully by Blanche Winogron.
London offers a number of Schubert
so: gs, ranging from the well known
at beautiful “Nacht und Traume,”
“Der Jiingling an der Quelle,” and “Det
Jungling und der Tod” to the less fa-
miliar and less interesting “Der Schiffer”
and “Ganymed,” sung well by Gerard
Souzay with good accompaniments by
Jacqueline Bonneau.
And London gives us Mahler’s “Das
Lied von der Erde” performed with im-
_ pressive mastery by Bruno Walter with
| ‘Ki thieen Ferrier, Julius Patzak, and the
- Vienna Philharmonic. Hearing the work
| again after a considerable interval I
ave been struck as before by the way
‘Mahler’s mind is always working, and
always with freshness and individuality,
Band how by this constant activity it
| holds interest even when it is excessively
Es ong-winded, as in the closing song of
the work. —
| The activity is most evident and
“fascinating in the sparing and fas-
‘tidious use of the enormous orchestra;
and the first thing to mention about the
performance is the remarkably beautiful
playing of the Vienna Philharmonic,
which is reproduced with a clarity in
quiet and space, a fidelity to the original
*sound—including this time the sound of
t Violins—that make this, for me, Lon-
| don’s highest recording achievement to
4: te. The slight distortion of Ferrier’s
| Deautiful voice in the last climax is neg-
ig ligible; but Patzak’s struggle with an
old voice is a major defect in the three
“songs in which he sings. The orchestra
| is not as superbly reproduced in the
; 1936 Columbia performance; but Kull-
leman’s singing is better, and Thorborg’s
Lh: , in addition to its beauty, an ex-
bressive intensity that is lacking in
t Ferrier’s.
bs On the fourth side of the London
ecords Ferrier sings three of Mahler's
kert songs with the orchestra—“‘Ich
der Welt abhanden gekommen,’
atmet’ einen Lindenduft,” and
Mitternacht.”
Pe]
A Concerned Reader
Dear Sirs: Your announcement of forth-
coming changes in The Nation, includ-
ing the departure of Margaret Marshall
as book editor, raised. certain doubts
in some of your readers’ minds, and the
reference to these changes in the Janu-
aty 19 issue of Time—however distorted
it may prove to be—converted these
doubts into suspicions. Please do not
consider this letter as a “‘protest” but as
an expression of fear which I sincerely
hope will prove unwarranted.
For some time I have been disturbed
by the tone and attitude of a number of
your political writers; I shall try to illus-
trate by an example which seems typical
(Jet me make clear that I do not wish
to quarrel with one particular writer).
The January 17 issue contains a piece
on the Point 4 program by Paul A.
Baran, who uses a few legitimate and
important criticisms of Point 4 as the
‘basis for a vitriolic attack on the whole
program, conducted in a tone of hos-
tility clearly excessive for the facts pre-
sented. His article carries, from the
outset, the assumption of an entente
between writer and reader that Point
4 is just another corrupt capitalistic plot
whose sole intention is to exploit colo-
nial peoples for the benefit of Western
reactionaries, while it is being presented
in a benevolent guise to deceive un-
suspecting progressives: (Reread just the
opening two sentences, for example, and
note the powerful and uncalled-for load-
ing against Truman.) The crudity of
this sour and “alienated” point of view
has been matched too often, I think, by
other of The Nation’s political articles.
As long as more rational liberal criti-
cism of American policies appears in
The Nation the magazine will be worth
supporting. And. al/ the points of view
the magazine presents will get consider-
ation from readers like myself. But the
best writing and thinking now appear to
be concentrated in the “Books and the
Arts” section. Without the book col-
umns—and drama and music—of the
present Nation 1 doubt if I should con-
tinue my subscription.
And the over-all appearance and ef-
fect of The Nation, should the book
section be cut down or changed, may
be sufficiently altered, it seems to me,
so that many people who do not now go
along with Time’s view of The Nation’s
editorial policies, and who do buy the
magazine primarily for the news and
editorial features, may decide the new
Nation is less valuable, narrower ia
viewpoint, than the old. .
A new format that cuts printing
costs and enhances the physical appear-
ance of the magazine—particularly
your unfortunate covers—seems like a
good idea, but “economies in space and
personnel” that cut down the present.
book section seem foolish from any
viewpoint. Time for a change? If Miss
Marshall, “an able and discerning
critic,” as you say, “has been responsible
for the integrity and high standards
maintained by the book section,” what
better way to carry out “the firm inten-
tion of the editors to preserve those
standards” than by retaining a
Marshall? Please reconsider.
Cambridge, Mass. PAUL BERTRAM
a Z may, oe A gts . : ie ae.
Pre ee ee ee ee ee
. - — : s
Ce hie tT es
[Time’s story was a distortion. Its
editors. asked for and received from us
a detailed statement on the changes
The Nation was planning. They ignored
it except for the word “economy,”
which they put in quotes, and played
up the untrue implication that Miss -
Marshall was dropped because of pa-
litical differences. The single motive
behind the staff reductions was a need
with which we could no longer tempo-
rize, to cut casts: politics had nothing to~
do with the case, as we hope to prove
week by week, Beginning F february 21
the book section will appear in a new
form but will be fully as authoritative
and independent as it has been through-
out its honorable history. We suggest
that the author of the above letter and
other anxious readers withhold judg-
ment until the evidence is in.
We consider Mr. Bertram’s criticism
of Professor Baran’s article a bit
“loaded” —as he does the article itself.
We expect, however, to print a full dis-
cussion of this controversial piece in a
later 75sUé.— EDITORS THE NATION, }
Where the Democrats Erred
Dear Sirs: The really blunt fact for the
man who voted for the Democratic
Party in 1932 and 1952 to face is not
that the party had been in .power for
twenty years, but that he is twenty years
older, and the things that caused him to —
vote as he did then do not apply in the
same way now. It is well, of course, not
107
to forget 1932, but there were many
Democratic strategists who could think
of nothing else. This was one of the
major reasons why the Democrats didn’t
win the last election. It seems to me that
among the other important reasons are
these:
First, the Republicans took the initia-
tive on the issues. “Korea, communism,
and corruption” was the simplified spell-
ing for the confusion that dominated
the thinking of most voters. That the
issues were inaccurately defined, or at
best oversimplified, was not important
to the majority of voters. It was enough
that the Republicans had set forth on a
“crusade” to clear up the confusion.
The Democrats were forced to fight
the campaign on the stage set by the
Republicans. No other stage was possi-
ble, since the Republicans had chosen
the most comprehensive setting and the
most powerful psychological symbols.
In this setting, basic principles (which
have been the Democrats’ tour de force
for twenty years) were lost. Adlai Ste-
venson did an incredibly astute job of
“talking sense” to the American people,
but on a stage of overwhelming non-
sense. Had the Democrats takén the.
initiative themselves and defined the
issues more properly, had Stevenson
earlier in the campaign dealt forthright-
ly and aggressively with the real issues
behind Korea, communism, and _ infla-
tion, he might have won.
Second, the real issues were far more
complex than the majority of American
voters were willing to admit. Behind
Korea there are innumerable problems
of principle, strategy, and tactics, of
organization, of diplomacy. Behind
communism there is the whole problem
of world revolution and progress, free-
dom and coercion, the responsibility of
the United States to the peoples of the
Asiatic and free Western worlds. Be-
hind corruption there are the problems
not merely of private and public moral-
ity, but the morality of competitive eco-
nomic and political patterns and prac-
tices. The average man senses all this
but is not ready to admit it. He grasps .
at any straw in the wind that promises
to reduce this complexity to simple
terms. Eisenhower’s promise to go to
Korea offered the voter a dramatic and
simple way out of a complex situation.
The Democrats in the person of
Stevenson offered wisdom, courage, and
faith to combat these problems while
the Republicans offered chiefly expedi-
ency.
Third, the Republican definition of
the issues capitalized on the average
voter’s fears and prejudices. Expediency
108
=
10
11
12
13
15
17
19
21
23
24
27
28
29
80
1
2
8
a ae Soi
; ee 1\4
= “Crossiaera Puzzle No. 501 —
BY FRANK W. LEWIS 2 ae
ACROSS
If the first hyphen were a comma, it
could be dramatic action on the side.
(4-2-4)
Look especially at each end! (4)
and 23 But don’t afterwards, if you
want to get home safe. (5, 2, 5)
The G.I.’s hard at work on K.P.,
perhaps. (7)
Shields that give way? (8)
Does this water-lover come back to
soak? The other way around,
rather! (5)
What to do with a dog, if small?
(5)
Calls to account Miss Browning’s
introductory remark?
Represented as being sent very fast.
(9)
This is more than a round stopper,
as an interjection! (5)
See 10 across.
The expense of plain cotton fabric
in Australia? (8)
11, in a sense, might be less dirty.
(7)
An inclination to be an angel in
disguise. (7
Sort of weight put on around the
middle? (4)
False name, or sort of man who
looks good in blue? (10)
DOWN
See 7 down.
To quail, usually before part of
those who count. (7)
“kes this up, and eat this fast.
) ;
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
requests to Puzzle Dept., The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, New York.
q
nd
\
ae
r
”
as
BE AE tes i
<i Ne One a eee YS
er eR ch gh mater
4 The way one might call contractions
a body of language. (9)
5 This could be the height of sedan
Soar en ee (5)
7 and 1 down The sounds of the
devil’s footsteps? (7, 4)
8 The sort of girl Gladys found in
Scandinavian mythology. (10) 1.
9 Sounding agreeable, like an insect ©
on an animal? It’s the other way ~
around! (8) 7
14 Supplements what some people lose ~
in the operation. (10) of
16 The chief of South African ;
migrators? (8) H
18 Forms both ends of the vertical, but
it’s just plain lousy! (9)
20 Connected with the charges at
kindergarten, perhaps. (7)
22 Bill commonly associated with
Dodgson’s father. (7)
24 Fixes the rent, perhaps, or
confounds the imprecated. (5)
25 The gentleman referred to in 22
feared his might have been
injured. (5) i,
26 Ishmael’s mother has noe aspiration a
for culture! (4)
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No, 500
ACROSS :—1 RECITATIVE; 10 CHIMERA; 11
CLIMATH; 12 PUBLIC ‘PROPERTY; ‘14
UNRESTED; 15 ORISON; 16 EATING; 18
UNIVERSE; 22 TELLERS WINDOWS: 24
INTONED; 25 ELIDING; 26 EWE A
METRONOMBS.
DOWN: RECAPTURED; 2 CLIMBER ; 3B)
THE MISSING LINK; 4 TRAMPLH; 5 VIC-
TOR; 7 HEARTHS; 8 SEEM; 9 FIRE PRB- *
VENTION; 18 UNDARSIGNS! 17 TRESTLB;
19 and 6 NOW HAR THIS; '20 RHODIUM; |
21 BRIDLE; Vos aN a
‘|
' oe 3 2
ground rules."" Address
The Natio .
actly ‘where one is moe or what is
| to happen Creates prejudice against
ie “things as they are.” In 1948 the major-
: ry of American people were not ready
for a change because it was relatively
dex where Truman was going, and the
majority was content to go with him. In
1952 the Korean war had intercepted
the line of direction, and a relatively un-
_ known candidate was the Democratic
: standard bearer. The disclosures of
“scandal” and treason in high places,
_ the rise of McCarthyism which placed
| almost every public official under suspi-
ir cion, and the increasing economic ten-
_ sions represented in the repeated wage-
_ Price conflict removed from the voter
iF the props of confidence and stability he
_ had long felt and associated with Demo-
cratic leadership.
i The Republicans did not need to ask
in 1952 as they had asked in 1948,
i “Had enough?” They had only to ex-
O
PUBLICATIONS
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; - PEACE, WAR & YOU by Jerome Davis.
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: paid. Wellington Books, 346 Concord,
| i: nt, Mass.
_ pBOOKSAND from the
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The NATION
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BArclay 17-1066
ARY 31, 1953
it become worse. In promising simply
to end the Korean war, to rout the Com-
munist menace, and to clean house the
Republicans answered the need and
fears of 32,000,000 Americans.
The Democratic Patty was not un-
aware of the existence of these fears and
prejudices. But it mistook them to be
the same as those current prior to 1932,
It was a great mistake of the party to
reprint news photos of Hoover bread-
lines and street-corner apple peddlers
and to attack the Republicans for their
failure two decades ago. Although the
basic Republican philosophy may not
have changed, the world and the United
States have. The fears and prejudices of
that time are not those of 1952. In this
respect the Democratic Party revealed
its own sense of confusion and betrayed
its own principles of creative politics,
It should have done far better in exor-
cising the demons of fear and prejudice,
and it could have if it had exorcised it-
self of the “twenty years ago” nostalgia.
Knowing the basic Republican forces
to be anti-social, it is easy to assume that
the people were defeated. Yet that re-
mains to be seen. Perhaps the destiny of
America will be made more manifest
by the enthronement of the very powers
that represent a refusal to understand
that destiny. This may prove to be liber-
alism’s great opportunity to reanalyze
the course of liberalism and revise its
patterns—which in many cases have be-
come antiquated and ineffective,
FRED ZIMMERMAN, Pastor,
St. John’s Evangelical
and Reformed Church
Powhatan Point, Ohio
‘CONTRIBUTORS
eae ===
FRANCES PERKINS, formerly Secre-
tary of Labor, is a member of the United
States Civil Service Commission.
HAYDEN CARRUTH, formerly editor
of Poetry, is on the staff of Intercultural
~ Publications.
ALAN BARTH, editorial writer on the
Washington Post, is the author of “The
Loyalty of Free Men.”
ALBERT GUERARD, professor emer-
itus of comparative and general litera-
ture at Stanford University, is the author
of ‘The France of Tomorrow’ and
other books,
50 Guna to FOREST HOUSE
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to the alert citizen and student of world
affairs, Professor Tansill’s book is equally
unique and invaluable as a textbook for
university and college classes. It is the
only up-to-date and comprehensive text-
book available for courses in general or
world diplomatic history from 1918 to
(1942, as well as for recent American di
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ACK OR book is likely to remain ... the classic
7 . work on the genesis of the second World
: / War” HARRY ELMER BARNES
Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941
by Charles Callan Tansill, Georgetown University
@ “The main narrative rests largely on official diplomatic correspondence, which is
digested with clarity and skill; especially for the years 1935-39, Dr. Tansill has
exploited much hitherto unused material.” —U. S. Quarterly Book Review
@ “It is the most up-to-date and one of the most scholarly pieces of revisionist writ-
ing on the causes of America’s entry into the Second World War yet to appear.”
—THOMAS H. D. MAHONEY, World Affairs
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@ “To the work of the World War II ‘revisionists’ . . . Professor Tansill now adds
a much more weightily documented volume . . . a work of great learning.”
—JULIUS W. PRATT, American Historical Review
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Tenants Must Be Loyal
San Francisco
VERY hot political issue that got
its first public airing in San Fran-
cisco has been dropped back into the lap
of Congress by the Housing and Home
Finance Agency.
On July 5, 1952, Congress passed the
Gwinn amendment to the Independent
Offices Appropriation Act for 1953,
which provides that no member of any
organization designated as subversive by
the Attorney General shall occupy feder-
ally aided housing. Enforcement of the
loyalty clause, the amendment stipulates,
is to be by local authorities.
In mid-July John Taylor Egan, Com-
missioner of the Public Housing Ad-
ministration, dutifully advised all his
agency’s field offices of the amendment
and instructed them to write compli-
ance clauses into all new yearly con-
_ tracts under which local public-housing
authorities receive federal funds. Local
housing authorities signing new contracts
or amending old ones with the Federal
Public Housing Administration promised
to review the ‘‘subversive'’-membership
status of all adult residents of the
housing covered by the contracts,
Two months after passage of the
amendment local housing authorities
were still awaiting clarification of means
of enforcement to come from Washing-
ton. Then on September 13 San Fran-
cisco newspapers reported that John
Melville, Federal Public Housing Ad-
ministrator for the San Francisco Bay
Area, had announced that some 150,000
adults living in 40,000-units in the Bay
Area would be required to sign affidavits
that they did not belong to “subversive”
organizations. :
Affidavits would be distributed about
November 1, by which time Mr. Mel-
ville hoped that the Attorney General
would have supplied a suitable “‘subver-
sive’ list that could be duplicated and
mailed to tenants. The Attorney General
has now indicated that the list compiled
for the federal employees’ loyalty pro-
gram will be used.
Strangely enough the only official
announcement that affidavits were to be
required came from the San Francisco
office of the Public Housing Administra-
tion. Some time after it was issued,
there were reports that Melville had
learned of the plan for implementing the
Gwinn amendment at the local level
through informal talks with Wash-
ington; apparently these sources then
decided to clam up and gave the infor-
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mation to no other local ea But in
dividual citizens in the Bay Area were
acutely concerned, and the Nonorl "
California office of the American Civil”
Liberties Union promised legal aid in
testing the amendment in the courts. 7
The A. C. L. U. felt confident that a=
clear-cut verdict of unconstitutionality —
could be won in a test case brought by ©
a tenant of impeccable anti-Communist ©
record. But such a case would have to”
wait for some overt move to enforce the ©
amendment by a local authotity. “a
Since September the Housing and ~
Home Finance Agency has been quietly —
exploring the legal obstacles to enforce- ~
ment of the Gwinn amendment. The |
Attorney General has indicated that 7)
since the task of prosecuting violations ; |
would devolve on him he should pass ~
on the mechanism set up for implemen- -
tation. Also to be considered is the |
statement made by Senator Maybank on |
the floor of the Senate prior to passage
of the bill to the effect that the con- ~
ference report clearly indicated the view
of all the conferees that the “principle —
embodied in {the Gwinn Amendment} ©
should be made applicable and applied |
uniformly to all housing assisted by the |
federal government by loan, grant, in-
surance, guaranty, or otherwise.”
After consultation with the Attorney
General and the various agencies im- |
plicated Raymond M. Foley, adminis- @
trator of the Housing and Home Finance
Agency, announced on November 28
that in his opinion the Gwinn amend- —
ment could be applied only to federally |
assisted low-rent public housing until
further legislation was enacted by Con-
gress and recommended that Con-
gress repeal the amendment unless it §
chose to enact the necessary legislation. —
Since Congress would not meet until
January, the Housing and Home Finance
os hte Ae
ire
e pauthorities, whether or not they
tributions contracts containing the com-
pliance pledge, to implement the ~
Gwinn amendment by requiring the
affidavit now okayed by the Attorney “
General. Housing agencies in other
cities, among them Newark and New
York, have adopted this policy.
JUDITH SEGARD :
Judith Segard is a San Francisco writer. ©
; ae 176
The Shape of T a
: Fait Accompli in U. N.
A foretaste of how the new “Administration plans
_ to operate in the United Nations was offered by Am-
_ otder a loyalty check on all Americans employed there.
_ Since the General Assembly is scheduled to discuss staff
relations when it reconvenes on February 24, the ques-
tion arises: Why this hasty move? The answer can only
be: to present the session with a fait accompli.
It was evident at the close of the first half of the sixth
session that a large number of delegations were disturbed
by the general smear of staff members, by the secret
agreement between Trygve Lie and the State Department
on American nationals employed at the U.N., and by
Mr. Lie’s immediate acceptance of the controversial
recommendations made by the panel of jurists he had
set up to advise him.
_ ___The screening process accepted by Mr. Lie is already
_ in operation. Mr. Lie will no doubt take refuge in his
right under the Charter to make all decisions in adminis-
trative matters, But one wonders how he will explain his
+ acquiescence in the unilateral assumption by the United
_ States of the right.to pass on the qualifications for em-
_ ployment of its nationals, when this right was explicitly
_ denied to all countries by the commission which drew up
the Charter.
Half-of the 4,000 employees of the United Nations
. are not Americans. Will the United States demand that
they be screened too? If so, by whom and on what basis?
_ Will loyalty to their own governments be the test? Or
to the United Nations? Or to the United States? And if
_ other governments refuse to screen their nationals, or if
the screening is inadequate, what then?
. Inauspicious Beginning
Obviously Americans disloyal to their country, or
spies and other foreign agents operating in the United
States, have no place in the internatienal organization.
But we see no reason why decent employment procedures
could not have been worked out in agreement with the
| U.N. delegations, especially since the United Nations has
no secret information of any intrinsic value. That there
is no Becca eee involved is indicated by the fact
sha:
ees ~/
NEW YORK « SATURDAY «+ FEBRUARY 7, 1953
_ bassador Lodge, whose first act as chief delegate was to -
AMERICA *"S LEADING LIBERAL WEEKLY SINCE 1865
NuMBER 6
that “full field investigation” by the F, B, I. of 345.
Americans in key posts could take as long as a year.
The screening operation now called for by Mr. Lodge,
which conforms to ex-President Truman’s executive order
and goes even beyond the jurists’ recommendations by
making “reasonable doubt” as to loyalty and suitability
the test of employment, will do more harm to the pres-
tige of the United States than any delay which might be
occasioned by orderly procedures. Is the screening opera-
tion by United States officials of United States nationals
on United Nations territory, with no advance notice to
staff and less than forty-eight hours in which to fill out
complicated questionnaires, an example of the new con-
form-or-else policy? It is certainly not an auspicious
beginning for the new Administration’s relationship to
the United Nations.
What, No Honeymoon?
Even those observers who viewed the marriage be-.
tween Mr. Eisenhower and the Republican right-wing
as a shotgun affair, expected that harmony would reign
during the honeymoon. Yet before the confetti has been
swept up, the newly-weds have started squabbling about
who is to wear the pants. According to the Wall Street
Journal of January 30, Congress, dominated by die-hard
members of the G. O. P., “clamors to run the Washing-
ton show. .. . If Ike fights back, there could be a nasty
row. G. O. P. Congressional leaders won't give ground ©
easily. One reason: There's not an ‘original Eisenhower
man’ among them.”
Within a week of the inauguration moves were made
on “The Hill” threatening the attainment of two of
the President’s pledged objectives—reorganization of
the machinery of government and a balanced budget.
Despite warnings from Budget Director Dodge both
the House and Senate committees on Government Opera-
tions voted to permit the vetoing of any reorganization
plan by a simple majority of those present in either
House instead of by a majority of the full membership
as is the case now. Although this change will clearly
hinder the achievement of greater efficiency and economy,
there are some indications that the-President will submit
to the weakening of his authority in this sphere.
Meanwhile Representative Daniel A. Reed, the primi-
tive New York Republican who presides over the House
Ways and Means Committee, has introduced a tax bill —
EDITORIALS
Ae The Shape of Things 109
sO} Formosa Blunder Lil
mee Lattimore the Scholar 112
ARTICLES
Rendezvous in Santiago by J, Alvarez del Vayo 114
100-Billion-Dollar Grab by Bruce Catton 115
The Purges: Villains and Scapegoats
by Mark Gayn 117
Justice in Jersey City by William Murray 119
Point 4—After Four Years
World Action on a World Task
by Stringfellow Barr 120
The Doomed Valley by Edgar Perry 122
Proposals for Peace—VI by Léon Jouhaux 124
BOOKS AND THE ARTS
Poems: Songs for a New America
by Charles G. Bell 125
The Problem of Hope by Perry Miller - 126
A Great Spaniard by Mildred Adams 127
An Indispensable Source by George Genzmer 128
Vision versus Facts by Thomas J. Hamilton 129
Dostoevsky as Myth-Maker by Jacob Korg 129
Books in Brief 130
“The Crucible” by Freda Kirchwey 131
Records by B. H. Haggin 132
‘Art by S. Lane Faison, Jr. 133
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS 135
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 502
by Frank W. Lewis 136
AROUND THE U.S. A.
Tenants Must Be Loyal
by Judith Segard opposite 109
i EDITORIAL BOARD
eae Editor and Publisher: Freda Kirchwey
Editorial Director Director, Nation Associates
Carey McWilliams Lillie Shultz
pets. Managing Editor: Victor H. Bernstein
Foreign Editor: J. Alvarez del Vayo
‘s Drama: Joseph Wood Krutch Masic: B. H. ee
Ps i Copy Editor: Gladys Whiteside
Beech Assistant Literary Editor: Caroline Whiting
Contributing Editors
Andrew Roth, Alexander Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus,
Keith Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W.Macmahon Ball
Business Manager: Hugo Van Arx
Advertising Manager: Mary Simon
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A,
by The Nation Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, tt ae Post Office
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3 9. Advertising
and Circulation Representative for Continental ene Publicitas.
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Three
years $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $1.
Change of Address: Three weeks’ notice is required for change of
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kes the new.
i Information to Libraries: The Nation is indexed in Readers’ Guide
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Articles, Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatie Index.
LETTE TLE TOOL EEL I EL LCL IE EC CS
110
the Treasury a chance to present its views. ‘Speak
Martin and Majority Leader Halleck are said to have
mildly deprecated this unseemly haste, which will cer- in
tainly add to the President's budget-balancing a
but Mr. Reed's claim that his bill will pass both Houses
appears to be well-founded. E
$i
Democracy’s Achilles Heel 4
Evidence of widespread enthusiasm for the world |
approach to world-wide social problems outlined by a
Stringfellow Bafr on page 120 of this issue can be found ~
in almost any day’s news. The guides who last year con- ~
ducted 385,000 persons through the U. N. headquarters ~
give convincing accounts of the interest and enthusiasm ~
shown by these visitors. And last week when Andrew W,
Cordier, executive assistant to the Secretary General, de- Hi
scribed the work of the U. N. to a thousand high-school
pupils from the five boroughs of New York—all mem- ©
bers of Junior UNESCO clubs—his remarks were re- |
ceived with loud applause and shouts of “Bravo!” 4 i
Unfortunately this interest and enthusiasm femain |
unorganized. A comment by Max Ascoli in The Re- ©
porter of February 3 is directly relevant: “. . . the |
Achilles heel of democracy is the international party
politics of the free nations. All traditions and interests
are represented by the existing parties except one: the
longing for supranational unity. This longing, no matter
how widespread, is too new ta have become politically
organized.” Most of the existing parties came into being
in a period when a national approach to social problems ©
was logical if inadequate. Today this approach is obso- ©
lete. Everywhete the problem is the same: to realign |
existing political forces so that progressive domestic poli- ~
cies will find their logical extension in foreign policy. A ©
world community requires political parties whose outlook |
is essentially world-wide.
Franco and Morocco
Events in Spain under Franco frequently combine the —
tragic and the absurd. Tragedy has been provided of late —
by a new wave of repression, with mass arrests in Batce-
Jona and new evidence of hunger in spite of the good |
harvest and the early prospect of American dollars. —
Comedy is to be found in the rapidity with which the —
regime changes positions and theories, Everybody will *
recall the enthusiasm for Islam expressed by the most |
Catholic and Apostolic government on earth on the eve |
of Foreign Minister Artajo’s recent crusade to the Mid-
die East. Every Falangist was ready to sacrifice his faith |
to win the favor of the Arab League, and Spanish Mo- a
The Natt
havior of re in North Africa.
__ Now overnight the pro-Arab policy has been dropped.
Aware that the unrest in French Morocco would cer-
_ tainly spread into Spanish Morocco, Franco has made
_ an about-face, even hinting that he will send troops to
_ the assistance of France if a serious situation develops in
_ French Morocco. Apparently he is ready to send Span-
_ iards to fight anywhere—possibly to avert the chance that
they might fight against him inside Spain. He is even
‘pfomoting the departure of “volunteers” for Korea,
-among whom are members of the former Blue Division,
_which fought for Hitler on the eastern front. Falangist
| pfopaganda is convinced that Spanish “volunteers” in
Korea will make the regime popular in the United States,
or at least sweeten somewhat the bitter flavor left by
recent American dealings with the fascist dictatorship.
National Book Awards
As principal speaker at the presentation ceremonies of
_ the National Book Award for 1953 Justice William O.
- Douglas rather blanketed the rest of the proceedings in
_ the press. In a moving plea for understanding of Asia’s
fight to an independent world policy, the Justice made
_ the interesting point that the Asian nations were isola-
tionist, “in the sense that America from 1890 onward
_. was isolationist,” rather than neutral.
But the occasion itself was noteworthy for other
" reasons. The awards of gold medals to Bernard DeVoto
' for “The Course of Empire,” and to Archibald MacLeish
for “Collected Poems, 1917-1952” were so right as to
be almost beyond comment. They demanded of the
judges nothing more than recognition of unchallenged
_ merit, The fiction award to Ralph Ellison for “Invisible
_ Man” was another matter. Highly controversial in sub-
stance, point of view, and manner of writing, this first
novel must have presented real difficulties. For it is
neither conventionally well made nor emotionally well
balanced. As Irving Howe wrote in his review in The
Nation:
Though immensely gifted, Ellison is not a finished
craftsman. The tempo of his book is too feverish, and
New Drama Critic
The Nation is-happy to announce that Harold
Clurman, long connected with the American theater
_ both as director and critic, will join the staff as Drama
Critic. Mr. Clurman’s first review will appear in our
issue of February 21—by which time we trust that the
new play, “The Emperor’s Clothes,’’ which he is direct-
ing will have established itself fora long and prosper-
ous run on Broadway.
ec? 1, , 1953
sm Ss
| oP die =
was re tyrannical be-
as
: os teh vee Ba Fen d
Siac meade: hice he tfles to over
: rf aie the reader, and usually he does; but when he
_ should be doing something other than overwhelm, when
he should be persuading or suggesting or simply telling,
he forces and tears.
But Howe also concluded that “it is one of the few re-
markable first novels we have had in some years.” The
fiction judges went even further, saying: “Mr. Ellison
has had the courage to take many literary risks, and he
has succeeded with them.”
Formosa. Blunder
RESIDENT EISENHOWER and Secretary Dulles,
during the campaign and lately from their high
offices, have been talking a lot about getting tough with
the Communists. They proclaimed their “liberation”
policy, then had to tone it down. They left our friends
abroad nervous and failed completely to satisfy the fire-
eaters at home.
Now the President, apparently feeling himself under
Berapeleion to translate words into action, has decided
to “take the wraps off” Chiang Kai-shek. In his State of
the Union message he formally announced a new direc-
tive, replacing ex-President Truman’s order of June 27,
1950, commanding the United States Seventh Fleet to
prevent the Chinese Nationalists from attacking the —
China mainland and blocking any mainland assault on
Formosa. Eisenhower's ruling maintains our navy’s pro-
tection of Formosa while giving the go-ahead to Chiang’s
troops for raiding the China coast.
Freeing Chiang’s soldiers to cross the Formosan Straits
may partly appease the China Lobby and its fellow-
travelers in Congress. Its military consequences will be
zero for a long time ahead. In fact, we have long since
torn up Mr. Truman’s neutralization order. The Chinese
Nationalists control a few dozen little islands between
Formosa and the mainland, and their troops have been
engaging in pinprick raids alortg the Communist shores,
Neither Washington nor the Seventh Fleet have inter-
vened against that violation of the Truman directive.
‘Fully aware that we were intently looking the other way,
Chiang Kai-shek would surely have enlarged these hit-
and-run sallies had he felt capable of doing so. He knows
that his army is incapable of attacking in force across the —
straits. His troops lack landing craft and weapons, even
assuming that they ate politically dependable. —
President Eisenhower’s removal of the legal—though
fictitious—ban on Nationalist armed action against Com-
munist China amounts to little more than shouting
“boo!” at Mao Tse-tung. But it has political implications
disquieting to America’s allies, as press reaction from
Western Europe and the United Nations amply demon-
_ strates. The British and others who have recognized the
111
with Chiang Kai-shek, France fears possible adverse. re-
percussions on its own war in Indo-China. There is a
tendency on the part of all our partners in the Korean
adventure to resent this new example of unilateral pol-
icy-making. And India, Burma, and Indonesia, whose
support in Asia is of high importance to us, have voiced
strong and unofficial disapproval.
This is merely the first of several moves which the
Eisenhower Administration is contemplating in East
Asia. Another possible measure is the imposition of a
naval blockade against China's entire coast. That too
could cause only minor damage to Communist China, for
the armaments which Peking imports arrive by rail and
air across Siberia. A naval cordon could not stop these
deliveries; it could serve only to immobilize an immense
number of our warships while antagonizing many of our
Asian friends. For instance, it would presumably inter-
cept the rice which, in exchange for rubber, Ceylon is
getting from China, What all such steps will do, in addi-
tion, is to postpone into an indefinite future the hope of
a negotiated settlement of the Korean war and of the
other Asian conflicts.
R. DULLES'’S speech last week—his first as Secre-
Ma: of State—can be said in retrospect to have set
the stage for such new maneuvers, Despite the haphazard
“off-the-cuff” style of delivery, it was without doubt a
carefully prepared address, and its meaning came through
hard and threatening.
What he said in essence was that the new Administra-
tion was going to try for a closer alliance with Europe
but that if Britain, France, and Germany could not get
together the United States would reconsider its relation-
ship to the Continent, In stressing the need for “‘effec-
tive unity” he implied that Britain should join the new
European army, a suggestion Mr. Churchill must surely
shave turned down in his talks with Mr. Dulles this week.
He more than implied that ratification of the German
arms treaty would be regarded as a test of the good faith
of both France and Germany. He made it plain that the
Administration planned new steps to end the war in
Korea, and in Indo-China too. He told “those suffering
under Communist slavery” that they could “count on
us.” These statements were freely interpreted abroad to
mean a new offensive in Korea and a liberation policy
for Eastern Europe, perhaps for Asia as well. To Euro-—
peans all this adds up to a new and more aggressive
foreign policy, with general war rather than peace as its
ptobable result.
Eisenhower's directive to the Seventh Fleet has tended
to confirm these fears. If to the military expert the de-
neutralizing of Formosa is only a blank cartridge fired to
arouse pleasing echoes in Congress, the sound is proving
far less pleasing to our friends overseas,
112
RUEL as ote ordeal GE Owen Le
for the victim it has not been without rich inciden- .
tal rewards for the rest of us. Of these none will be re- | &
membered longer than the statements which Dr. George ~
Boas and Dr. Harvey Wheeler have assembled in “Lattt- 4 |
more the Scholar.” * a
As Gerald W. Johnson points out in his foreword,
there has been a remarkable inconsistency in the mabe q
attack on Owen Lattimore. On the one hand he has been
assailed as the “chief architect” of our Asian policy and |
on the other as a clever journalist whose opinions catty ‘|
little weight. This inconsistency, Mr. Johnson notes, has ~
been forced upon his critics by the record, which shows {
that, far from planning our Asian policy, Lattimore —
steadfastly opposed the successive steps that led to dis-
aster. Once this became apparent—in the summer of
1951—his critics promptly shifted to the charge that he
was not, in fact never had been, a scholar. "4
To lend weight to the attack, they pointed out that al-
though Lattimore is director of the Walter Hines Page |
School of International Relations at the Johns Hopkins ~
University, he is not a Ph. D. and, aside from two terms |
at the Harvard Graduate School, received no formal col- @
i
legiate training. From this starting point the accusations #
ranged far and wide, with gossip columnists, radio com-
mentatots, pamphleteers, and here and there a disgrun- ,
tled academician joining in, No mention was made of —
the fact that Far Eastern studies are a comparatively new |
field of research in American colleges and universities —
and that a number of the most distinguished older men |
in the field had little opportunity for formal preparation, i
including Lattimore’s father, who, though he had never ©
been to college, was a full professor at Dartmouth for ©
twenty years. Forgotten, too, were the twelve years |
Lattimore spent on Central Asian studies in China, —
Sinkiang, Mongolia, and Manchuria, using source ma- —
terial in many languages. Nor did his critics mention the 7
recognition his work has won from learned societies,
including the medal of the Royal Geographical Society.
To meet this new assault, in which the professional &
hatchet men continued what McCarthy had begun,
George Boas, as an individual and not in his capacity as |
professor of the history of philosophy at Johns Hopkins, :
wrote to a group of American and European scholars |
whose attainments certified their competence to assess
Lattimore’s work as a scholar. He made it clear that their _
replies would be printed. These replies now appear in >
full in “Lattimore the Scholar”; not so much as an “and” |
i
a
*Edited by George Boas and Harvey Wheeler, with a preface by
Gerald W. Johnson. Copies can be obtained by writing Harvey
Wheeler, Waverly Box 108, Baltimore 18, Maryland. Contributions
toward the cost of publication should be mailed to George Boas,.
Baldwin, Maryland. Proceeds will be turned over to the Taino
Defense Fund. -
RR Age, eS
a
BO. L. by the McCarthys and the Budenzes,”
th (
aut ve ane it was Po piehtcn oe
a feluded-a1 are 2 the foreword by Johnson, an introduction by
Boas, and an epilogue by Harvey Wheeler.
The replies are of extraordinary interest. Contributors
include Mortimer Graves, administrative secretary of
the American Council of Learned Societies, Quincy
Wright (Chicago), H. A. R. Gibb (Oxford), Arnold J.
Toynbee, Carrington Goodrich (Columbia), Knight
Biggerstaff (Cornell), Derk Bodde (Pennsylvania),
Woodbridge Bingham (California), H. H. Fisher
_ (Stanford), George B. Cressey (Syracuse), John K.
_ Fairbank (Harvard),
Nathaniel Peffer (Columbia),
C. Martin Wilbur (Columbia), Harold Vinacke (Cin-
cinnati), Earl H. Pritchard (Chicago), and many others.
While the contributors do not share all of Lattimore’s
views, they are in general agreement that he has made
important contributions to Far Eastern studies.
A few quotations—used with special permission of
the publishers—will indicate the character of the replies:
. the leading scholar in America on the history and
ptoblems of the vast and important area on the frontier
of China and the Soviet Union” (Quincy Wright); “I
know of no greater master of the history and institutions
of the Central Asian nomads, and his field work on their
relations with their agricultural and urban Chinese neigh-
bors, is, as far as I can judge, unique” (Arnold J.
Toynbee); “He is undoubtedly America’s leading au-
thority on Mongolia and the other little-known areas
which make up what is known as ‘inner Asia’” (Derk
Bodde).
Moreover, the warm tributes paid to Latimord s char-
acter eloquently refute the comment of one professor-
columnist who has written that Lattimore’s character is
“detestable,” or that of a newspaper columnist that Latti-
more is one of the “silliest” men he has ever known.
“Personally I haven't read a single charge leveled against
writes Car-
tington Goodrich, “that didn’t seem either deceitful or
malicious. We are cruelly testing a man whose worth and
. ability and character have been tested again and again
_ and not been found wanting.”
Even more significant, perhaps, than these personal
tributes is the recognition of Lattimore’s worth to his
> country.
Wilbur, ‘both as a scholar and as an American citizen
“I am deeply convinced,” writes C, Martin
concerned with America’s role in world affairs, that Mr.
‘Lattimore’ s unique and comprehensive knowledge of
_ these areas [ Manchuria, Mongolia, Sinkiang]} is an im-
portant national asset which must be preserved. . . . If
defamers had succeeded in restricting ot endiete his
scholarly work and publication in the past, that would
have been a calamitous loss to the world of scholarship.
This must not be allowed to happen now.”
"a oo
Dts a Oa ee 5
command...
“The question may be raised of the relationship be-
tween Mr. Lattimore’s scholarship and the serious
charges which Senator McCarthy first made against him
and that of perjury now made. It is possible that a com-
petent scholar be also a spy. But the point in this case
is that Mr. Lattimore’s supposed communistic sympa-
thies prejudiced his scholarly work. If this had been so,
then surely some of the authorities in his subject and in
allied fields might have suspected it a year ago. It may~
not be possible for anyone to be entirely objective, but
the correspondence which follows does not even inti-
mate that Mr. Lattimore was not as objective as repu-
table scholars usually are. It will be observed that some
of the writers point out that they have not always agreed
with everything which Mr. Lattimore has written, but
none has said that he was following the Communist line
or writing Russian propaganda. As for the charge of
perjury, it is doubtful, though not beyond the bounds of
possibility, that a man who is truthful in his scholarly
work, who weighs evidence, who accepts the heavy re-
sponsibility which scholarship entails, would be deliber-
- ately mendacious in other fields. Since the charge of
perjury was made presumably to weaken his reputation
as a sinologue and by inference to suggest that any ad-
vice he may have given on Asian affairs was the advice
of a liar, it is worth while publishing evidence that in
his most serious work his colleagues found no evidence
of wilful deceit. If they had seen any, they could be
counted upon to indicate it. To believe otherwise, is not
to know the world of scholars. None of these men and
women was forcedcto answer my letter.
There is no precedent—surely no exact one—in our
history for the attack on Lattimore. In our time it has
been the totalitarian regimes, not the democracies, that
have sought to punish scholars and scientists for the
policy mistakes which the dictators could not admit with-
out endangering the structure of power on which their
regimes were based.
But if the attack on Lattimore is without precedent,
the response of his colleagues holds high promise of re-
deeming American men of learning from the humiliation |
which was the fate of their counterparts in Nazi Ger-
many and, currently, in Soviet Russia, With Harvey
Wheeler, they recognize that the writings of Lattimore — a
“should be criticized with unflinching vigor. . . . But if
creative scholarship is to be encouraged . . . then the
right of men to be honestly and courageously wrong as
well as infinitesimally accurate must be protected and en-
hanced with every degree of moral fiber we have at our
. What is at issue is the virtually impera- _
tive necessity that his work be evaluated on its own
merits rather than being discredited and suppressed be-
cause some of his conclusions find emotional rejection at
the hands of men who seem able to get momentary per-
113
¥
sonal relief erie iby « Gents at the things ‘wh rich ap
- to threaten them.” Aas
And Mr. Wheeler adds: “If there is one impression
imparted to the reader of the letters in this collection, it
is the sense of drawing in, with each one, a fresh ‘breath
from the common wind’ of our free heritage.”
Rendezvous in Santiago
BY J. ALVAREZ DEL VAYO
N HIS first major speech since his appointment as
Secretary of State, made on January 27, Mr. Dulles
declared that South America would receive a good deal
of attention from the new Administration. This is what
he actually said: “Sometimes we are inclined to take
South America for granted. But the reality is that there
ate strong Communist movements in Latin America and
fascist imfluences in some quarters which are working
away, largely underground so far, and they are trying to
destroy the traditional friendship between the peoples of
the American republics,” The reference to fascism must
have been put in to give an impression of impartiality,
for it is no secret that the man chiefly responsible for
the spread of fascism in the Latin American republics is
Francisco Franco, And since Franco is Washington's
“newest ally, Mr. Dulles’s concern over fascism in South
America can hardly be taken seriously. On the other
hand, Mr. Dulles’s concern over the advance of commu-
nism is certainly genuine.
In previous articles I have discussed the awakening of
the peoples of Latin America as one of the most im-
portant features of the present era of rebellion in the
colonial and semi-colonial parts of the world. Examin-
ing this phenomenon a little more closely, one can see_
-that it presents two different and often opposing aspects.
The social setup of Latin America closely resembles that
of the Middle East: a ruling class, cynical, corrupt, and
very rich, using popular discontent both as a means of
obtaining power and for blackmailing foreign interests
and governments into granting loans and other aid, and
@ population oppressed, hungry, and largely illiterate.
With the exception of a few countries and allowing for
differences of degree, this has been the social picture pre-
vailing in Latin America for centuries.
But World War Ii has dramatically introduced an-
other factor. Following the revolt of Asia and parallel
with the awakening of Africa, the relation between op-
pressors and oppressed in Latin America Is changing.
The feudal oligarchy finds it more difficult every day to
hold down the impatient masses, to keep wages and
working conditions at their incredibly low levels, assur-
ing high profits for the privileged minority and its
foreign associates, and to prevent the development of a
revolutionary situation. The days when these countries
114
: 4
. vo
RS
‘ ’
ernments in the last few yeats—financial aid from Amet-
ty hae Ma
2d eC.
gone for ever. Th ch: :
change their mati and to e of rul
The “modern” way of controlling the masses is through ~
a civilian or military demagogue who gains their ad-
herence by fooling them with attractive slogans of 1 |
“nationalism,” “anti-imperialism,” and “social justice.” ~
But it is one thing to teach the people to shout “Down a
with the Yankees” and quite another to overcome the eco-
nomic difficulties of these countries. For that slogans are ~~
not enough, and the double game of mobilizing the
masses and of putting on the brakes when they seem to
be moving too fast has perils of its own. In the Argentine
even the workers who used to be Perén’s willing fol- —
lowers have more than once reminded him in recent *
months of his unfulfilled promises. In Brazil, Getulio
Vargas sees those who voted for him in the belief that
he would “get tough” with Washington gradually drop-
ping away. Ibafiez was elected President of Chile partly
by the votes of the left; but the left is already demand-
ing a series of economic reforms that the government is
reluctant to grant. a
This popular pressure forces the ruling demagogues a
to shift their position rapidly. One day they appeal to the
masses against “the greedy and tyrannical Yankee land.” "
The next day they ask for American support to check the 4
impetuous advance of their people. Information recently 7
received from Latin America seems to indicate that an
operation of the second type is now in the making. The
Presidents ef Argentina, Brazil, and Chile have been in
constant touch during the last few weeks, preparing for
a meeting which is supposed to take place soon in Santi-
ago, Chile. Its purpose will be to reconstruct the old
ABC alliance, but with totally different motives Nothing
is yet known about the agenda, but the following hy-
pothesis is based on the views of informed political ob-
servers in the three countries immediately concerned.
The three governments are facing the same political
and economic problems—inflation, a fall in the prices of
raw materials after the short-lived boom of the Korean
war, and the narrowing of the world market for these
materials through import restrictions imposed by Euro-
pean countries, especially France, England, and Italy.
None of the three Presidents is in a position to find a
solution for these problems, Really effective remedies _
would involve nothing less than a radical reconstruction ~
of the economies of their respective countries—a redis-
tribution of land, planned production, and a realistic
trade policy. But this would mean a real revolution, and
none of the three wants that, for all their revolutionary -
gestures and posturings.
Another solution, of an emergency ilies is the
one that has kept in power a number of European gov- |
i
sta.
B
eit AEG PM AAS he eee
ox -cit Sas
SAS ee ee
das at rte
el
sc
an le n \ the new A Administration a
t “compre ending” attitude. The Santiago meeting,
if it takes place, is intended to make possible cooperation
on a new basis, with the three countries soft-pedaling
.
|
' Washington
. 'HEY are coming in hungry, and
they are not hungry for peanuts.
‘ _ The vast public-utility, oil, mining,
_ and lumber interests that supported
_ the Republican campaign are getting
_ feady to move in on America’s natu-
_ fal resources, and what they want is
all the country has got. The new
_ Administration is prepared to make
things easy for them, and the program
is beginning to be clear. It adds up to
_ what is probably the greatest raid on
the national wealth ever contem-
_ plated.
First, of course, will come the off-
shore-oil grab, Barring a completely
_ unlikely change of mind in the White
House, this is as good as done. No one can hope for
anything more than a brief rear-guard action against it.
Next will come the grab for public power. Here the
general idea is to go on building big power plants with
public funds but to make sure that they are run for the
' benefit of the power companies rather than for the
"people. The’ third step, which is still in the formative
stage, is in some ways the most appalling. It is pro-
_ posed that the tremendously valuable public domain
_ be handed over to the states for parceling out to such
: > private interests as can make the most lucrative use of
_ them.
_ Altogether, the program represents an attempt to get
_ back not only to the days of Herbert Hoover but all the
_ way back to the era before Teddy Roosevelt. It is spelled
© out quite clearly in the record of the Senate hearings on
the confirmation of Douglas McKay as Secretary of the
~ Interior. The Department of the Interior is the official
custodian of America’s publicly owned wealth. When
the hungry special interests moved in after the election
of Harding, this department was one of the first things
er
—
. BRUCE CATTON is writing a4 series of articles on the
Washington scene,
-— ~
february 7, 1953
ie].
Secretary of the Interior McKay
Tee 5 “v x “hey
he ees A ae ihe United ie
ie greatly increasing its financial aid. A revived ABC al-
liance could expect to attract first Bolivia and then the
other republics, with the exception of Uruguay, Mexico,
and Guatemala, where a realignment of this sort is for
the present at least exceedingly unlikely.
I 00-Billion-Dollar Grab
BY BRUCE CATTON
they looked at. It is even more attrac-
tive to them today, for on top of
everything else it now contains, in
the Bureau of Reclamation, the largest
single generator and transmitter of
electricity in the world. In other words,
the stakes are immense. The attitude
of the Secretary of the Interior is vital-
ly important.
Bear in mind that everyone who at-
tacks the public-power program attacks —
it by indirection. The first target is the
famous preference clause, which sim-
ply provides that the co-ops of the
Rural Electrification Administration,
cities, public-utility districts, and other
public bodies get first rights to the
purchase of power from federal
dams. If the preference clause can be knocked out, if the
federal government can be kept from building its own
transmission lines, and if—these things having been
done—the utility companies are then allowed to make:
long-term contracts with the agencies that sell federal
electric power, the public-power program is done for,
and the government’s power facilities exist solely for
the benefit of the private companies,
When he appeared before the Senate Interior Came
mittee, Secretary McKay declared that he believes in the
preference clause—“if-the people want it.” But he also
said that “private enterprise has a right to pursue their
business,” that public power should not be given an
advantage, and that the power companies ought not to
be throttled. He thought that long-term contracts ought
to be made with the power companies and that at the
present time, in the Pacific Northwest, public power was
getting most of the breaks.
Senator Jackson of Washington, a staunch public-
power man, pressed the new Secretary: Isn’t it sound
policy to have power from government dams sold first
to public bodies? “Not necessarily,” replied McKay. “It
is a sound public policy that all citizens be treated alike.
. If that preference {clause} is in there, you are un-
Z
)
Ye LAD
AShirag ten OC,
115
fair to some ei the people of the states; 1
might want to buy from a publidy ‘owned place and
they can’t.”
There is nothing mystifying about any of this if you
understand the jargon. You never attack the preference
clause openly; you simply say that everybody ought to
get equal treatment and that private utilities ought to
be free of handicaps. You agree that the government
ought to build the great multi-purpose dams, but you
object, as McKay did before the Senate committee, to
“the part of the federal government in imposing them-
selves in authority,” because you feel that the people of
the state ought to have control over their own resources.
Interpreted in that way, McKay's words made his
position clear. No attack in Congress on the preference
clause is likely to meet a very strong counter-attack
from the new Secretary of the Interior, Similarly, if a
Congress pledged to stop “wasteful expenditures” re-
fuses to vote money for government transmission lines—
and any appropriations granted in the next two years will
have to get the okay of a House committee dominated by
tight-fisted Representative Taber of New York—McKay
is not the man to make an effective protest.
Long-term contracts for government power executed
with private power companies in the absence of a pref-
erence clause and also in the absence of government
transmission lines would, as Senator Jackson pointed
out, “simply dedicate the federal dams to the utilities.”
And as the retiring Commissioner of Reclamation, Mi-
chael Straus, remarked, in practice such contracts would"
tend to become perpetual. Each: one would become an
inalienable right, with money invested, territory devel-
oped, markets arranged; to try to change or cancel one
would be to raise a storm of protest about loss to cus-
tomers, economic upheaval, and so on. All this is the
more disturbing since Congress is definitely to be asked to |
change the preference clause and a determined fight will
be made to keep the government from building any
more transmission lines. In the face of these attacks it
is hard to imagine a winning fight for public power
being put up by a Secretary of the Interior who talks as
McKay talked before the Senate committee,
N EVEN more serious question than that of power
was raised by a remark dropped during the McKay
hearings by Senator Hugh Butler of Nebraska, chairman
of the Interior Committee, McKay had just said that he
was “on the side of Louisiana and Texas” in the off-
shore-oil wrangle, when Butler interjected: “I would
like to say here that’ when the tidelands question is
settled—and I hope it will be rather definitely before too
far in this session—there are plans for the introduction
of a bill that will make the same theory applicable to
public lands now held by the federal government within
the state.” This was not a complete surprise, since both
116
the Na a hambet jis of NM > hav
ing such a es ever ‘since | ne
first indication that legislation i is aétually being prepa red.
It is worth while to take a brief look at what such a — +
step would mean. at
No one has accurately estimated the total value of what a
is left of the public domain—the land, the oil and min- '
erals under the land, the timber, the forage, and all the ~
rest—but the best guesses made by peoplé who are in a j
good position to know what they are talking about run
higher than $30 billion. Some estimates run a good deal ~
higher, Commissioner Straus recalls that not long ago” ‘
the Bureau of Reclamation retained a man to make a ©
detailed analysis of the worth of the public’s possessions.. ?
The man threw up the job when his estimates got above ~
$100 billion, saying that after appraisals got that high
they became meaningless. ‘s
Anyway, this is what remains of our heritage as ~
Americans. It is not exactly a white elephant. Even now LY
the government earns more than $60,000,000 a year
from oil and mineral royalties on properties adminis- Z
tered by the Bureau of Land Management—only a part |
of the whole. But the success of the off-shore-oil grab — 4
has set a precedent, and here is the next target. Now- @
you can see also what was really behind that often- a
repeated Republican complaint that the Interior Depart-
ment under Ickes, Krug, and Chapman became an |
unconscionable “empire” operated by power-hungry ©
bureaucrats, If the empire can be made to fall, the ak ‘
ings are going to be very, very lush,
Secretary McKay told the Senators that as yet he had 4
no opinion on the proposal that the public domaing
ought to be turned over to the states, In response to a
number of questions, however, he did give a fair
measure of the breadth of his views on the matter. De- |
claring that he had always been “one of the states’- —
rights governors,” he said, “I don’t expect to change my — i
philosophy of government because I go to work for ie f
federal government.” He added that “people at the local ©
levels are better able to decide what is better for thent
than somebody in Washington,” and that he personally
was not interested in trying to build an empire in the
department he now heads. When Senator Daniel of
Texas told him that he was delighted to see agood }
states’-rights man running the Interior Department, Mca | ‘
Kay replied, “I hope I don’t disappoint you.’ 'y :
During the recent political campaign Adlai Stevenson |
remarked that while he had a high regard for the Re- a 4
publican Presidential nominee he was a good deal dis | |
- turbed by the one-eyed characters with knives in their
teeth who seemed to be swarming over the bulwarks be “|
_hind him, Well, here they come, after off-shore oi
public power, and the whole public domain. It will take
a vety stout fight to repel them,
e
4
‘
eee es” lle ae
=~
a
|
ea
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eae
Paris
HAT is the secret of the current Communist
purges? Why does Moscow sactifice its ablest
foreign operatives, who have served it so faithfully for
decades? Why is it willing to arouse the doubt and
anxiety that purges produce in the satellite states? Why
does it launch an anti-Semitic drive that will both alien-
ate millions and supply the West with an effective
_ propaganda weapon?
The Communist movement has developed from its “ro-
mantic” or “idealistic” stage to its bureaucratic stage.
_ Moscow no longer requires pure faith from its followers.
I could name a dozen ex-Nazis, ex-Fascists, and war crim-
_ inals who have joined one of the East European parties
and are now holding key posts in the “people’s democ-
facies.” Moscow measures the usefulness of a party mem-
ber today by his loyalty to the Soviet Union and his
_ effectiveness in boosting production. By this yardstick a
_ war criminal released from prison and given a high post
_ in the Hungarian army may be a good Communist, while
Rajk and Slansky, who between them had given nearly
ik. seventy years to the cause, were traitors,
_ As viewed from within the Red world, the purges
fall into four categories. In the first are those that seek
_ to remove the inner rot I described last week. A Com-
__-munist government, of course, is a tremendous dispenser
of patronage. Matyas Rakosi has put the number of card-
holding workers and peasants placed in key posts in
Hungary at more than 100,000. In Poland and Czecho-
slovakia the figure is twice as large. If countless
thousands of officials and managers are eliminated, com-
_ petent replacements are hard to find. I knew a bank pres-
ident who could barely sign his name and a worker
_ assigned to keep an eye on textbook writers in the Min-
| istry of Education who had not Bone beyond primary
_ school. :
i. * But a modern state and economy cannot be run on
f loyalty alone. Thus incompetent officials must be purged.
- In Hungary two years ago the party discovered that
everybody in a certain industry—workers, foremen,
* managers—was involved in a wholesale wage fraud.
§ Workers and management falsified their reports to show
4 Aigher production, and of course claimed bonuses. When
the figures were added up, the total exceeded the in-
.
1
|
|
i
|
MARK GAYN, author of several books on the Far East, bas
ived in Europe for the last four years, spending considerable
Peeeane eee
‘et
BP <S
. 4a rots
t Sa Lape coats
BY MARK GAYN
dustry’s known output. In addition to fraudulent wage
claims, there have been health-insurance frauds and
frauds in the delivery of grain to the state. The cheating
is universal, and the Communists take advantage of it
like everybody else.
The standard cure for this inner rot is the surgery of
a purge that goes on around the calendar and hits hun-—
dreds of thousands of Communists a year. Probably 90
per cent of all purges are of this type. And yet they
do not and cannot cure anything. As long as the worker
is underpaid and overworked, as long as government
functions are performed by a double-decker bureaucracy
(party apparatus superimposed on the state), as long as
every patty boss wields unlimited power, and as long as
there is a premium on denunciation, the inner rot th
continue,
es 7.
HE second type of purge aims at erasing every sign
of disloyalty, actual or potential. Since intra-party
conspiracy is extremely difficult and rare, purges of this
kind are directed largely against nationalism, which
Moscow regards as the greatest danger to its primacy. By
Communist definition, nationalism takes various forms
—doubt of Moscow's good intentions, excessive devo-
tion to one’s homeland (as in Tito’s horrible example),
or even faith in the unbreakable unity of the Jewish
people—but it is always a dangerous infection, to be
burned out mercilessly,
Nationalist deviations have been very much in the
Communist mind in the past six months. In several of
the Soviet republics, for instance, the party and the secret
police have uncovered plots by native writers to glorify
ancient fighters for independence or to depict czarist
Russia as an aggressor (“this distorts the fact that
Russia has always sided with native peoples in their
courageous battle against foreign imperialism”), In the
satellite countries any half-heartedness in extolling
the Soviet Union or in pushing the Russification of the
“people’s democracies” is promptly branded as a nation-
alist deviation, And of course Zionism and its Social-
ist foe, the Jewish Bund, have always been targets of
Soviet fire. As Walter Kolarz notes in his well-docu-
mented book “Russia and Her Colonies,” published re-
cently in the United States by Praeger, Stalin’s first long
ideological article, Marxism and the National Ques-
tion, written back in 1913, was largely an attack on the
Jewish Bund. Kolarz recalls that even in 1941, when
Stalin was wooing Jewish groups abroad, he did not
halt his “special little war” on the Bund but executed
117
ie
two of its Getonuling eadlets ‘Erlich eos - Alter, The
creation of Israel, by inspiring nationalist feeling among
Russia’s Jews, immediately provoked a series of anti-
‘Zionist and sometimes even openly anti-Jewish steps,
such as the closing of a Jewish publishing house, the
newspaper Aynikeit, and the Jewish Theater,
Moscow will not tolerate “divided loyalty.” A Kazakh
who dreams too much of the ancient glory of his people,
a Jew inspired by the re-creation of his ancient state, a
Traicho Kostov who tries to get the highest price for
Bulgarian tobacco—each is a traitor to the “peace camp”
and to the “homeland of socialism.” The penalties for
such treason are severe. If a thieving factory manager
gets seven years in prison, a “bourgeois nationalist” is
lucky to escape with his life.
Nationalist deviations provide the most spectacular
trials in the satellite countries. Moscow is not content
with eliminating persons of doubtful loyalty; it must
also make the lesson clear to all: “Bourgeois nationalism”
must be shown to be a Western conspiracy, and those
guilty of it must be presented as professional spies,
saboteurs, and sometimes murderers. Since the men thus
blackened have often been top-ranking leaders, it is nec-
essary to explain how this deception could have been
carried on for decades. So the explanation is produced.
“The enemy,” declares Bulgaria's Chervenkov, “cannot
always be identified by his bad work. On the contrary,
the enemy usually tries to work ‘well’ and to rise to
some responsible post. He works with a long-term ob-
jective. He disguises himself, drapes himself in loyalty,
votes, does not quarrel, and awaits the decisive moment
of difficulty to betray and injure us.”
Thete is every sign that a new set of highly publicized
dramatic trials in this category will be staged in the
next six months, And Zionism is certain to be one of the
villains in the coming war on “bourgeois nationalism.”
The trial of the “Zionist doctors” in Moscow will have
all the trappings of a major propaganda effort. Ana
Pauker is yet to be tried in Bucharest, and Zionism will
surely sit in the dock with her, Zoltan Vas, for sixteen
"years a prison comrade of Rakosi himself, may be in-
volved in a “Zionist” trial in Hungary. Many reporters
in the West suggest that Moscow’s anti-Jewish moves
are intended to please the Arab world or the ex-Nazis in
Germany. These also may be dividends of which Mos-
cow is not unaware.
HE third type of purge meets the Communist Party’s
ti for scapegoats. Since the party is the absolute
master of any country in which it is in power, it must
logically be blamed for all failures of judgment and
performance from food shortages to wholesale frauds.
Thus it searches constantly for villains. Wall Street and
Tito are the invariable first choice, joined more recently
by the Zionists and “right-wing Social Democrats.” In
118
~ lessness of the u
3
O
>
a
vital. coal-mining pls. Tt i eee ;
But villains and sonscprats™s must not be. vague or fe- 4
mote, They ate needed right on the scene, in trembling | an
flesh, In Rumania, where food is in tragically short J
Satis supply, Foreign Minister Ana —
t Pauker is blamed. In Czecho- ©
z slovakia, Slansky was held re- |
» sponsible for every economic.
failure. At a mass-meeting at —
_ the Roztoky penicillin plant a —
microbiologist explained why
production had dropped:
“One example of Slansky’s:
sabotage here was the build-
% ing of a boiler house with
se second-hand material, so that
steam suai iid not be sufficient.” Almost in the
same tone of voice President Gottwald blamed Slansky
for the failure of the entire Five-Year Plan, In Hungary,
where the scarcities and strains are as great as in any
“people’s democracy,” the responsibility is now being
pinned on the Planning Office of the veteran Commu-
nist, and Jew, Zoltan Vas.
Trials of this type provide a means not only of drama-
tizing villainy but of whipping up production. They are
always accompanied by an intense campaign “to show the
traitors what honest workers can do.” It is a ptoved
fact that production soars immediately after each trial,
only to dip again when the fear of denunciation and
arrest dies down. ;
The purges which began last summer have still an- —
other purpose. Stalin may assure the faithful in his latest
theoretical work that the capitalist warmongers are about
to start fighting one another. (This is not a new doctrine,
General Derevyanko, the Soviet ambassador to Tokyo, —
told me back in 1946 that the United States and Great —
Britain were the great rivals in Japan and that the J
Soviet Union was merely acting as a peacemaker between
them.) But Stalin’s published views to the‘contrary, deep ©
concern exists in the Communist world. It is clearly re-
vealed in Moscow’s startling discovery, after thirty-six
triumphant years, that there is a strain of disloyalty in —
what Pravda customarily calls “the advanced Soviet man” —
and that purges must be resumed on a large scale. It is
seen in the new intensive drive against minority groups q
afflicted with “bourgeois nationalism.” A hint of it is —
provided by the rumblings in Eastern Europe of a sur-
prising campaign against “pacifism.” a
~ As indicated in my first article, the publicized trials —
are only a part of a great mass purge. And this purge _
in turn is only a part of a vast plan whose outlines re-
main vague but which obviously reflects some funda-
mental—and unpublicized—decisions reached by the {jj}
2 Moscow decisions were not p ikedtod ea bay the
nomination of General Eisenhower. The Communists in
_ Europe made no secret of their preference for Senator
Taft for President, less because they counted on his
affection than because they expected him to be cool to-
_ ward continued American involvement in Europe. The
_ views of Eisenhower and Dulles on intensifying the
_ cold war or extending it to Asia must have been studied
_ in Moscow with considerable concern,
_ In 1947 Moscow created the Cominform as its answer
to what it genuinely considered a threat of hostile West-
ern moves in Eastern Europe. If the new purges mark
~ a milestone in Soviet thinking, then they are merely the
_ first of a series of moves. At the moment there is no in-
_ dication whether Moscow will next appear with an olive
branch or a bayonet, It is, I believe, wrong to under-
4 estimate Soviet eagerness for some settlement, as ex-
HERE is no question of honesty in Jersey City poli-
: tics. Either you are in or you are out, and those who
' afe out are only interested in getting back in, where the
© gravy is thicker.” This was the first thing Robert W.
" Greene, then a young reporter on the Jersey Journal,
learned in 1949, when he began investigating the local
_ water-front rackets for his newspaper. He also learned
” that it is dangerous to be honest in Jersey City. A man
_ could go to jail.
"When Greene first came to Jersey City from Massa-
| chusetts he was astounded by the corruption which
seeped down from City Hall and infected all of Hudson
County. He discovered that about half the reporters on
the Journal and the Observer, then published separately,
=were on the city pay roll in one capacity or another. It
"was not hard to link the corruption along the water front
to the benevolent patronage of the city administration.
_For nearly three years Greene hammered away in his
§ column at the mobsters and crooked politicians. In 1949
— John V. Kenny had been elected mayor on a reform
"ticket and the Hague regime finally pried out of City
' Hall. But the voters soon learned that it was only a case
— of the outs again replacing the ins. The faces changed
__ but the system did not.
Greene discovered that it was easy to get information
; WILLIAM MURRAY, known to Nation readers for his dis-
B patches from Italy, recently returned to this country.
February 7, 1953
Justice in Jersey City
and ee would be folly ‘ 0 J this o overture offhand—as
President Eisenhower most certainly did not. But it
would be extremely dangerous to underestimate the
range of action, pacific or aggressive, open to the Soviet
bloc.
My own guess is that Moscow will vigorously press
peace moves, partly because they promise to widen the
existing gap between Western Europe and Washington,
partly because the Communists believe that American
morale is low and the Korean war thoroughly unpopular,
and partly because they are convinced that a peace move
is far more likely to send the American economy into a
tailspin than intensified rearmament. Almost exactly six
years ago Mao Tse-tung told me that the great American
depression was just around the corner. This conviction
persists in Moscow as in Peking. Moscow may want to
help the depression along by bold peace moves, but no
such action on the world scene will halt the trials and
purges. Both are part of the Communist system.
BY WILLIAM MURRAY
_ about the current rackets from the disgruntled members _
of the old Hague administration, who were naturally —
annoyed at having been left out of the stealing. One of
the angriest was a thug named Frank (“Biffo”) De
Lorenzo, described by Greene as “a middle-grade moron
whose stupidity was matched only by his greed.” De
Lorenzo and two cronies, Anthony (“Slim”) Lucy and
Vincent (“Cockeye”) Brown, had been profitably en-
gaged in running Local 1247 of the International Long-
shoremen’s Association and were furious when they
found themselves muscled out. Greene had reason to
hope that “Biffo” could be persuaded to talk, especially
about Mayor Kenny’s friendships with big-time racket-
eers like Charles Yanowski.
In September, 1951, Greene became an investigator
for the New York Anti-Crime Commission, a private
organization which had been delving into water-front
crime since March of that year. Meanwhile Mayor Kenny
and his administration were in trouble. The public had ©
been jolted out of its apathy by the increasing violence
along the water front. Under Hague things had been
quieter and more efficient. During one of the strikes
which have afflicted the Jersey water front during the
past three years Hague commented to a shipping-
company official, “Kenny likes his cabbage. He’s trying
to get in four years what it took me thirty-two to get.”
Hague had known how to control the mobs. Under
Kenny gangsters were dropping hand grenades into
119
i
= —
; A “~
ously inconveniencing es citizenry. “ Qpestony be n to :
_ be asked about Mayor Kenny's past relations with Yan-
owski, one of the more aggressive gangsters infesting
New Jersey. Unfortunately Yanowski himself was un-
available, On July 16, 1948, his corpse had been found
_ on an empty lot in the town of Clifton. The gangster had
been stabbed twelve times with a pointed instrument,
probably an ice pick.
In the sammer of 1951 the Kenny administration ap-
pointed a grand jury to investigate the situation. It was
headed by Charles F. Davis, who was campaign treasurer
for Kenny in 1949 and whose brother Alfred is Hudson
County elections commissioner and a district leader in
Kenny’s political organization. This unprejudiced jury
spent eighteen months fiddling while Jersey City burned.
Meanwhile Greene had persuaded the unhappy “Biffo”
to talk about Mayor Kenny and Yanowski, but the
mobster wanted $5,000 in cash and three $100 suits as
payment. Greene explained to him that as an investigator
he could not make such an agreement, but “Biffo” knew
that some of the other disgruntled hoodlums who had
been squeezed out of the new order would be willing to
pay in order to get Kenny, At one point “Biffo” held out
for $100 a week for the rest of his life and five suits.
While Greene waited impatiently for these macabre
negotiations to end, somebody in the Kenny administra-
tion apparently got wind of the project. Somehow
POINT 4—AFTER FOUR YEARS
World Action on a World Task
HE first three articles of this series have told a story.
I believe it is the most important political story that
cam be told for Americans of our generation. Most
Americans have never heard it, even though it is of life-
and-death importance that they should hear it.
Paul A. Baran repotted on what has happened to
“Point Four” and the billions we Americans have spent
—almost all of it bilaterally, not through the United
Nations—on the assumption that our money was helping
our neighbors to help themselves, Peter Weiss told the
really melancholy, and I think one should add disgrace-
ful, story of how Washington has systematically blocked
ali efforts to do this job through the United Nations,
STRINGFELLOW BARR, author of the recently published
“Citizens of the World” and other books, is president of the
Foundation for World Government. This article concludes a
Series on economic aid for underdeveloped countries.
120
‘We have tried to persuade the other members of the —
against ie ae Os ecember |
grand jury indicted Greene for “being an e
person wickedly devising and intending unjustly to de- |
prive one Joha V. Kenny of his good name” and also 7
“injure him in the practice of his trade and business.”
The indictment does not specify just what “trade and ©
business” Mayor Kenny is in. It was the only indictment ~
of any consequence which the grand jury returned; ©
earlier it had indicted three men for stealing coffee —
beans and the unpopular Mr. “Biffo” De Lorenzo, the
chief witness against Greene, for perjury.
A few weeks ago “Biffo” died of a “heart attack,” 7
He was embalmed and buried with remarkable speed...
A witness claims that he was tucked safely underground ~
two hours after his death. His convenient demise means ©
that Greene will not be able to tell what he knows in
court, since the ‘case rested solely on “Biffo’s” testimony. —
And it will enable Mayor Kenny to claim, as he is al- ~
ready doing, that Greene is a tool of the Hague organiza- |
tion. This will undoubtedly be Kenny’s line during the ~
election campaign next May. He hopes, too, that it will
enable him to discredit all the evidence Greene has sup-
plied the New York State Crime Commission new in- <
vestigating the water front. Of course if Kenny loses the
election there is always Hague. Perhaps in Jersey City |
no one is clean.
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id hei cine coe tees
a
BY STRINGFELLOW BARR |
while protesting to the American people that the U. N. os
is the cornerstone of our foreign policy. W. Arthur ~
Lewis, as a member of the U. N. committee set up to —
study the problems of world-wide misery, quietly pre- | a |
sented the committee’s reasons for recommending the
joint international action which Weshingtes has con-—
sistently rejected.
I think the issue can be briefly summarized. thes 4
Charter of the United Nations, which our government i
signed, calls for political and military cooperation in the ©
Security Council and for economic cooperation in the |
Economic and Social Council. We insisted on the former
and have to all intents and purposes refused the latter,
U. N. to give us more than token support in Korea, ©
though in very few cases have we succeeded, On the
economic front we are going it alone. And going it alone ff
has inevitably made economic aid take second piace
area. _ This has ie a eae Berees us Americans
~ and the slum dwellers, has made them look like cannon
fodder to us, and has made us look like the builders of
the newest empire to them, It has made us insist strident-
ly that communism is the world’s most’ urgent problem;
and that is a proposition which the hungry, diseased,
_ despised inhabitants who form the bulk of “the free
_ world” will not buy.
Mr. Weiss made it clear where the log jam is, al-
though the average American, a good neighbor and
filled with good-will, has never heard of it. It lies in the
_ persistent clamor of the “‘underdeveloped countries” for
an International Development Authority, capable of at-
tacking frontally what our neighbors are convinced is
_ feally the world’s most urgent problem, a problem which
_ neither private enterprise nor even the United States
Treasury can conceivably solve.
Er
ERP ee GAN Clee wy
}
HERE is a formidable world revolution in progress,
quite independent of communism. It is a revolu-
tion against unnecessary misery; and by refusing to join
our neighbors in attacking it we are steadily forcing
them into the Communists’ arms. By refusing to join
we are forcing our neighbors to smile at our defense. of
_ the free world against the Communist monster and to
diagnose us aS one great power looking for allies to help
it smash another great power. Last year six “friendly”
_ non-Communist governments embarrassingly refused to
let us assist them. In Western Europe we scarcely turn
our backs to elect a President before our NATO allies
ie begin scaling down rearmament. Going it alone eco-
nomically looks more and more like going it alone mili-
tarily if and when the storm breaks. This is not a picture
of a successful foreign policy.
| Perhaps our foreign policy is not successful because it
_ does not appeal to foreigners—a very grave criticism of
any foreign policy. Maybe, to get one that did we should
have to make it with them instead of for them. Maybe
_ “leadership” involves, not laying it on the line, or get-
‘ting tough, or threatening to cut off people’s allowances,
_ but listening—listening to the people one proposes to
_ lead. But if we started listening, it is already cer-
tain what we should hear: “Let’s get together and jointly
attack our common problem, the problem of a sick world
economy.” That would restate the Point Four problem
_ 4s primarily a U. N. problem. Instead of issuing orders
_ and then picking up the check, we would pay dues
in proportion to our national wealth, which means our
__ dues would be the biggest. Most certainly, having paid
our dues, we would have to risk being outvoted. And our
_ tecent policy has been to make no large contributions to
_ an agency we do not control. I believe the American
Feb wary 7, 1953
aos ges ¢
a ey ; i
cae ah, rt
pe Be if tha iene Nhe ae ould “wal on no such
unreasonable and undemocratic policy. I believe they
could persuade the Congress to stop insisting on it.
But how? I can conceive of no way except the hard
way which we American liberals have now for several
years been dodging. The fact is, we just hate homework.
We prefer action; and for action—provided you are not
too choosy about long-term
results—slogans suffice. But
the problem this series has
dealt with will not, I suspect,
be solved by slogans; nor
even, I fear, by “putting
pressure on Congress.” The
point is, there are too many
things the Congress can do
that look like what ought to
be done but are not. For
instance, I judge that the
average American cannot distinguish between sending a
team of technicians into a country and finding the capital
to do the things the technicians are bound in common
professional honesty to advise. Some of them cost a lot of
money, and some of them, though happily not all, are
not self-liquidating—at least, not from the point of view
of a bank, certainly not the International Bank for Re-
construction and Development. Again, I judge that the
average American cannot distinguish between bilateral
aid from Washington, or perhaps Washington working
“through” the U. N., and an international agency re-
sponsible to the U, N. though financed by national con-
tributions. But the underdeveloped countries can make
that distinction—and do.
I make these judgments because I have made the ex-
periment personally of discussing the problem with my
fellow-citizens from lecture platforms, in articles, in
pamphlet form, and most recently in book form. On the
one hand, the response has overwhelmed me by its vol-
ume and its note of excitement. On the other, I have
been alarmed by the frequency with which I met the pre-
mature cry: “Let’s go!” Would that we could! Unhap-
pily, there is much to be thought through before we go
—if we expect to get any place.
In brief, I simply do not believe that what we liberals
are short on is energy. I think we are short on ideas.
The problem we are discussing is indeed political, but it
will not be solved by politics. It will have to be solved
by statesmanship—which, it is true, includes political
maneuver, when the time is ripe for maneuver. Living
in the atomic age, we have been trying to solve our po-
litical problems at jet speeds. But the world revolution
that has posed our problem will not be solved without a
revolution in our thinking. And that revolution has not
taken place.
We American liberals have become increasingly con-
121
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larly freedom of eck oy the cold war, But we run the
constant risk of demanding freedom of speech in order
_ that we may speak freely—about freedom of speech. We
_ should be speaking freely—come hell, high water, smear,
or prison—about mankind’s most desperate problem.
We should be demanding a solution more relevant to
history than either ‘the American way” or the Russian
way. We should be seeking the world way.
We could do it by every device we know—lecture,
study group, reading list, article, and book. I know by
experience that this is a subject that cannot be censored
out. It interests Americans too much. But we could also
“learn by doing”—a good old American habit. For ex-
ample, recently a group of young American men and
women of college age organized the International De-
velopment Placement Association, to help their contem-
poraries to find useful work in underdeveloped countries,
work in native villages at local wages. They have opened
an office in New York; they have started collecting the
The Doomed Valley
dent a massive ee But as these young ey come
back home, more and more Americans are going to size ~
up the real problem and relate themselves to it humanly.
And there are literally scores of other spontaneous efforts © :
all over the United States to get moving on the problem © §
that Washington has muffed. “Action” of this kind, and
not premature lobbying by lonely, heartsick liberals, is
what can eventually force Washington out of its phony — %
“realism” and put it in touch with people again. It is ©
constructive action in which the simplest citizen can play
a role, It is legal action, but it is popular and does not try
to lean on a government in Washington which at the
moment is not morally strong enough to be leaned on,
Meanwhile, there is no use asking Washington to get the
point so long as we liberals don’t know the score our-
selves,
“a
Albuquerque, New Mexico
F YOU build a dam in the arid Southwest to store
water, it will be considered a laudable enterprise but
not particularly newsworthy. Citizens of the region had
constructed irrigation systems long before the coming
of the Spanish conquistadors, But if the dam is to store
mud, that is something else. And the chief purpose of a
$63,000,000 reclamation project in progress in the Rio
Grande Valley in New Mexico is to control the tide of
silt inexorably rolling down over this, the oldest agricul-
tural valley in the United States. Considered by itself,
the project might still fall short of newsworthiness, since
it will affect less than 100,000 acres of farm land and
only some 200,000 peopie, rutal and urban. But the
thing that is happening here is happening throughout
the West, from the foothills of the Rockies to the Pacific
and from the Mexican border to Canada. In nearly 40
per cent of the land area of the country the same forces
are at work that have already made the Rio Grande a
“doomed valley.”
This particular project is designed to “save” what is
generally spoken of as the middle Rio Grande Valley, a
. relatively short and very narrow section beginning sev-
eral miles above Albuquerque, where the river emerges
EDGAR PERRY served with the National Forest Service for
many years and is a frequent contributor to the Journal of
Forestry and other publications.
379
BY EDGAR PERRY
from a lava gorge, and extending to the Elephant Butte |
Reservoir, a distance of some 140 miles by road. White
settlement of the region began when the Spanish ex-
plorer Ofiate planted a colony at the confluence of the
Rio Grande and the Rio Chama in 1598. The land was
fertile, irrigation water was abundant, and the climate
was warm and healthful. The valley filled with people.
After the United States subdued the hostile Indians, new
settlers spread out into the foothills and grazed their
stock on the abundant range. a
Then sometime in the past century it was noticed that ‘e !
a peculiar thing was happening to the farm land along ~
the river. Water started creeping up to the surface from 7
below. Gradually the lower spots became marshes, unfit
for cultivation. Adobe houses, which owe their solidity to
the dry climate, got their feet wet in the rising water 9
table and melted away. The trouble was that silt was 7
piling up in the river bed, raising it above the level of
the surrounding valley. As more and more silt came ~§
down the river's tributaries and was stranded in the
slower-flowing main stream, the amount of tillable land 7
steadily decreased. By 1924 it had shrunk to 40,000 ~
acres, less than a third of what it had been. At the same: ||
time the river took to overflowing in spring, making it |
necessaty to build dykes. In 1920 a great flood broke Bi
through the dykes, inundated 35,000 acres of vale |
land, and stood in the streets of Albuquerque. 7q
The situation became so acute that in 1927 the middle q
: . Middle Section of the Rio Grande Watershed
ee Shaded portion shows critical erosion areas
| valley’s residents were moved to bond themselves to the
"tune of $10,000,000 to build a system of dykes and
‘ drainage ditches. The tillable acreage was restored to
93,000 acres, but the remedy was strictly palliative. It
_ did not touch the source of the trouble.
Where does the mud come from that threatens to ruin
this pleasant, fertile valley? And what started the tide?
There is no doubt about its origin; it is the soil that long
lay undisturbed on the 24,000 square miles of the river’s
drainage area, and in the opinion of the various conser-
vation agencies at any rate, the cause of the movement is
__ Clear. They figure that it can hardly be mere coincidence
* that the soil began coming down as the watershed was
occupied by the white man with his grazing animals, his
_ ax, plow, and torch. 3
The deep gullies, the familiar arroyos of the South-
_* west, winding for miles up tributary valleys which
within the memory of people still living were grassy
swales, are of course largely the result of the overcutting
of timber, overgrazing, and fire. The soil conservationists
_ have plenty of evidence to prove that when slopes are
covered with vegetation, water from rain and snow sinks
_ into the soil, emerging later in the stream channels in the
_ form of springs. When the hills have been denuded, the
water runs off the surface, carrying the soil with it and
i
om Tr
a aR ea
Ae ¥ 7 erg a
7 -* 7-9
-
-
runs through the city of Albuquerque is several feet
nullified, and the tillable land is again shrinking.
At present the bed of the Rio Grande where the river
higher than the downtown streets and is rising every
year. As the bed rises, the dykes become less adequate,
and evety spring the citizens shiver in apprehension until
the flood season is past. At the same time the expensive ~
drainage system installed to carry off the water is being
HE accumulation of mud in the middle valley has
caused setious damage far beyond that short stretch —
of the river. In 1915 the great Elephant Butte Dam at the
lower end of the middle valley began to store water for
use in southern New Mexico, Texas, and old Mexico. It
also stored the silt carried down by the river, which was
not bad as long as the silt went out into the lake and set-
tled to the bottom. But within a few years a delta began
to build up at the head of the lake. In the late summer
of 1929 an unseasonal flood broke over the banks at that
point and completely obliterated the village of San
Marcial. Today the mud lies twenty feet deep where the
village once stood, and the surrounding swamp covers
sixty square miles. It is overgrown with salt cedar and
other worthless vegetation which thirstily drinks up the
precious water and transpires it into the atmosphere,
where it is lost forever. Other swamp areas have been
formed at various points along the river, and it is esti
mated by the engineers that together they waste 238,000
acre feet of water annually, enough to irrigate 50,000
acres of crop land.
This situation has got the middle valley into very bad
odor with people below Elephant Butte Dam, all the way
to the Gulf of Mexico, Under a compact between the
states using Rio Grande water and a treaty with Mexico
the middle valley is allotted a proportion of the river's
water sufficient for its needs and must let the rest flow —
into the reservoir, The loss due to the silt beds is charged
against the valley’s allotment, and in consequence the
valley has run into debt to its neighbors downstream.
The debt has now reached such a size that the valley is
asked to quit using water entirely until it is reduced, an
obviously impossible requirement. The state of Texas ai
has recently filed suit in federal court to have the matter
adjudicated, One item of the new reclamation program
is to dredge a channel through the delta at the head of «©
the reservoir, called by the engineers the San Marcial
plug, and allow the water, together with its burden of
silt, to pass on into the lake. The silt will eventually fll
up the lake, but it will be out of the way for the time ~_
being.
This silting up of reservoirs is a very serious problem,
The McMillan Reservoir on the Pecos River, a tributary
of the Rio Grande, is for all practical purposes full of
123
mud after only thirty-four years of use. To replace it,
Alamogordo Reservoir has been built farther up the
Pecos, but it too is silting up at a rate that will make it
useless in about forty-five years. The silt traps being con-
pens ae corrective meas too long del ‘
an expensive example, but j it will be worth the cost if it
drives home the lesson. é
- ane
structed in the new middle Rio Grande project are ex-
pected to fill in about fifty years. Moreover, dams which
have been rendered useless cannot always be replaced.
Not only is the cost great, but acceptable reservoir sites
ate scarce, and most of the good ones have already been
taken,
In its three-volume report on the nation’s water situa-
tion published in 1950, the President’s Water Resources
Policy Commission recommended engineering works to
save the Rio Crande Valley for the time being but recog-
nized that only more far-seeing practices by the residents
of the watershed would prevent its ultimate ruin, The
United States Bureau of Reclamation and the Army En-
gineets, after making independent surveys, arrived at the
same conclusion.
The one thing that limits all economic development in
the West is water. Millions of acres of fertile land lie
idle because there is no water for irrigation. Cities grow
to the limit of their water supply. Lack of water forbids
extensive industrial development, though the region has
abundant raw materials. So nothing can be allowed to
interfere with the most efficient possible use of every
drop of water that falls.
“Watershed management” is a term on everyone's
tongue, but there is a great diversity of opinion as to
what it means. One school of thought insists on complete
elimination of livestock grazing, timber cutting, and
most other human activities on watersheds; another,
called the “tin roof” school, holds that the quicker the
water gets down to the reservoirs where it can be
watched, the better—never mind about denudation. In
between are the moderates, backed by the scientists of
the agricultural colleges and the Department of Agricul-
ture, who see timber and grass as crops which if prop-
erly managed can be grown and harvested perpetually
without damage to the watersheds.
The conservative-use idea is proving a little hard to
sell in some quarters—witness the current struggle be-
tween the United States Forest Service and the big stock-
men, The Forest Service is trying to reduce the number
of animals on the forest ranges to what they consider
the safe, year-in-year-out carrying capacity of the forage.
The stockmen, many of whom feel they have acquired
somé degree of freehold in the forest ranges through
long use, are putting up a stiff resistance, arguing that
there is not sufficient evidence that livestock are respon-
sible for the widespread erosion.
The West is waking up to the menace of the mud,
however, and the conservation agencies are confident
that it will soon go all out for watershed protection.
Proposals for Peace—VI
BY LEON JOUHAUX
BB struggle for peace is the oldest tradition of the
working class. Since the formation of the Interna-
tional Workingmen’s Association in 1864, the first in-
ternational, the workers’ movement has always placed
action for peace among its foremost objectives. As
early as 1914, acting on the initiative of the A. F. of L.,
we began to formulate the social purpose of a just
peace. At the international workers’ conferences at
Leeds, at London, and at Berne was born Part XIII
of the Treaty of Peace, the point of departure for
the great work of the International Labor Office. In
spite of all the dissensions of the working class, so
much desired formerly by the Red International and at
present by those who take their orders from Russia, the
workers are the primary force for peace.
Now, after the Second World War, we find that the
voice of the working class and, in general, that of the
world’s peoples is being less and less heeded by gov-
ernments. We seem to forget the truth, evident though
it may be, that social progress and economic coopera-
tion are the real foundations of peace. Let us establish
prosperity effectively in the non-Soviet world, let us
apply and broaden the great principles of individual
liberty, and we shall soon see that communism will
lose its attraction for the masses and that the prospect
for peace will improve.
Likewise will disappear that mood of resignation
which seeks a solution in neutralism and in the passiv-
ity of the mere onlooker, a mood that spells inaction
in the presence of danger and—suicide.
But we must act quickly, for the situation is con-
stantly growing more serious. That is why we have
created “La Democratie Combattante,” a world-wide
movement for peace, social progress, and the rights of
man. Our aim is to give confidence to the masses and
to re-create popular enthusiasm for the U. N.
Ours. is a vast movement which will be-able to op-
posed effectively the mendacious demagogy of the Com- _-
munist “Partisans of Peace’ and give to millions of
. citizens a rallying point. In the last analysis it is not
so much a new program that we need as a “will to
action” and an organization to bring together the
scattered people of good-will. The battle cannot be
won unless the various peoples of the world work
together; peace can be preserved only by the peoples.
[Léon Jouhaux, French trade-union leader, is presi-
dent of the Force Ouvriére and vice-chairman of the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.}
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Too much is at stake for it to do otherwise. The Rio
—
124 | . The NATION —
POEMS - - - BY CHARLES G. BELL
Familiar voices call and roads beckon.
‘And what love draws us on? Quiet in the plane
I close my eyes until we resume the lane
Where flight commences. Wait. And again we feel
That great acceleration like a hand
Pressing us into our seats. The gaunt earth reels,
With a last bound drops behind, and we are things
Of the air. Brief separation. Yet we must dream
It could protract itself, be in our command
So easily to break from the old stem
And leave this shadowed limb of the sad land,
Songs fer a New America
1. We rise by the water; all things begin in the sea,
The formless mother, but of such melting beauty,
She draws at the land’s heart forever. We
Are climbing in air; look, the bay and city
_ Wheel beneath us. That girl holding the lamp,
Timid in style, is a foreign freedom.
But here and higher we have put our stamp
All ever the rock island of Manhattan.
Here is our Liberty, a daring thing
a Of abstract line without face or feature,
4 Catching the dawn at the tip of the banking wiag,
a. This beauty no man planned, clean beyond nature,
A crystal of explosive energy—
And this is our land, tall over the shifting sea.
5. The diminishing city vaguely splotched with sua
Withdraws under the mist; we roar head on
Into a luminous bank of cloud, a thin
Shell of brightness. Then we break out above
Over the clear expanse rippled with tints
Of rose and blue and the melting purple, as in
A rainbow, colors in light, and fresh and new.
Over this blindingness the map as we move
Marks where the centers lie, the dynamic engines,
Hearts that are traffic in the noontime canyons.
Here, impetceptibly heaving in the winds,
With the quiet breathing of a peaceful thing,
Under its mottled cover—all one great pearl
Of rounding beauty—sleeps the terrible world,
2. We are crossing the Susquehanna. Right about here,
In a farmhouse by the woods I know a man
Who lives as his fathers did. As far as he can
He keeps away from the city. He dips the clear
Water from his own spring. There is virgin timber—
ae Oaks and enormous hemlocks—in his ravine;
_ And he has planted all his hills with pine.
E He gathers maple sap in the snows of winter,
Makes beautiful furniture, and carves and weaves,
And fashions with wrought iron at his forge. 6. Past the Mississippi the clouds are breaking,
He is a Quaker, as honest as his streams. Making way. The first rifts are like shadows
ae He has Lat radio, and when new roads Of such deep blue you think them darker cloud.
. Appear in the forest, and drab frames Then in the glimpses golden lands are shaping,
; Spread from the city, he returns to his hearth and grieves, Stubble and corn, the patterned fields of yellow,
- Along the winding streams by the fall-flecked woods,
3. For myself, I think we have gone past ~ Tender through the last mist and dissolving scad:—
Nature—as past the ridges and cut-over woods . This earth again, Welcome stranger. It was good Atay
Of the dwarfed Alleghenies, where the roads Almost being pated from you. You are one eh a
Are winding as they climb, and the mired rivers - We have loved too deeply, too much counted on, SUDA
_ | Bend down to the plain through hills they sever. Lovets so young, each has betrayed the other. SO
B Out in the central valleys in an hour, Now the clouds are gone. Incredibly wide you discover J
- We have run through a hundred years and more Your goods beneath us. And always love will burn pi ae
| oe Of the epening of the West. Here by the Lakes Through the sweetness of parting, this sweet return. —
; The midland cities stand, and one that takes s
i Our breath with boldness as we bank and lower— 7. The great brown Missouri and the shallow Platte—
i. Brute and butcher, yet you of the wind’s towers, Following the last, a dry stream in a prairie,
i Chicago, is this curse of earth and air We go up over fields of harvested wheat.
a And water, this rearward ugliness the cost Brown fingers of rock erosion are reaching back
ie - Of every embodied dream and act of power? Into the ruled tables. Frightening the very
he : che Expanse and marginal slipping into waste.
ay 4. Over miles of tenements we are settling wings A damned-up lake is a blue promise in the vast.
iM Through the gray air. I do not even descend. These men live under the weathering rocks
eee Against the danger of the forward vision Where the flat mudstone tilts and breaks
bruary 7, 1953
>»
Fe ek a an
ond the ia outcrop of the Lins cS.
They are always gambling on the cold and hee ee
Cycles of the sun and rain, and all their hope,
Under the giant sky, is rooted between ~
The dust and dust, in a little moment of green.
8. Over the broken teeth of the Wasatch range
We reach the dead center—that sudden dropping aay
To the salt basin of an exhausted sea
Shimmering in the heat. This mineral plain
Is not of our spoilage. Nature left it drained
Before we entered. Now the whole cycle has changed.
From that irriguous ground and granite temple
A new leader rallies his wavering people:
“We are men singled out by destiny
To a high calling. What an age is ours.
It is the coming of our fathers’ dream,
This hope and trial of which the weak complain.”
Here caught in the rush of mind the desert flowers.
We build as we destroy, consummately.
9. Much of this country is more of the moon than earth.
For the pioneers it was days and weeks, trekking
The salt-flats, range on range of heart-breaking
Desert. Strange they went on. But they made a path
. The fog comes rolling in from the long Pacific;
¥
AIP -
On the bluest eee of a lake, ssa water stirre a
By mountain winds, the cold Tahoe. Then the shelving e.
Valleys plunging in the sky’s flame down a
To the Sacramento, The naked hills are scored =
As with rivers of fire; they shine like burnished bronze,
Here in the valley where the wild light is poured,
In goblets of wheat and vine we drink the god sun.
The redwoods tower in the mist where we go down;
Their needles drip into the columned gloom; ~
The white-skinned eucalyptus are swaying and weeping.
Over the warm hills and bay the fog dissolving
Lets rainbow light play through. Long sunset rays
Touch the mirrored shores glimpsed through the haze
Golden as dream, a melting hieroglyphic
Of all our temporal lands. So cloud and rain
Close the curtain, as banking we descend—
Cycles of rise and fall—where crashing waves,
As slow as heavy, gather weight and pound
The splintered granite of the coast’ range:—O land,
O cities; and down to the salt sea again.
The Problem of Hope
THE ZONE OF INDIFFERENCE. By
Robert Strausz-Hupé. G. P, Putnam's
Sons. $3.75.
ERHAPS I did not pay attention,
but it seems to me that Robert
ee “The Zone of Indiffer-
” published last October, received
Bitkin gly little notice. It is one of the
wisest and best- informed discussions of
the issue between Europe and America
that I have encountered.
Mr. Strausz-Hupé is profoundly influ-
enced by Spengler. In fact, he is a good
example of that moderately rare person
for whom Spengler means not parallel
charts of decay but an insight into what
makes a culture coherent. Fully aware of
how much Spengler’s scholarship has
been discredited, Mr. Strausz-Hupé in-
sists that the critics have thrown out
the baby with the bath—the baby being
the concept of culture. From this histor-
ical perspective he focuses on the present
contrast, and tension, between America
(which has survived by grace) and
Europe (a generation ago the center of
world power, now the debated ground)
with a rich comprehension of both their
characters, of their distinct and yet com-
mon heritage.
If Western European culture is to
126
endure, it must remain whole; it can
remain whole only so long as the dia-
logue between the two segments con-
tinues. If the time ever comes when
they can no longer speak to each other,
or when America reduces Europe to
silence and obsequiousness, the culture
is ended. For Americans to keep up
their part requires, much more than
arms and tanks, a realization of what
has happened to Europe, what Mr.
Strausz-Hupé calls “the alienation of the
Social Mind”—the slackening of coop-
erative drives, the disillusionment of the
masses with “traditional society,” the
basically moral failure of a culture
which, though it had the immense re-
sources of the Greek, Roman, and
Judaic tradition behind it, lost itself in
the sands of bureaucracy (he is es-
pecially pungent—and _terrifying—on
the subject of bureaucracy).
But then comes, as he sees it, the
appalling fact that the America which
now sustains the tottering structure is
itself being transformed into a bureau-
cracy. Just as this country has trium-
phantly demonstrated the feasibility of
a great middle class and effectively re-
futed every premise of Marxist theory,
it too elects to follow the curve of
European rigidity, and settles into a
hierarchy of military and political grada-
tions. At a moment when America
might, indeed, have provided a regen-
erating vision of the future, it offers
only a dismal reminder of Europe's
past.
As for solutions, there are, he argues,
two alternatives. America may take over
Europe, administer it, and finally reduce
it to provinces, as Rome did Greece. The
horror is that this is a perfectly feasible
program. The other possibility is “the
reintegration of the Western commu-
nity,” which would require a subordina-
tion of political and military strategy
to moral considerations, call for a recon-
ciliation of the peoples of Europe to
the traditional society, and impose upon
America a live-and-let-live philosophy.
Otherwise, if America supposes that
Europe will take up arms and fight to”
the death in defense of a hollow concept
of “Western culture,” America is
launched upon a disastrous adventure.
In many quarters of this country
European “‘neutralism’” is regarded as a
self-evident sin against the Holy Ghost.
Every report, especially of recent
months, shows that it is not thus to be
conjured away. From the evidence of
this book no one can accuse Mr.
Strausz-Hupé of underestimating the
danger to Western culture of a Russian
onslaught, but there is a more pressing
_ The NatIoN
mi
__ dssue of neutralism.” The author no
doubt has his crotchets, but the fascina-
tion of the book is to watch this enlight-
ened Spenglerian struggle with the
_ problem of hope. ‘The destiny of man
and of peoples,” he moralizes, “is
death”; yet he concludes in resolute
optimism that as long as the Western
schism is not swept into an absolute
rift, the West is not-released from the
burden of responsibility. .
The American reader will compre-
hend, after reading this book, his own
exasperation with the inferiority com-
plex of modern Europe; I know no
better work to bring home to him his
responsibility for growing into a matu-
rity sufficient for the control and even
the sublimation of that legitimate
emotion. PERRY MILLER
ee tcuiety oe eee
POSS
Pa
“ts
Prawns
SSS SS ee ASE SO =
le
years
Phe SRT et 2 ARES Se
'
A Great Spaniard —
UNAMUNO, By Arturo Barea. Yale
University Press, $2.50.
ee Spanish philosophers in con-
temporary life have interested and
baffled foreign observers. One is José
Ortega y Gasset, now dividing his time
between Madrid and Lisbon. The other
is Miguel de Unamuno, who died at the
end of 1936 and who still attracts both
controversy and acclaim.
This is not the place to embark on a
comparison of the merits or the influ-
ence wielded by the two men. Only
when Ortega is gone and the body of
his work stands completed, can a scholar
and critic sit down to that fascinating
task. Toward that end Arturo Barea has
+ in his interesting study provided a par-
. tial and preliminary study of the older
* of the two. It will not satisfy aficionados
of the grand old man, but its author is
quite aware that this is only a first
attempt to cut away underbrush and set
“clearly and sympathetically the more
obvious foundation posts for a critical
‘biography.
Unamuno, born in Bilbao in 1893,
was a philosopher, a teacher, a novelist,
a poet, an essayist, a critic of political
regimes. He was all of these at once,
and no one of these terms is adequate to
describe the impact he made on his
_ country and his time. So passionately
ful only “within the context of the
mie
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3
4
ise Dent Be es a ad ae eee Seat Beye
= é . i re, artes ree ye
had he lived, so determined was his tingly 0
onslaught on factors in Spanish life
which seemed to him destructive, that
by the time he was fifty he loomed as
one of the elder giants.
It is only in the light of his back-
ground and his accomplishment that his
curious -and tragic role in the Spanish
war can be understood. Barea tells the
outlines of the story. Unamuno, who had
regarded with horror certain practical
aspects of the republic for which he
had hoped so much, was rector of Sala-
manca University when the war broke.
He declared himself in favor of the
military rebellion which made _head-
quarters there,-‘‘not because he shared
the ideas of the fascists but because he
hoped that the movement would save
Spain from the mass rule which was his
nightmare, and revive ‘the living tra-
dition’.”” Three months later, his eyes
opened by the war's course, he rose to
speak against the generals. He was re-
lieved of his post at once and died at
the end of the year.
The legend, which Barea does not
tell, is that a friend coming to offer
New Year greetings found him lying
in his chair, feet stretched to the fire,
and one shoe slowly charring. His last
months were spent under house guard,
but shortly before his death he was
allowed to see a Dutch journalist. Some
people suspect that his presence became
too embarrassing to Franco to be toler-
ated, but though rumors of poison per-
sist they have not to the knowledge of
this reviewer been substantiated. He
was an old, frail veteran of many
battles. It seems much more fitting that
he should have left life by the sheer
force of his will as a final, victorious
protest against the intolerable conditions
which had mounted around him.
BAREA stresses Unamuno’s life-long
struggle against man’s unique enemy,
the extinction that comes with death.
This is the core of his philosophic in-
quity, the live coal that gave all his
work its force. In that struggle he
doubled on his tracks like a fox under
hot pursuit. Writing, speaking, think-
ing, his fight was for the power of the
_ individual in a world which threatened
with growing force to crush the indi-
vidual. To Barea’s mind “he achieved
what he wanted to achieve; there is no
thinking Spaniard who has not, wit-
128
S> bey
irritating, and “amibleigs thought. A —
thinker who teaches how to turn con-
flict, contradiction, and despair into a
source of strength has something to give
to men of this age.” Now that he is
gone, those contradictions which were
so difficult to understand from the out-
side fall into their proper perspective.
But Barea errs in this—it was not the
“how” that Unamuno taught but the
“what.” His way of turning “conflict,
contradiction, and despair into a source
of strength” might not be another’s
way. It is the fact that he did it which
is all-important. Consider his Spain, the
paucity of his formal education, the
material difficulties against which he had
to struggle, the power of his mind and
of the prejudices that tried to chain it—
then measure his achievement against
those. In a day and a country like ours,
in which material aids are easy while the
exercise of moral courage is doubly
hard, that achievement becomes both an
inspiration and a challenge. We would
do well to heed it.
MILDRED ADAMS
An Indispensable Source
THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFER-
SON. Volume VI: 21 May, 1781, to
1 March, 1784. Edited by Julian P.
Boyd; Mina R. Bryan and Elizabeth
L. Hutter, Associate Editors. Prince-
ton University Press. $10.
HE common reader is not likely to
be attracted by an expensive and
voluminous edition of Jefferson’s writ-
ings and related documents edited for
the use of scholars and ‘so comprehen-
sive in scope and so accurate in pres-
entation that the work will never need
to be done again.” “The Papers of
Thomas Jefferson’’ will be a formidable
work, and so is any one volume of it.
It is not to be recommended for casual
reading.
Yet I hope that every reader of this
notice will try the “Papers” for himself.
The reward will be rich for anyone who
brings to the business a slight amount of
background knowledge, a little imagina-
tion, and a sense of what to skip. Jeffer-
son is in these volumes as he is no-
where else, and it is necessary to keep in
touch with him, for it is still true as it
was in Lincoln’s time that “the prin-
great protagonist of political: religigll
and intellectual freedom, and those three. :
freedoms are so interrelated that we
would do well to consider them, as he
did, inseparable. We shall not have any ~
one.of them for long unless we have the
others. And it is in the nature of things
that the fight for freedom never ends,
for freedom can be kept only by exer-
cising it and extending it. Jefferson’s
intuitive understanding of the nature of
freedom has never been surpassed, and
he was extraordinarily sensitive to every
form of attack on it, however covert it
might be. He is still our ally in the un-
ending campaign, and that is why every
least detail of his thought and activity is
significant.
There are other reasons also for
studying the “Papers.” They are one of
the chief sources for our knowledge of
the Revolutionary period of our history,
and Jefferson himself, if one could con-
sider him apart from his great, never-
forgotten idea, would still be one of the
most interesting personalities that Amer-
ica has produced.
Volume VI of the ‘Papers’ begins
with the last fortnight of Jefferson’s
governorship of Virginia and closes be-
fore he had finished his second period
of service in the Continental Congress.
If it thus lacks a proper Aristotelian
beginning and end, it makes up for the
deficiency by an abundance of rich mid-
dle. For the historian the value of this
volume lies in the fact that it will enable
him to see certain events more clearly,
in greater detail, than before,
+ p
re a
i oe
cet a ee ee
ze
a
2 Jace
THE UNPROFESSIONAL reader will
find much else to enjoy. The turbu-
lent life of the time animates these
pages, although it is seldom reported
directly. Events are usually seen by reflec-
tion. As a minor example: On June 4,
1781, Tarleton’s force raided Charlottes-
ville and Monticello in an attempt to
capture what was left of the legislature
and Jefferson himself, who had retired
the day before from the office of gov-
ernor. Warned in time, Jefferson sent his
family and guests to safety and, trusting
to his knowledge of the terrain, did not
leave Monticello until the raiding party
was in, sight. Here is how Jefferson re-
ports the incident: “The alarm which
The NATION —
-~? \ Da
;
!
ar
PAT Ae ra
~
ST Way ee
:
amy
_ them were true formerly; but in pte-
paring for flight I shoved in papers
a
i )
where I could.” That’s all, for Jefferson
ignored every opportunity to dramatize
himself. :
Although he is seldom off-stage for
more than a page or two, his supporting
company is numerous and diverting.
This volume includes letters from
eighty-three of his individual corre- -
spondents, eminent or obscure. The
editors promise to provide us eventually
with a Biographical Register; it will not
be the least interesting volume of the
whole work. The bigwigs—Washing-
ton, Franklin, Lafayette, Greene, Steu-
ben, Benjamin Rush, the two James
Madisons, and many another—are self-
explaining, or largely so; but thete is a
fascinating batch of little-knowns and
unknowns whose personalities break
through their writing with engaging
clarity. But who are they? How one
would like to know whence they came,
where they went, and how Jefferson
happened to meet them!
There is, to take one, the Chevalier
D’Anmours, a charming man, whose
letter introducing Colonel Ternant is
a model of what such things should be.
One would like to catch more than this
single glimpse of him, and one hopes
that his was a kindlier fate than awaited
so many Frenchmen of his class. Then
there is a letter from the sprightly
’ Francis Hopkinson, in which content and
form ate so at one that the editors had
to reproduce it in collotype, mere print
being inadequate. And there are various
Virginians, discoverers of strange bones,
owners of albino Negroes, explorers of
Western rivers, experts in Indian
speech and lore. They are not practiced
hands when it comes to letter-writing,
but they manage to get themselves
- across, and they are happy to give Mr.
, Jefferson, still adding to his ‘Notes on
Virginia,” any information he may de-
_ sire. A goodly company: the 25,000 let-
" February 7, 1953
ters addressed to Jefferson are one of
the grand features of the “Papers.”
As for Jefferson himself, we see him
in the depths of humiliation over the
abortive “inquiry” into his administra-
tion, writing the famous ‘“‘Notes,’* em-
bodying his recent experiences in a new
5
ast
TUG an
life for a
nental Congress, where—a few months
after the end of this volume—he
brought to a conclusion a decade of
brilliant statesmanship.
GEORGE GENZMER
Vision Versus Facts
. MAKE THE U, N. EFFECTIVE—
FOR PEACE, By John Bauer. Rich-
ard R. Smith. $2.50.
R. BAUER’S intentions are good,
and it is a pity that he has not
devoted his considerable talents to a
study of practical steps by which the
United Nations can be made more ef-
fective. Essentially his proposal is a
stripped-down version of World Fed-
eralism; he would have a new-model
United Nations give guaranties against
interference with any nation’s internal
or international affairs, but national
armaments would be prohibited and the
U.N. itself would have its own armed
forces at its command to carry out its
pledges against aggression.
To point out that this is not a prac-
tical program is the height of under-
statement, Can anyone seriously propose,
now or in the foreseeable future, that
the United States should eliminate its
own armed forces and rely exclusively
upon the guaranties of the U. N.? Can
anyone believe that the Soviet Union
would consider such a program for it-
self? Dr. Bauet’s proposals are as im-
practicable as those of the World Fed-
eralists, but at least they see that it is
useless to talk about a super-world or-
ganization unless it has power to re-
strain the national rivalries that have
caused wars in the past and will con-
tinue to do so unless the U. N. can be
made strong enough to enforce the peace
and simultaneously to remove the under-
lying causes of war. Nor should it be
forgotten that the U. N. Charter en-
visaged the creation of an international
force similar to that advocated by Dr.
Bauer, but much more in accordance
with the possible. The East-West split
has prevented its realization, and Dr.
Bauer's proposal has no chance of being
adopted.
THOMAS J. HAMILTON
THE TRAGIC
LIFE. A study in Dostoevsky. By
Vyacheslav Ivanov. Translated by S.
Konovalov. Noonday Press. $3.50.
Bo it is a study of a mystic
by an author who is a mystic, this
book on Dostoevsky is both more and
less than criticism. Vyacheslav Ivanov,
who died in 1949, was a poet and
scholar of great originality and pro-
found erudition. Basically a classical
student specializing in the mystic re-
ligions of ancient Greece, he became a
poet of considerable importance, taking
a leading part in the literary life of St.
Petersburg between 1905 and 1912. Al-
though he was fascinated by the study
of cultural achievements, which he felt
should be regarded as a single sweeping
development, he thought that ultimate
religious experience was a spiritual ab-
solute which transcended artistic and
intellectual activities. _
Ivanov discusses Dostoevsky against
the background of his own rather special
interests. He sees a number of links be-
tween the Russian author and a remote
Greek past; the novels are essentially
tragic, in the dramatic sense, and aim at
a catharsis, a device of emotional re- —
lease derived by Greek tragedians from
old religious rituals. The dominant force
in Greek tragedy is a mysterious fate;
in a Dostoevsky novel this role is played
by an equally mysterious process of
WHAT ARE YOUR CHILDREN WORTH?
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129
g i ) verwhelm 8g . FREEDOM AND
grief, returning to public
- second period of service in the Conti-
4
* " ae
st oe eR pe eae
~
eee,
ee
ee,
So Reet eee
med
ae =
bi nh pe ee her os ee ee ta
Spiritual choice which goes on within his
characters.
Ivanov sees further relationships be-
tween Dostoevsky’s religious beliefs and
the mythical lore of ancient Greece. His
mystical altruism, his doctrines of the
universality of guilt and surrender to
God are regarded as developments of
primitive occult beliefs. The personal-
ities and events of his novels, though
_ fealistically presented, are, accordizg to
Dostoevsky’s own statement, intended to
convey a sense of higher, transcendental
reality. Thus, the novels assume the
nature of myths, and Ivanov explains.
in detail the mythological background
and significance of ‘“The Possessed’” and
“Crime and Punishment.”
The result of this mingling of myth,
theology, and criticism is both puzzling
and arresting. A reader searching for
clarity is likely to be defeated by the
arcane systems of two private religions,
Ivanov’s and Dostoevsky’s, one super-
imposed upon the other. Many of the
relationships Ivanov has detected are
very general and therefore unconvincing.
And some parts of the book, especially
a long discussion of demonology, have
little reference to Dostoevsky and ap-
pear to be digressions. In spite of these
shortcomings, Ivanov’s study has the
great merits of learning, originality, and
passionate conviction, and is probably
best regarded as an independent work
rather than a critique. JACOB KORG
Books in Brief
THE OCEAN RIVER. THE STORY
OF THE GULF STREAM. By Henry
Chapin and F, G. Walton Smith. Scrib-
net's. $3.50. The beer carried below
_ decks by Sebastian Cabot went bad
when his ship reached a certain unex-
pectedly warm area in the Atlantic
ocean. This, say the authors of the
present volume, is the first written evi--
dence concerning the Gulf Stream,
whose flow is about a thousand times
that of the Mississippi and without
which much of Northern Europe would
be a sub-Arctic waste. Despite their title
and first chapter their book is not ex-
clusively about the Stream but includes
a sort of popular introduction to the
- relatively new science called ocean-
ography. Since that science includes
portions of various others in so far as
130
ag ae a ces
ee "apply he sea
bit of geo aphiitiegy ten | so.
some of which is familiar to readers of :
other popular-science books. Neverthe-
less, it is seen from a somewhat un-
familiar angle, and we are apparently
in safe hands. F. G. Walton Smith is in
charge of research sponsored by the
navy, and Henry Chapin is the author
of various books dealing with the by-
ways of American history.
HANNAH MORE. By M. G. Jones.
Cambridge University Press. $5.50. Even
in her own day sophisticated people
were likely to sneer at Hannah More,
the bright young thing who gave up a
successful career as novelist and play-
wright to found Sunday schools and
compose the innumerable tracts which
set the tone of pious subliterature for a
hundred years. Our day finds it even
harder to forgive her acceptance of the
Great Scheme of Subordination and her
conviction that the poor should be
taught only enough to save their souls.
One of the virtues of this sober, fair,
and interestingly written account of
Hannah More’s life and works is its
successful. attempt to see her opinions
and activities in the setting which makes
them comprehensible. Even churchmen
today are likely to justify religion in
terms of its social benefits; in Hannah
More’s epoch many besides herself took
it equally for granted that social services
were justified because they brought
religion to the poor.
THESE YOUR CHILDREN. Edited by
Harold U. Ribalow. Beechhurst Press.
$4.50. An anthology of twenty-five stor-
ies on Jewish subjects by American Jew-
ish writers ranging from Ben Hecht and
Albert Halper through Nelson Algren
and Arthur Miller to Hortense Calisher
and Abraham Rothberg. On the minus
side is Mr. Ribalow’s Holmesian ability
to ferret out “Jewish subjects” and “‘Jew-
ish characters’ without the necessary
complementary ability to assess quali-
tatively the results of his detective work.
His editorial notes are also something
less than perceptive: Nelson Algren
“is now winning recognition from less
perceptive critics than Ernest Heming-
way’; James Yaffe “has been writing
long, humorous, and perceptive stories’’;
Hortense Calisher had “a perceptive
interview with Harvey Breit of the New
novels’; Artl r-
ceptive ‘volgts ¢ called “Situation Nor-
ri, ” On the plus side is the fact that a
. Ribalow has after all taken the
ee to go to the literary quarterlies
and the little magazines and has come
up with some good stories, as well as
some early stories by now-established
writers whose literary interests no longer
seem to be confined to “Jewish sub-
jects.”
.THE LAZY ONES. By Albert Cossery.
Translated by William Goyen. New
Directions. $2.75. Cossery has caught”
the age-old lethargy of the effendi world
in this grotesque of Egyptian life. ““The
Lazy Ones” is the story of a family dedi-
cated to the pursuit of sleep as some
are dedicated to self-advancement in
business, and when one of their num-
ber, Rafik, realizes that he has “grasped
the elemental truth hidden at the bot-
tom of life—the way of the least effort
{is the true way}, he is filled with
“pride and gratitude.” The family situa-
tion is comic in the grand vein, and
Cossery writes of it with the purpose-
ful seriousness best calculated to
heighten this effect. The drugged weari-
ness he creates envelops the whole as a
silkworm wraps itself in its own sub-
stance. This almost glutinous atmosphere
is easier to sustain in even a long short
story, however, than in a novel, where
its rarefied, exhausting quality is hard
on the reader. The masterpiece of this
type is, of course, ‘“Oblomov,” and just
as that compact though no less lethargic
excursion into compulsive sleep told
us something of the fast-disappearing
Russian world of provincial gentility,
so Cossety is, by exaggeration, giving
us insight into one of the basic handi-
caps the Egyptian middle class faces in
trying to achieve effective direction of
its own life. =
BULLFIGHTER FROM BROOKLYN.
By Sidney Franklin. Illustrated. Prentice-
Hall. $3.75. He walked out of his
father’s home in Brooklyn and into bull-
fighting as if there had been some in-
stinctual, atavistic craving to return to a
popular manifestation of a culture which
was, in fact, no part of him, This is
what the Spaniards who were for him
never accepted: somehow he must have
The Nation’ d
hoe ?
ea LY
Se Se aS Ped “ Jeedihkedat a
sie innate
WPS ee
phy never really explains it either,
except that he gives us an understanding
of his physical need for adventure, his
‘great admiration for skill and pro-
fi tency, his healthy respect for money.
pe he book is well and simply written,
with colorful anecdotes along the way
and three or four splendid accounts of
Ss ire kills, including a play-by-play view
of many of the finer points of bullfight-
ing. To spice the whole, there is the cred-
ible and—to Franklin’s Mannlichkeit—
creditable tale of the week he was high-
ed by an aboriginal tribe in Mexico
so that they might obtain a coveted in-
fusion of red-haired white-skinned
blood. (He admits that he slept some
‘fifty hours after this glorious work-out. )
And inevitably there is the story of his
relationship with Hemingway, which he
4 ells with enthusiastic loyalty, How does
such a maverick stand up, though, in
“the field he has chosen to invade?
Hemingway himself gave the answer to
this in the passage on Franklin in
“Death in the Afternoon’: “He is a
better, more scientific, more intelligent,
and more finished matador than all but
about six of the full matadors.in Spain
ta ay, and the bullfighters know it and
have the utmost respect for him.”
BY EAR ‘IN, YEAR OUT. By A. A.
Milne. Dutton. $3.50. A pleasant grab-
iba g of odds and ends, all short and all
humorous put otherwise as various in
subject and manner as possible. Some
: re merely agreeable specimens of what
the professional funny man turns out in
the routine practice of his trade; others
embody sesious convictions lightly ex-
‘pressed. Mr. Milne belongs to a gen-
eration not too enthusiastic about post-
¥ at changes in the atmosphere of Brit-
ish life and frequently says so without
losing his temper. He thinks the young
writer has much less chance of making
a living than in his own youth and is
mot tee sure about subsidies as a solu-
tion. “I can imagine nothing more
desiccating to a young writer than the
wledge that he owes three hundred
inds’ worth of inspiration to people
a . A Poet Laureate, with
- embarrassed.”
7,1953
Pee cts ie KN
- Johns Hopkins,
"paradox? Beankhn’ s auto-
f 4 “12 NF a ot ig a is
eA Ay -.Y er a Ves
f de Unamuno.
$3.50. Readers who
want their Unamuno library complete
will be interested in these translations,
which have the Spanish originals on
facing pages. Miss Turnbull does her
usual competent and conscientious job
with the translations; she does not share
the judgment that the most enduring
part of Unamuno’s literary work will be
his poetry, and on the evidence here,
there is something to be said for her
point of view. :
ENGLISH POETRY: MAIN CUR-
RENTS FROM CHAUCER TO THE
PRESENT. By Douglas Bush. Oxford.
$2.50. Professor Bush, in his introduc-
tory note, contends that this book is not
designed as ‘an aid for those whose
minds are anxiously divided between
poetry and examinations.” Intended,
rather, as a guide for the general reader,
it discusses, in six chapters, six large
divisions, with major emphasis given the
major poets of the Middle Ages, The
Renaissance, The Age of Reason and
Sensibility, Romanticism, The Victorian
Age, and The Modern Period. By Eng-
lish poetry, apparently, Professor Bush
means poetry written by Englishmen;
Americans, except Pound and Eliot, do
not count, Frost, Sandburg, Lindsay,
Stevens, Jeffers, for instance, not being
found in the index. There is little non-
sense in this short text, and little reason
to believe the general reader will buy
it in any larger quantity than professors
will order it for survey courses.
“The Crucible”
eo the proper way to judge
Arthur Millet’s play, ‘The Cru-
cible’” (Martin Beck), would be to see
it out of context—out of the pertinent,
and thus painful, and thus perhaps dis-
torting, setting of today. While watch-
ing it, I tried to do this, and now,
writing about it after a lapse of days,
I shall try again. But I shall not succeed
except partially, and in my mind. In
literal fact, I cannot shed the sense of
having experienced simultaneously the
anguish and heroism of Salem’s witch
hunt and of today’s; And since this is
so I am driven to believe that the emo-
tions of both tragic periods charged the
lines with a power they would have
missed had Mr. Mille tas the Salem
Courthouse in a more tranquil time.
But if “The Crucible” is a drama of
1953, as well as of 1692, it does not
follow that it is a simple parable. On
the contrary, it is self-contained rather
than contained by time or place. It is
the terrible and tragic situation that
provides the real setting; while the ac-
tion develops a completely believable
conflict between a handful of ordinary
citizens and the epidemic madness which.
spreads from children—half-malicious,
half-obsessed—to the top dignitaries of
bench and church, ~
The situation is convincing to the last
irrational detail. The conflict emerges in
subtly differentiated forms and shadings.
Mr. Miller is not afraid to point out
how short a distance can separate spite-
ful lying from honest, screaming hys-
terics or stark courage at the foot of
the gallows from the normal impulse
to pay irrational authority the tribute of
a lie in order to live.
Beginning slowly, with a prologue
somewhat diffuse and confusing, the
play gathers momentum and power with
each act. The final scene, just before the
hanging, is immensely moving, sum-
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MUSIC IN THE NATION
By B. H. Haggin
Some of the finest music commentary
of the past twenty years,
List price $5 — Sale price $2.50
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134,
a Ree Saath ie tee
marizing ae ene of the ie with an
tloquence that carries the audience
(carried this member of it, anyway) out
of the theater in a mood of resolve
rather than despair.
Walter Hampden is impressive as the
Deputy Governor who cloaks with his
personality and high office the horrid
farce acted out in courtroom and jail.
The role of Abigail Williams, a young
servant who under pressure slides from
psychotic spasms of false incrimination
to spells of truth-telling and repentance,
is handled by Madeleine Sherwood with
effective excitement. Arthur Kennedy
and Beatrice Straight give the parts of
John aind Elizabeth Proctor the strength,
reserve, and sober resolution demanded
of the witch hunt’s leading victims.
Peter Ustinov’s satire-farce-fantasy,
“The Love of Four Colonels’ (Sam S.
Shubert Theater), is likely to amuse
almost anybody who does not delve for
meanings or try to piece the thing to-
gether into a coherent play. Beginning as
a witty if rather obvious take-off on the
political attitudes and behavior of four ,
Allied colonels—American, French,
British, Russian—thrown together in
an office in post-war Germany, the
scene and mood presently shift. In a
nearby castle, under the supervision of a
good and a bad fairy, each colonel is
given a chance to woo the Sleeping
Beauty back to the world and love. Mr.
Ustinov makes good fun out of the
national approach of his officers to this
fascinating game of forfeits. Each in
turn acts a tiny charade of courtship,
parodying the manner of his country’s
traditional drama. Is there psychological
satire also lurking in these contrasting
performances? Perhaps, but better not
bother about it. Concentrate rather on
the loveliness of Lilli Palmer, the
Beauty, on Rex Harrison’s arrogant
charm, and on Mr. Ustinov’s flow of
wit and nonsense. FREDA KIRCHWEY
“The Fifth Season’ (Cort Theater),
by Sylvia Regan, is a pleasant farce in
the spirit of Potash and Perlmutter.
Without much originality in situation or
dialogue, it holds its audience and creates
a lingering nostalgia for earlier and
simpler days. Menasha Skulnik, making
his debut on Broadway after twenty
years of starring on Second Avenue,
plays with simplicity, assurance, and
humor. 1-8:
132
cee eB, oe acy ee
Wer > * 7 De aay a re
BL H. ;
Redids HAGGIN
CA VICTOR continues to make
available again in its Treasury of
Immortal Performances series of LP rec-
ords items not deserving of immortality,
such as the Menuhin-Landowska and
Menuhin-Enesco performances of Bach's
Sonata in E and Concerto in D minor,
but also things like the Casals perform-
ances of Bach’s Suites Nos. 2 and 3, of
which I will say again what I said when
they were first issued: “The life which
these works have . . . is the life created
by the coloring, the movement, the ten-
sions of Casals’s phrasing. . . . This is'
something you would almost not believe
you had heard in a performance, after it
was over; but you can put the needle
back at the beginning of the Sarabande
of No. 2 and find that it did happen;
and there it is on the record for all
time.”” Which now—thanks to Victor—
is true again.
And if Victor hasn't yet got around to
reissuing the Kreisler-Rachmaninov per-
formances of Beethoven and Schubert
sonatas, the Elisabeth Schumann _per-
formances of Mozart arias and Schubert
songs, the earlier performances of Frieda
Hempel, it has on the other hand
placed the public enormously in its debt
by making available to it for the first
time the Schnabel performances of
Beethoven sonatas in Volumes 1 and 2
of the Beethoven Sonata Society, which
HMV issued in 1935 only in small
limited editions. The two LPs not only
make it possible for many people to
hear again those unique performances
of Opus 111 and Opus 109, and for
many more to hear them for the first
time; they also make it possible to
study in the performances the distinc-
tive way of dealing with the music that .
so extraordinarily enlarged its meaning.
Toscanini once spoke of the difficulty
of playing Mozart as one of knowing
what to do between the mere p here and
f eight bars later; but actually there is
the same difficulty with Beethoven whose
directions are much more numerous and
closer together: there still remains what
must be done between and around them.
This is something one appreciates when
one plays first the Solomon performance
of Opus 111 that was issued last year
. Schnabel’s equally outstanding perform-
of the first two on the new LPs and th e
one of Opus 53 on the old HMV 78s. —
The difference—most striking in the
slow movements—is between Solomon’s —
mere obedience to every p and f in the
score, and what Schnabel does in addi-
tion: the expansion, the distention in
time, the intensification by dynamic.
force, which place the sounds in signifi-
cant, powerful relations in sharply-con-
toured successions with cohesive tensions
that are built up to the salient points .
and then released. And this produces ,
the further difference that the slow
movement of Opus 53, for example, as.
Schnabel plays it has a spaciously, pro-
foundly meditative and powerfully dra-
matic expressive effect that it doesn’t
have in Solomon’s performance.
That meditative character of Schna-
bel’s playing led some people to charac-
terize it as a product of intellect without
emotion; whereas actually, though the
involvement of a powerful intellect is
evident, so is the operation of powerful
emotion. It was excess of emotion, not ©
of intellect, that produced the flaws in
the performances—the occasional dis-
tention of phrase to the point of distor-
tion, the occasional tempo too fast for
clarity, the occasional fortissimo beyond
the limit of agreeable sound; though it
was mere limitations of technique that
produced the inaccuracy and confusion
that is to be heard in the difficult pas-.
sagework in the first movement of Opus
111. If one can’t endure these flaws one
can have smoothly rounded perfection
from Solomon; if one can endure them
one gets in addition what Solomon
doesn’t offer: the dramatic power that
Schnabel imparts to the first movement
of Opus 111, the sustained continuity
and intensity of the progression from
the spaciously reflective opening of the
second movement to the supetearthly
illumination of the end, the similar
sustained continuity in the conclusion
of Opus 109—the crescendo of intensity
in the’ extraordinary final variation to
the trills that subside into the affecting
restatement of the theme.
On the record with Opus 111 are
ances of the fine Sonatas Opp. 78 and ~
90; on the one with Opus 109 beautiful
performances of the less interesting —
Opp. 27 No. 1 and 14 No. 1. In Opp.
The NA
109 and 111 one hears the surface noise
of the copies from which they were
dubbed. jac
Schubert is another composer whom
Schnabel loved and played with wonder-
ful effect—with lyricism, grace, and on
occasion the hair-raising power that
Schubert was capable of. An HMV LP
offers the performances of the Impromp-
tus Opp. 90 and 142, most of which are
among Schubert’s finest pieces. On my
review copy two of the finest, Opus
90 Nos, 1 and 3, are spoiled by noisy
sctapes.
An excellent performance of Bee-
thoven’s Sonata Opus 57 (““Appassion-
ata”) by Victor Schioler is on an HMV
rf LP, absurdly coupled with Liszt's Piano
Concerto in E flat.”
5S. LANE
FAISON, JR.
¥ Art
if ORE than twenty water colors and
oils by John Marin at the Down-
' town Gallery, all painted in 1952, give
rise inevitably to certain questions. Are
Marin’s oils and his water colors of
equal significance? Is he among the few
octogenarians in the history of art whose
very late work ranks with his best at
any previous period? Shall we follow
custom in hailing him as dean of some-
thing or other but pass over his current
work in respectful silence?
Far from being silent, I propose
herewith that Marin’s recent water colors
are among the finest he has done, but
that the dils are among the emptiest.
In water color Marin has combined a
small-scale, tightly packed calligraphy
with a deep Renaissance space (Autumn
Coloring No. 2) and has managed to
- achieve an impact at once expansive and
‘ terse, not unlike early Mantegna, for
example. In Written Sea, an oil, the
calligraphy is crabbed, hesitant, too
- widely spaced. I can only think of these
» -0ils as weak sketches for the water
colors, which of course they were not,
In an adjoining room several water
colors of the thirties show a relatively
passive attitude. None projects the
scudding power of Westerly Gale or
the silent relentlessness of Approaching
Fog. These new works have the bite of
crusty very late Donatellos and Michel-
— angelos, their modest dimensions and
__ February 7, 1953
\
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WHAT SOME A.R.S, FAEMBERS SAY:
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j D.H., New York, N. Y.
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— om ae ce ee Gen ee Gee ts eee ere a cies coed ee
143
al a
sharply ae theme notwithstanding,
They show that Marin is by no means
willing merely to reminisce from the
eminence of some theoretical deanship.
He is one of the most masculine of our
male artists—a statement meant to con-
note no more than-it says, because Bot-
ticelli and Giorgione are high on my list
of creative spirits, and because the rest
of this column will be devoted to women
painters of both feminine and masculine
expressiveness.
Loren MaclIver and I. Rice Pereira,
who share the hospitality of the Whitney
Museum through March 1, could hardly
differ from each other more profoundly
than they do. The former is all tenuous,
indirect suggestion; the latter, blaring
affirmation. Loren Maclver, it seems to
me, is the finest of our women. artists
now in the public eye. I offer no theory,
such as that painting by women should
be feminine, on which to argue this
opinion. She is a minor artist whose
extraordinary subtlety _ occasionally
touches on greatness. To call her minor
is intended as no insult whatever, since
I consider Simone Martini, Watteau,
and Paul Klee minor artists, and Klee
the greatest and most minor of them
all. Minor and major, like their musical
analogies, are a matter of tonality; their
differences are qualitative. In the visual
arts I associate them as well with basic
intention, and suggest that the major
artist is one who attempts the sublime,
as Masaccio did, while the minor artist,
reticent and intensely personal, avoids it
like the plague.
Loren Maclver’s imagination is re-
leased by fragments of urban experience:
ashcans, votive lights, sidewalks, a bat-
tered window curtain, oil slicks, and the
itidescence of rain more felt than seen
from the interior of a taxi. Her art lies
rather close to its subject matter: the
object metamorphosed into poetry. There
is considerable pictorial invention, but it
runs the risk of losing some of its force
once the excitement of sharing an un-
expected poetic discovery has worn off.
I am constantly surprised that the large
pictures stand up so well, as everything
HEDDA
STERNE
Recent Paintings * Feb. 16-Mar. 7
BETTY PARSONS GALLERY
1S 2.157151) XS
134
a ot FET sre
“ ei A i i . ree
ms mh oe
ab6ut Toren 2 Mactver's s art ene is the
diminutive, and fragility, as Watteau
understood so well, is accommodated by
the small scale. Despite this theory,
which I found myself dangerously far
embarked upon, I have to report that
the big panoramas of Paris at dawn
(Metropolitan Museum) and Venice by
day (Whitney Museum) challenge the
several smaller items very successfully,
though I still hold out for a modestly
scaled Venetian night piece in gouache,
in which the ghostly silhouette of the
Doges’ Palace predominates. The exhi- |
bition covers twenty years’ work in fifty-
nine paintings. The development is
gradual and cumulative, a fair test, I
think, of the artist with staying power;
and the end is implicit in the beginning.
I must confess that I am bothered by
sudden breaks in the work of Pereira,
one coming exactly in 1937 when she
shifted from what I shall call illustra-
tions of machinery, the other occurring
about a year ago when fourteen years
of variation of the rectangle were super-
seded by a totally curvilinear design.
Sixty works are presented, and even
from these I can find nothing like a
logical momentum of change, such as
can easily be followed in Picasso’s shift
from one idiom to another. While such
remarks may be objectionable as criti-
cism, I have always felt the career itself
is worth evaluating as a kind of super
work of art. Pereira’s individual works
strike me as much too similar to stand
up in a large retrospective. Furthermore,
I do not warm up to the mystical ex-
planations, in terms of light, offered in -
John Baur’s sensitively written introduc-
tion. The artist’s sincerity is not the
question—or in question; the question
is, as always, what. gets projected in
visual terms. For me it is mostly slick
design, elaborate industrial-age decora-
tion. I would like to acclaim it as major
att, like Leger’s of the ’20’s, since it
assuredly is not minor, but I am unable
to do so.
In these days of conflict of interest in
the political scene, I have one of my
own: an exhibition in a small college
museum which I direct, but an exhibi-
tion that seems worthy of more than
local mention. Rassie Gifford has exhib-
ited in group shows in New York, but
Williams College has been displaying
her first one-man show. Because of the
conflict of interest mentioned above, I
critical biography of Thomas Jefferson.
with an n unusual combination |
and gentleness. if s6ot suspect; she ¥ will: "|
be heard from in the metropolifn a4
centers, I shall find an occasion to say
I told you so. .
he e *
CORRECTION. In my review of |
“Great Paintings from the National
Gallery of Art’’ by Huntington Cairns
and John Walker (The Nation, Decem-
ber 20, 1952) I criticized the use of an
“old” color plate of El Grece’s Lao-
codn in its pre-cleaned state, amd com-
pared it adversely with a plate in a
recent and expensive publication on El
Greco showing the “present radiant
condition” of this picture. A very recent
visit to the National Gallery obliges me»
to report that the radiant cendition —
exists only in the color plate, the picture —
itself being as dark as when } last saw
it. As the National Gallery has been
doing wonderful work in getting its pic-
tures cleaned, it did not occur te me that
the “cleaning” of the Laocoén had been
done only by some color printers in
New York, Publishers should, of course,
be enjoined from perpetrating such.
falsehoods. But there is a happy pros- ~
pect. Something like the radiant condi-
tion indicated by the false cotor plate
probably does exist under the dirty
varnish that now covers the surface of
the Laocodén. May the National Gallery
soon bring it back to view! ° :
CONTRIBUTORS
CHARLES G. BELL, on the faculty of
the College of the University of €hicago,
is at work on a book entitled “Spirit
Takes Form, an ce. Study of the
Western Arts.” %
PERRY MILLER is professor of English —
at Harvard University. iG
MILDRED ADAMS has long heen a
student of Spanish and Hispano-
American culture.
GEORGE GENZMER is working on a
THOMAS J. HAMILTON is the
United Nations correspondent of the
New York Times.
JACOB KORG is a member of the
English Department of the ay College
of New York.
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a viaten of sia dealt A oeiions
To aid Mr. Judd in his fight the A. F.
of T. allotted a legal-defense subsidy
which was supplemented by our state
organization’s legal-defense fund.
In conformity with the decision of-
the university local our organization
took the matter before the University of
Colorado's faculty senate, although we
felt from the start that this would be a
fruitless way of trying the case, since the
senate was an appendage of the univer-
sity itself. We had offered legal service
to Mr. Judd if he wished to go before
the Board of Regents, but he didn’t
avail himself of it until the senate had
sustained a report by its Committee on
Privileges and Tenure upholding the
university's stand. Subsequently the Re-
gents rejected by a five-to-one vote a mo-
tion to allow Mr, Judd to appear before
it with legal counsel. As a result of this
decision Mr. Judd got neither a public
nor a private hearing of his case by the
university itself.
Since Mr. Judd wanted to continue
the case, our lawyer investigated the
possibility of getting a hearing in a fed-
eral court on the ground that his civil
liberties had been placed in jeopardy by
the university's action.” On the basis of a
decision by Judge Learned Hand of the
United States Court of Appeals, the way
was left open to bring Mr. Judd’s case
before the federal court in Colorado.
After a debate in our own executive
committee it was agreed that our organ-
ization should continue to aid Mr. Judd.
At this point, however, he refused our
help, though we had been trying for
nine months to get his case heard. He
had the right, certainly, to reject our
assistance, but by dropping the case he
not only hurt himself but, we believe,
has weakened the whole fight to pre-
serve academic freedom.
Our organization took considerable
tisk in supporting a case of this nature
at a time when the defense of liberal
traditions in this country is not too pop-
ular. We feel that in the final analysis
we had more at stake than Mr. Judd as
an individual. Our regret is that he did
not see fit to carry his fight forward
through the courts rather than through
the organizations set up by the univer-
sity, which, as elsewhere in this country,
are not safeguarding academic freedom.
MORRIS TAYLOR, President,
HERRICK S. ROTH, Executive Secretary,
Colorado Federation of Teachers
Denver
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Wilson’s Air Secretary and “Flying Coffins
LES tone’ § “Weekly "
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Psy ea ‘, as De Ty hee 7 " See
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Vol. I NUMBER 3 January 31, 1953
<>
WASHINGTON, D. C. 15 CENTS
What They Confirmed With Wilson
It would take a Balzac to do justice to the hearings on
the nomination of Charles E. Wilson to be Secretary of De-
fense. The Business Man and the Politician confronted each
other, each ready to turn a forgiving eye on the derelictions of
his own kind. Senators who had just voted to seat a McCarthy
were in no position tobe righteous about Wilson’s reluctance
tu dispose of his stock in General Motors. Wilson was taken
aback. Had the Republicans not won the election? ‘‘I would
like to tell you men,” he told the Senators at one point, ‘‘ther-
is a change in the country. The people are not afraid «*
nessmen like me right now.”
The full transcript of the executive ser"
Wilson spoke not with arrogance br’
said he could not conceive of -
new position “because for
our country was good fo. %
He was proud of his record
pany, as he had a right to be ¢
was giving him credit for leay
am now risking a failure, in my
a challenge. Now, as far as I a
is finished. I closed up my des.
mingled feelings of regret and nos
being treated with suspicion!
The retirement bonus provided tha.
paid only if the recipient did nothing - GM's in-
terest. Wilson had this specially chang, 4 tact which did
not appear until the transcripts were released) to read that
nothing he did in government service would be considered
inimical to GM “‘so that no one would feel like I had any club
over me.” When Senator Russell still questioned the bonus
arrangement at the second hearing, it was more than Wilson
could bear. “I know what you are talking about,” he said,
“but I really feel you are giving me quite a pushing around.
~cing
I. F. Stone’s Weekly
Room 225 Kellogg Bldg.
1416 F Street, Washington 4, D. C,
Please enter the following subscription. $5 for 1 year is
enclosed.
% B » ‘Yat they bought from.”
, ‘
an honorable one; no one questions his integrity. But *
can you staff a government with business men who hav:
conception of the conditions necessary for public service!
In the clash between the two points of view, sub
and larger consi? -ations were neglected. The conflict ¢
terest the !- to avoid required more than the dive.
of st- ° Morse, Lehman and Smith tried to m
one day of debate by the Senate; a mj
f€ his past, his point of view, his ac+y
Wilson himself volunteered at éne
‘earing, “We had exactly the Same
We had a very strict rule that any
buyers, none of them should have ©
Was it
‘est company dealing with the
” executive to head Defense?
‘ area which went completely
ith past experience in arms pro-,
0bilization. Wilson's GM and Wil-
« mobilization for World War II resisted
.« automotive facilities to war production, insisted
-oiness as usual” for months after Pearl Harbor.
fhe man Wilson picked to be Secretary of the Army, Robert
T. Stevens, a textile manufacturer doing a $125,000,000 busi-
ness with the Army, was a Colonel buying textiles in the
Quartermaster Corps in the last war. When the resignation
from the War Production Board of Robert R. Guthrie, in the
spring of 1942, focussed attention on the lag in conversion to —
war, textiles was one of the horrid examples. Wool and jute
were being wasted while the army was short of cotton duck.
Facilities which could have produced the vital cloth were stand-
ing idle. Stevens at one point was prevailed on to force
the grant of cotton duck contracts to idle carpet mills, but —
beyond this the business men in uniform would not go. The
record should have been gone into and questions asked.
Above all questions should have been asked of Talbott,
Wilson’s choice to be Secretary of Air. The post is the most
important one of all in many ways. The story disclosed on
page two makes Talbott seem a shocking choice for it. Avia-
tion is the one major American industry today which must live
or die on war scares. Peace, real peace, would leave it wither-
ing on the vine. The air lobby today is what the armorplate
and naval lobbies were before World Wars I and II. The.
Secretary for Air should be free in every way of industry ties;
this one is reluctant to divest himself even of the obvious ones. .
Wilson's choice of: Talbott reflects no credit on Wilson. What
the Senate confirmed with Wilson was its readiness to acquiesce
in handing over war production completely to big business.
Experience with these same men and companies in World
Wars I or II show that this is unwise from the standpoint of
war production, and hazardous for the prospects of peace.
eo or The G. O. P. Takes the Road Back—FAttorial
BURLINGAM,
Nation
February 14, 1953
Freud and the Hucksters
Seducin 1g the Social Scientists
BY RALPH GOODMAN
*K
Jews in Russia
BY ALEXANDER WERTH
+
The Morse Code
t , What the Oregon Senator Is Fighting For
BY BRUCE CATTON
.
E1753 ta) he \
ae &@ PUBLIC LIBRARY )
8 lin j 2 Calil. 7
LL S>>>S=>=>E>E>>EEEEEEE©»x=>~>(=(=~wyx»DDBDO9nBnDS===HH]HHHHHH
0 EEN ES a COPY > EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865 - 7 DOLLARS A YEAR
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eR RE nme
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recently Assistant Director of Information of the De-
partment of the Interior under Oscar Chapman and
author of “War Lords of Washington,” to write a series
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NEW YORK + SATURDAY +. FEBRUARY 14, 1953
NUMBER 7
The Shape of Things
Persuasive Mr. Dulles
Dispatches from London and the Continent suggest
that Messrs. Dulles and Stassen left behind them a more
acquiescent collection of allies than had greeted them
on their arrival, The resentment and alarm described in
this issue by Alexander Werth and Andrew Roth seem
to have subsided into a mood of wait and see. Evidently
British and French officials were partly reassured by Mr.
Dulles’s indication—there was no promise—that the new
Formosa policy would not mean enlarging the Korean
war. They were pleased by his invitation to visit Wash-
ington next month. In Germany the going was even
easier, as Carolus foresaw. The visit. of the American
emissaries, and Mr. Eisenhower’s letter to Dr. Adenauer
inviting him also to come to Washington, have strength-
ened the Chancellor’s hand and proportionately weak-
ened the Social Democratic opposition.
In spite of underlying doubts and tensions, official
Europe seems to be responding with a mild burst of
energy to the American demand for speed in ratifying
the defense agreements and getting ahead with the Eu-
ropean army. Britain has promised prompt action on a
detailed plan for closer cooperation with the Continen-
tal defense,system, and the French are accelerating their
effort to settle the protocols—meaning modification and
reservations—of the defense treaty so that ratification
and German rearmament can be pushed without delay.
Belgium and Holland are gearing their plans to those
of their larger neighbors but are not noticeably holding
back. ;
The Razor’s Edge
The long-range effort of American pressure will be
tested by later events. Just as the atmosphere changed
for the better during ten days of relatively tactful nego-
' tiation, so it could change for the worse equally fast if
Washington’s acts undermined the assurances given by
Mr. Dulles.
By itself the Formosa decision is so meaningless that
no one seriously believes it to be anything but a first
step in a policy still cautiously described as one of taking
the “initiative” or forcing the Communists “off balance.”
‘What will the second step be?—blockade of the China
coast, as urged by Senators Knowland and Taft and Rep-
resentative Short on the say-so of Admiral Radford?
Will the Seventh Fleet aid and protect Nationalist forays
against the mainland? Will the fleet or air force take
counter-action if the Chinese Communists attack For-
mosa, which we are pledged to defend? And if a block-
ade is established, will the fleet attack British ships
engaged in protecting British merchantmen en route to
Chinese ports? Only a handful of questions such as these
are enough to show how quickly and easily a new crisis
could blow up.
The success of the Administration's effort to hasten
into being an armed, unified Europe depends as much
on Europe’s belief that America wants to avoid war as
on the persuasion exercised by diplomatic junkets and
our towering financial strength. Nothing could be better
designed to shatter the fragile confidence built up by
last week's talks than the appearance of an American
policy that threatened to extend the Korean war to the
Chinese mainland.
Adenauer Takes Precautions
Now only a few months off, the West German general
elections are a source of great worry in both Bonn and
other Western capitals. The creation of the European
army, as well as the future of the Atlantic coalition, de-
pends on its outcome. Above all Adenauer’s political
life is in the balance. Thus it is not surprising that the
German Chancellor is taking his precautions; he wants
an election without surprises.
France and Italy have indicated the solution through
their recent electoral “reforms” which all but guarantee
the return of a majority for the government parties. The
new electoral law just submitted by Adenauer’s Minister
of the Interior, though received with stormy protests by
the opposition, is expected to work the same miracle.
The future Bundestag will have 484 members instead
of the present 402. Of this number half will be elected
by direct vote, but according to a provision which gives
each citizen two votes of different values. The first
indicates which candidate he prefers; the second trans-
fers his backing to another candidate in case his first
choice fails to win a majority.
This method applies to half of the Bundestag. The
other half will be elected according to the proportional
system. In the opinion of its critics, both parts of the
4
= IN THIS ISsE oS
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things ion
The Road Back 139
ARTICLES
Helping the Handicapped
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 140
The Morse Code by Bruce Catton 141
Freud and the Hucksters by Ralph Goodman 143
Jews in Russia by Alexander Werth 146
Europe Looks at Dulles 147
BOOKS AND THE ARTS
Ethics and Economics by Robert Lekachman 149
Struggle for a Soul by Albert J. Guerard 149
Rise of Chinese Communism by Mark Gayn 150
The Crane Legend by Hayden Cariuth 151
A Basic Study by S. Lane Faison, Jr. 151
Books in Brief 152
Verse Chronicle by Rolfe Humphries 152
Films by Manny Farber 153
Music by B. H. Haggin 154
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS , 155
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 503
by Frank W. Lewis 156
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor and Publisher : Freda Kirchwey
Editorial Director Director, Nation Associates
Carey McWilliams Lillie Shultz
Managing Editor: Victor H. Bernstein
Foreign Editor: J. Alvarez del Vayo
Drama: Joseph Wood Krutch Music: B. H. Haggin
Copy Editor: Gladys Whiteside
Assistant Literary Editor: Caroline Whiting
Contributing Editors
Andrew Roth, Alexander Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus,
Keith Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball
Business Manager: Hugo Van Arx
Advertising Manager: Mary Simon
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A.
by The Nation Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, N. Y,
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising
' and Circulation Representative for Continental Europe: Publicitas.
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138
Medovas
Ay F Pe
reece sort nee cks an
extra seats needed to insure continuance of the govern- :
ment. Aside from its extreme complexity, a careful stud
of the law has convinced the opposition, and especially
the Social Democrats, who had every reason to expect a
victory in the coming elections, that its main effect will
be to keep Adenauer in office,
Trade in the Briar Patch
The President's foreign-trade policy, as outlined in
his state of the Union message, differs little from that
*
of the Truman Administration. But his phrasing was |
rather unfortunate, He implied that action by the United —
States to encourage imports should depend on steps by
foreign nations to create “broader markets and more de-
pendable currencies.” Is not this putting the cart before
the horse? As Graham Tower, governor of the Bank of
Canada, has just forcefully pointed out, the cause of
freer world trade needs American example even more
than American precept.
Nevertheless, Mr. Eisenhower deserves credit for urg-
ing renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act.
This is not an easy pill for some of his followers to -
swallow, even though he attempted to make it more pala-
table by references to “legitimate ‘safeguarding of do-
mestic industries” and promises that earnest consultations
with interesfed parties will, precede executive recommen-
dations.
The key word is “legitimate,” and it is a slippery one.
American briar-pipe manufacturers, for instance, think
they have a legitimate claim to greater protection even
though present duties on such pipes range up to 75 per
cent. The Tariff Commission agrees with them, and
‘before February 28 the President must decide whether
to indorse or reject its recommendation of a higher
duty. This case provides an important test of the “escape
clause” added by Congress to the Trade Agreements
Act. If Mr. Eisenhower decides to discourage imports of
European pipes in the interest of what appears to be a
relatively inefficient industry, many European exporters
will decide not to risk the large investment entailed in
building American markets for their products, and plans
for “trade not aid” will suffer a serious setback.
Henderson in Cairo
Loy Henderson, the new American ambassador to
Egypt, comes to this key post with a record of partisan-
ship and failure. As the State Department’s Middle East-. ©
ern expert he consistently opposed Zionist aspirations in
the interest of. what he regarded as necessary appease-
ment of the Arabs. He is held responsible for sabotaging
the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee
of Inquiry which in 1946 would have admitted to
The Nation —
pee Speed
|
’
ling atbree
conversation held on January 29, 1948, in which he and
Henderson concurred in regarding the United Nations
| partition resolution of November 29, 1947, as merely a
recommendation, unworkable and therefore subject to
_ feexamination. These views were responsible for the
gytations in United States policy until President Truman
ended them by recognizing Israel and “kicking Loy
Henderson upstairs.” He has since served in India and
Iran, in neither place with notable success.
The Egyptian post is extremely important and calls
for a creative concept of the genuine revolutionary trend
in the Middle East, as in Asia, against poverty and
feudalism. It requires a realization that stability in the
area is essential both to the countries themselves and to
the Western alliance. It requires also an understanding
of the role Israel is playing as a democratic outpost in the
Middle East.
Nothing in Mr. Henderson's record offers any assur-
ance that he can meet these requirements. Does his
appointment mean a return to the policy of Arab appease-
ment with the single goal of a Middle Eastern defense
pact?
Charlie Ervin
Charles W. Ervin, who died last week at the age of
eighty-seven, was one of the great personalities of the
American labor movement. Old-time Socialist, union
organizer, editer of the New York Call in the days of
the Socialist Party’s vigor, he also served as The Nation’s
circulation manager in the early twenties.
Charlie Ervin was the very embodiment of independ-
ent American radicalism. He could no more be
imagined cringing before a witch-hunting demagogue
than taking,orders from an agitprop. His feeling for our
nation’s history, and particularly his passionate admira-
tion for Thomas Jefferson, stood between him and all
the irrational timidities and rancors of the period He
_ lived to depiore. As associate editor of the Advance,
organ of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of Amer-
ica, and the union’s adviser on public relations, he main-
tained to the last his militant spirit, unfailing common
sense, and genial, sardonic humor.
The Road Back
HE domestic part of President Eisenhower’s State of
the Union message—we intend to discuss his pro-
jected foreign policy in a later issue—deserves, on one
score at least, the nearly unanimous praise which it has re-
_ ceived from our one-party press: ft is certainly “coher-
ent.” The essentially harsh outlines of the program were
February 14, 1953
partly concealed by mildness of language apd absence of
specific detail, but the meaning will soon become appar-
ent as Congress settles down to work. For what the Presi-
dent hopes to achieve, as the Wall Street Journal points
out, is nothing less than the reversal of a generation’s
philosophy of government. What he proposes, in short,
is “a sharp, clean break with the domestic course of the
Roosevelt and Truman administrations.”
The sharpness of his dissent from the concept of a
welfare state was most clearly apparent in the President’s
studied advocacy of a laissez-faire definition of govern-
ment’s responsibilities for the general welfare. In indus-
trial relations government is not to intervene except,
perhaps, to encourage mediation and arbitration. There
is to be “a strong federal program in the field of resource
development,” but the major projects should be under-
taken to assist in leveling off “peaks and valleys in our
economic life”—that is, as public works and not as a
means of bringing about a better regional balance of
productive forces or for the purpose of expanding the
economy. “Soundly conceived projects” which have. al-
ready been initiated will be carried out, but new projects
should be merely planned, on paper, for the future. States
and localities are to be admitted to a “partnership” with
the federal government in the operation and administra-
tion of resource-development projects, including river-
valley authorities, which in the past has always meant
that the utilities have been able to run the show pretty
much as they pleased.
In the field of human relations laissez faire is to be
restored as the sole measure of government’s responsibil-
ities. The President promises to use “whatever authority
exists” in his office to end segregation in the District of
Columbia and in the federal government, including the
armed services; otherwise the safeguarding of civil rights
is to be left to “the power of fact, fully publicized; of
persuasion, honestly pressed; and of conscience, justly
aroused.” But this promise is narrowly limited in effect,
since he actually has little power in the District of
Columbia except the power of example, while the prom-
ise to end segregation in agencies subject to federal con-
trol merely affirms the principle that government itself
should not discriminate.
The return of the laissez-faire yardstick is equally clear
in what the President had to.say about economic matters.
Here Mr. Eisenhower has swallowed—hook, line, and
sinker—the main points of the N. A. M.’s program on
wage-and-price controls and related matters. Existing
deficits were “planned” by Mr, Truman and his associ-
ates in order the more easily to impose a planned or
managed economy on the American people. “Sound fiscal
and monetary” policies, rather than direct controls, are
the proper weapons to use in the war against inflation;
direct controls offend the character and temperament of
the American people, who are opposed to “artificial and
139
atbitrary controls of any kind.” Let the government bal-
ance the budget; let it adopt sound financial policies, and
the economy will manage itself. To be sure, the President
recognizes that it would be unwise to reduce tax revenues
until substantial cuts can be made in the budget; but the
goal is clear. And given the facts of political life, it is
equally clear that any budgetary cuts the Eighty-third
Congress may be able to make will be at the expense of
social-service and welfare programs. Yet with milifary
appropriations forming so large a part of the budget, it
will be difficult even for this Congress to make substan-
tial cuts in the budgets of civilian agencies, which in many
instances have failed to keep pace with expanding needs.
So it may be assumed that the review of the tax struc-
ture, which the President favors, will result in legislation
shifting still more of the tax burden from corporations
to individual consumers, from the high to the low and
middle-income groups. Essentially what the President
proposes is to fit the policy to the purse and to determine
the contents of the purse by adjusting taxes to the scale
of profits to which big business has become accustomed.
The reversal of attitude is as clearly revealed in what
the President did not say as in what he said. Carefully
avoided were any references to tidelands oil, to the in-
dustrial use of atomic power, to pending anti-trust suits,
and to price-rigging and other monopolistic practices.
The few references to education and extension of social-
security coverage were weak and inadequate. Not a word
was said about the development of underdeveloped areas
abroad. Aside from a reference to “false servants” and
the loyalty program, there was little about civil liber-
ties and what the President did say raised more questions
than it answered. For example, he failed to indicate what
his policy will be toward the roving inquiries of Velde,
_ McCarthy, and Jenner. Are these witch-hunters to be
given a license to hunt “reds” in every walk of life
except in the federal service? Or will Mr. Brownell, by
chance, use the report of the Senate Subcommittee on
Privileges and Elections to keep McCarthy in line?
The President wants all citizens to produce, “produce
more, and produce yet more,” but he did not mention the
necessity of increasing consumer purchasing power or of
bringing about a wider distribution of income. Farm
policies are to be “studied”; health and housing programs
are to be “studied”; the needs of the schools call for
“careful Congressional study.” Generously interpreted, his
domestic proposals constitute an old-fashioned, conserva-
tive, static social program; less generously interpreted,
the program is regressive in nearly every aspect. To make
matters worse, the President actually thinks of this do-
mestic program as “a middle way between untrammeled
freedom of the individual and the demands for the wel-
fare of the whole nation.” But it is not a middle way;
on the contrary, the President has set forth on the right
hand side of the road which leads back to the social and
140
ae ry
The political education of Dwig nt D, ef
promises to be an interesting spectacle, The prospect of
watching it, however, would be*more exhilarating were
the attendant risks confined to the big-business elements
that have already taken charge of his Administration.
Unfortunately this will not be the case, As the executive
council of the American Federation of Labor has pointed _,
out, the President's State of the Union Message is
“loaded with potential danger” for all of us.
Felping the Handicapped
BY Jj. ALVAREZ DEL VAYO
United Nations °
HERE have been frequent occasions on which I
have had to criticize the United Nations. It is
therefore all the more pleasant to praise it when praise is
due. An occasion for praise has been provided by the
opening at the U. N. headquarters of a conference on
the rehabilitation of physically handicapped persons
throughout the world.
I have been able to watch the preparation of this con-
ference from the office of one of its organizers, Ernst
Jorgenson of Denmark. He is himself an impressive
demonstration of what handicapped persons—Mr. Jor-
genson is blind—can accomplish by a combination of
spiritual strength and unselfish devotion, Alone with
him in his office, I watched him as he handled by tele-
phone the innumerable details involved in getting a
conference under way. “
Mr. Jorgenson is in charge of the rehabilitation unit
of the U. N. secretariat. He has long been chairman of
the Danish Association for the Blind and of the Federa-
tion of Danish Invalid Organizations and has served
on various government committees concerned with the
problems of disabled persons.
He told me something of the work, started two years
ago under the auspices of the United Nations Social
Commission, of establishing instruction centers adapted
to local conditions for the rehabilitation of the handi-
capped. Mr. Jorgenson’s movements are remarkably cer-
tain, his tone is precise and vigorous, and the sentimental
note is conspicuous by its absence. He emphasized what
it means to the individual to feel able to lead an almost
normal working life and what gain it represents for his
people—a double gain actually, since additional thou-
sands of workers not only make positive contributions
to their country’s economy but the negative one of -
saving funds which would otherwise have to be spent:
on their support. “It is not only humane and worthy of
an advanced civilization,” he said; “it also pays.” His re-
marks were entirely substantiated by Henry Viscardi, Jr.,
executive director of Just One Break, Inc., who last week
The NATION
ee
‘fantastic figure of 28,000,000.
_ The United Nations initiative has awakened wide-
spread interest in such projects and inspired a noble
competition in schemes for instruction and work, Mr.
Jorgenson drew my attention to one of the most recent
—the opening in Egypt of a demonstration center for the
blind. The pattern generally followed is for the United
Nations to send one or more experts to the place chosen
for a new center. One of their priricipal assignments is
to gather a group of native students and instruct them in
how to operate the center and even start new ones. Mr.
Jorgenson hopes that the Egyptian center will be fol-
lowed by projects for the rehabilitation of the blind
throughout the Middle East. :
No distinction is being made between the victims of
war and those disabled through disease or industrial
accidents, or from birth. The fact that a person is phys-
ically handicapped places him within the orbit of the re-
habilitation effart. It is a task that requires large numbers
yof trained personnel. The conference which meets here
on February 9 and 10 will devote much of its attention
to this aspect of the problem. International training
facilities for service to the disabled still leave a good deal
“to be desired. It is partly a matter of money. The United
Nations’ specialized agencies, as well as several of the
member states, have provided fellowships, scholarships,
and other grants, but on a limited scale. There is also
the problem of creating growing cadres of trained staff.
A statement. submitted to the conference by the Inter-
national Society for the Welfare of Cripples recognized
that the United Nations and its agencies have established
The Morse Code
selection criteria and programming pgocedures which
have greatly increased the value of their work but noted
that there was still need of better cooperativn between
the different organizations in the field. To deal with this
aspect of the problem, a second conference will be called
immediately after this one, to be attended by representa-
tives of the World Health Organization, the International
Labor Office, UNESCO, and other agencies.
A number of very encouraging reports have come in
from various countries. Studies made in Sweden show
that, given adequate methods of rehabilitation, even
very badly handicapped persons can learn to do effective
work in their own s@rroundings. American studies of the
collective employment of physically handicapped persons
prove that their productivity in suitable operations equals
that of normal workers, that their rate of absenteeism
is low, and that their accident rate at work is better than
average.
Particularly impressive is the work done with crippled
children, who are being trained to become useful, well-
adjusted producers and citizens. There are more than
300 Scout units of physically handicapped children in the
United States. “We live,” Mr. Jorgenson told me, “in
an era of specialization, and it is only a question of find-
ing out where each disabled person, child or adult, will
fit today or tomorrow.” Most of the work has been
limited to the physically disabled, but Mr. Jorgenson has
not abandoned hope of a parallel effort in aid of the
mentally handicapped.
If lack of money stands in the way of pushing for-
ward this admirable work, I suggest that one atomic
bomb less be made and the dollars saved turned over to
this department of the United Nations.
W ashington
S SOON as the bemused Democratic liberals get
A over their present condition of shell shock they will
find they have a well-prepared position from which to
start the important job of defeating the reactionary drive
of the Eisenhower Administration. This position is being
put in shape by Senator Wayne Morse, independent, of
Oregon,
Motse is waging a fight which for courage and vision
has had no parallel since George W. Norris staked out
the field on which liberals could rally during the dark
days of Coolidge and Hoover. So far he is fighting
e _ BRUCE CATTON is writing a series of articles on the
Washington scene.
_ February 14, 1953
- me.
BY BRUCE CATTON
practically alone. When Congress opened, the Democrats,
possibly because they were still reeling from the election
results, joined hands with the Republicans in an attempt
to cut his political throat. The vote which knocked Morse
loose from his Senate committee assignments was a vote
of the whole Senate, not merely of the Republican ma-
jority. Only five Democrats and one Republican supported’
him in that showdown. No protests were received from
labor organizations or other important progressive
groups.
Standing thus alone, Morse is open to all the criticism
which descends on the lone operator, By turns he is
presented in the press as the unhappy sore-head who is
against everything and the erratic egoist who flits from
position to position without regard for consistency.
141
ees
And certainly he is the
most effective opponent
of the Republican Ad-
ministration in Wash-
ington today,
He is effective be-
cause he is not content
merely to attack. He
tries to show. the pat-
tern of his adversary’s
*" actions invites
thefattack. For instance:
quite a number of peo-
ple complained that the
new Cabinet looked re-
markably like a million-
aires’ club and objected
bitterly to the attitude of Charles E. Wilson and other
appointees to Defense Department posts. It was Morse,
however, who demonstrated that the real trouble was not
a few ill-advised appointments but the fact that a big-
business Administration logically means government by
and for big business men, and that the interests of big
business.are not those of the people. Similarly, as special
“interests flex their muscles for a grab at off-shore oil,
public power, and public lands, Morse does not merely
point an accusing finger at the schemers; he shows why
such grabs are to be expected under an Administration
supported by special interests.
To give another example, Morse attacks the military
influence in government not by denouncing generals for
being poor liberals but by citing chapter and verse to
show that this influence is pernicious. In the first place,
he says, army officers in Europe blithely talk about when
the third world war will come instead of whether it will
come, thereby giving all Europe the jitters; in the second
place, the Pentagon spends so wastefully that we could
. cut our military budget at least 25 per cent, get just as
much defense as we now have, and set world commu-
nism back several notches by applying the saving to
economic aid.
Morse is not just a gadfly trying to vex good Repub-
licans. He is building up a solid body of doctrine on
which liberals can eventually return to the offensive. The
spade work for the campaign has to be done by someone
who is in the thick of things on Capitol Hill. Morse is
there, and that is what he is working at.
The steps by which he emerged as President Eisen-
hower’s stoutest antagonist make an interesting story.
Less than three years ago Morse was a strong supporter
of Eisenhower for President; one of the first to declare
himself in the Senate. Eisenhower appeared before the
Senate Armed Services Committee, of which Morse was
a member, and made an excellent impression; Morse
which
Senator Wayne Morse
142
Actually, he is aethiers ‘
long-continued trend fecthe ¢ ept in F :
velop a truly liberal program. This impression was *
strengthened when word came to various liberal Senators _
that Eisenhower saw the nomination of Senator Taft in
1952 as nothing less than a disaster and would be willing
to spearhead the fight to prevent it,
ISILLUSIONMENT came by slow stages but was
Dyke It began at the Chicago convention
when Eisenhower in effect ordered the nomination of
Nixon for Vice-President. This looked to. Morse too
much like the steam-roller tactics which had raised so
much opposition to Taft's candidacy. The famous Morn-
ingside Heights compromise followed, indicating that
the General as a matter of political expediency was adopt-
ing the program of a man whose prospective nomination,
earlier, had looked to him like disaster. At this point
Senator Morse began to suspect that Eisenhower was pri-
marily a military man rather than a statesman and acting
on the military principle of accepting, aid from any
source in order to gain his objective.
Shortly after this, while Morse was cooling toward
Eisenhower with considerable rapidity, he was asked to
be on the platform when the General addressed the con-
vention’ of the American Federation of Labor. Morse
said he might be willing if what the General was going
to say was something he could go along with; would
they please show him what the speech would contain?
This they could not do because they did not know any-
thing about it. They wanted Morse for window dressing.
They did not get him.
Next came the Jenner episode, with the public em-
brace visible all across Indiana and farther. While Morse
was finding this impossible to swallow, an Eisenhower
man came-to him to solicit his indorsefnent of the Gen-
eral. Morse said the Jenner episode had disillusioned him,
“Don't be naive,” the Eisenhower man replied. “The
General really hates Jenner. whe he'd like to have done
was give him a poke in the jaw.’
The final straw was Ike’s campaign speech blaming the
State Department for the premature withdrawal of troops
from Korea. As a member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Morse remembered having seen a document
in which General Eisenhower had joined with the chiefs
of staff in approving the withdrawal. Since this docu-
ment had been “classified,” it seemed safe for the Gen-
eral to make his accusation. Morse got it declassified,
however, broke the secret—and broke the last thread
between himself and the man he had once thought
might be the redeemer of the Republican Party.
‘The record hardly indicates that Morse has been erratic
in first supporting-and then opposing Eisenhower, But
it helps one to understand the pressure applied in the
Senate to get him off the Armed Services Committee. A
The NATION
oe
re
-e ad -
~ oe T e ee oats
ape i
ag dpe nor
«wes
] litt 2 ret yerenc e fe
cing can be a very thorny member of such a com-
So fauch heat*was put on, as a matter of fact, that in
the process of disciplining Morse the Senate killed its
own prized seniority system, if anybody ever wants to
make anything of it. For some eighty years seniority has
been the chief feature of the Senate’s organization. Once
a man is put on a committee, he stays on it, if he wishes
to, until the voters retire him. And finally he becomes
chairman, It is this system which infallibly brings aging
Southern Democrats to the chairmanship of key com-
mittees. Until recently there was no way of preventing
it. Now the Senate has voted that a man can be ousted
or realy sora a iid
from his committees, seniority or no. Ht 1s possible that
the precedent will rise to haunt people some day.
Morse is definitely not a sore-head, He does have
some of the bitterness of a man who has to fight alone,
but most of it is directed, not at the reactionaries who are
his chosen foes, but at the liberals who might have been
standing beside him. It is a safe bet that this anger will
vanish when liberals begin to take up the work he has
started, as they will doubtless do before long. “What you
need here in the Senate,” Morse has said, “is a bunch of
guys who are willing to be defeated but aren’t willing to
compromise on their principles.” There are plenty of
Senators of that description, and they will come out of
their coma before long.
Freud and the Hucksters
EDUCED by the advertising industry, an increasing
ane of social scientists are turning into super-
hucksters. Today any number of psychologists and soci-
ologists will gladly undertake to probe the mass mind to
discover, for instance, how non-drinkers can be persuaded
to drink and drinkers to drink more. They only want a
fat check—which they get.
To understand this strange marriage between sales-
manship and the social sciences, one must view it against
the background of our merchandising system. Advertis-
ing’s single function is to sell the goods produced by
industry, A successful advertising agency must therefore
conduct extensive market research. In agencies of any
size a special department collects all kinds of data on the
markets open to clients’ products and on consumers’
reactions to both products and advertising.
In this task it uses the work done by the pollsters.
Roper, Gallup, Crossley, and the others do not depend
for their livelihood, as some may think, on political fore-
casting but on market surveys done for business. In fact,
the whole range of statistical research and opinion
sampling got its first impetus from business concerns
which felt the need of reliable data on markets and
consumer attitudes.
Sociology and psychology have recently come in for
increased attention on the theory that if an advertising
man can gain a better understanding of human behavior,
he will be able to turn out copy with more “sell” appeal.
Of course advertising has always used this approach in a
haphazard, intuitive manner. Deodorants, soaps, and
s
RALPH GOODMAN is the pseudonym of an executive in
an important institution connected ‘with the American adver-
tising industry.
‘ February 14, 1953
BY RALPH GOODMAN
toothpastes have been sold through an appeal to such
human emotions as love, fear, ambition, and the desire to
be popular. Commercial use of facts discovered by the
social sciences has long been advocated by certain psy-
chologists, notably Ernest Dichter and the late Henry C.
Link; as far back as 1919 Link was acting as psycholog-
ical consultant to the United States Rubber Company. A
number of advertising agencies have quietly but con-
sciously employed these techniques for more than a
decade,
Today the application of the social sciences to adver-
tising has become a veritable fad. McCann-Erickson, one
of the five top agencies in the United States, has its own
psychological-research staff. Weiss and Geller, a large
Chicago agency, holds regular staff conferences with
prominent social scientists; Edward Weiss, president of
the agency, believes the social sciences will “revolution-
ize” advertising. The lead article in the fall Journal of
Marketing described the various schools of psychology
and made suggestions about how their concepts could be
used in marketing. The Chicago Tribune’s Distribution
and Advertising Forum for 1952 took as one of its three
basic topics the role that the social sciences can play in
advertising and selling. At the annual convention of the
American Marketing Association held in Chicago at the
end of December, the social sciences stole the show,
getting front-page play in the Wall Street Journ and
Ae Wen Age.
How, specifically, are the techniques of the social _
sciences being utilized in advertising? A brief account
of a few typical advertising campaigns will make the
ptocedure fairly clear.
Why do people chew gum? The Wrigley Gum Com
pany wanted to know, and Weiss and Geller undertook
143
to find the answer. A study made at the Institute of —
Psychoanalysis in Chicago produced three reasons—for
oral comfort, for release of tension, to express symbolic
hostility or aggression. The advertising agency next made
a comprehensive sociological survey of a coal-mining area
in eastern Pennsylvania, where gum sales were well
below the national level. It discovered that the area had
a relatively high rate of illiteracy, a large foreign- oe
population, and a low standard of living,
Putting the results of the two studies together, Weiss
and Geller laid out a campaign for this particular region.
The theme was frustration and the relief obtained by
chewing gum. The idea was presented on a series of
comic-strip ads, The first showed a child unable to do a
simple, everyday task and overcoming his difficulty after
an adult gave him a stick of gum. A second showed
adults conquering frustration in the same way. The strips
used a minimum of words so as to avoid the impression
of insincerity and reach a not too literate public. During
the year that the campaign ran, Wrigley reported that
sales in the test area increased at a much higher rate than
in the rest of the country. As a result the campaign was ,
expanded to fourteen other markets.
Why do people drink? McCann-Erickson explored
this question by interviewing people while they were
drinking. The results seemed to divide drinkers into two
main groups—those who drink as a means of retreat,
and those who drink for the effect. The agency felt it
could not project the first group in an ad in terms of a
social situation, Its analysis of the second group revealed
that the heavy drinkers drink either because it makes
them feel better, helps them overcome their shyness, and
so on or because they “become able to think independent-
ly and to use their creative ability.” Another finding was
that drinkers tend to associate the taste of liquor with the
effect produced.
Since previous market research had showed that heavy
drinkers consume 80 per cent of the hard liquor sold,
McCann-Erickson decided that effective liquor adver-
tising should “feature a taste promise which had an
effect connotation” and “the types of drinks popular
among heavy drinkers.” Two McCann-Erickson clients
who might be interested in this study are Melrose
Distillers and Schenley Distillers.
Why do people smoke? This question was investt-
gated by Social Research, Inc.,
following reasons: cigarettes relieve tension, express
sociability, aid poise, help anticipate stress, give sensory
pleasure, are proof of daring, are signs of sophistication,
_ help discharge energy, and signify conformity.
Advertising is important, Social Research stressed, be-
cause it popularizes a brand and smokers want to think
their brand is popular. Advertising thus helps to make
smoking “respectable.” But the problem of all cigarette
144
which discovered the |
how to combine a sane promise wi
the tobacco will not hurt you. The solution: advanced yo
Social Research was the generalization: “Cigarette adver-
tising calls for creativity, for new departures, for an
invitation to smoke that is not just a sehaupa of asser-
tions that ‘you like it’ or ‘it won't hurt you’.
Other special psychological tests being used ee in
marketing have to do with “thematic apperception,” word
association, Rorschach ink blots, and Rosenzweig picture
frustration, One company, the Ad Detector Research
Corporation of Chicago, even uses the galvanometer, or
lie detector. Consumers are strapped to the machine, ads
are flashed before their eyes, and as they comment, their
reactions are recorded. The Chicago Tribune has made
this copy-testing service available to its advertisers at a
cost of $75 per ad.
A NUMBER of concerns have profited greatly from
this tendency to base advertising on sociological
and psychological studies. The Psychological Corpora-
tion, founded thirty years ago in New York, lost money
for some time, but with advertisers’ acceptance of psycho-
logical research, its income rose from $250,000 in 1939
to $1,500,000 in 1951. Today more than half of its
earnings comes from business and industry. The head of
the Institute for Research in Mass Motivations, Dr.
Ernest Dichter, a Vienna-born psychologist, began by
helping the Chrysler Corporation to sell Plymouths
through a socio-psychological advertising approach in
1937. Since then, he has, in his own words, “conducted
research and completed more than 300 surveys in almost
every field of selling and for almost every type of
product.”
It should be pointed out here that the social scientists
engaged in market research are not of the pseudo variety.
' Many are ranking authorities in their fields. For ex-
ample, among the present directors of the Psychological
Corporation are Robert L. Thorndike, professor of edu-
cation at Columbia University; Robert S. Woodworth,
-professor emeritus of psychology at Columbia; Donald
G. Marquis, chairman of the Department of Psychology
at the University of Michigan; and Walter R. Miles, pro-
fessor of psychology at Yale. The executive director of
Social Research, Inc., in Chicago is Burleigh Gardner,
a former University of Chicago professor and co-author
of “Deep South.” Dr. Gardner as teacher and scholar
contributed greatly to our understanding of class differ-
ences in American culture, Recently he addressed the
American Marketing Association on the topic, “Putting
Stereo ips and Prejudices to Work in Your Advertising
Strategy.” Drawing on his knowledge of American so-
ciety he warned advertisers that the right stereotype must
be used for each economic and social group: in ads in-
tended for Ebony a Negro model must be used; .an ad
‘The NATION
~ os
Sa
oe BO pba
or rine 2
\
2a
’
_ The role played by social science in advertising raises
the issue of the social scientist’s place in society. Often,
pleading “objectivity,” he chooses to remain aloof from
the social struggle. But his work shows that he stands
for social and economic reform. His studies have in-
evitably led him to take the position, at least on the
abstract level, that the structure of society, not human
nature, is responsible for such ills as poverty and dis-
crimination. It is ironic, then, to find sociologists and
psychologists—most of whom know the score on social
. and economic inequalities—offering their services for
projects whose aim is to increase sales through the ma-
nipulation of legitimate consumer desires. If the social
scientist becomes the hireling of advertising and business,
how can he study objectively their social implications?
Social scientists in the past have paid attention to the
irrational patterns of human behavior because they wish
to locate their social origins and thus be able to suggest
changes that would result in more rational conduct. They
now study irrationality—and other aspects of human be-
havior—to gather data that may be used by salesmen
to manipulate consumers. No one, except perhaps Mr.
Wrigley, can believe that chewing gum will relieve the
basic frustrations of Pennsylvania coal miners.
The entrance of bona fide social scientists into the field
of marketing is all the more shocking in view of the
known damaging effects on personality of advertising
which stimulates desires but offers no real means of satis-
fying them. The late Karen Horney, in “The Neurotic
Personality of Our Time,” referred to this danger:
For economic reasons needs are constantly being
stimulated in our culture by such means as advertise-
ments, “conspicuous consumption,” the ideal of “‘keep-
ing up with the Joneses.” For the great majority,
however, the actual fulfilment of these needs is closely
’ restricted. ‘The psychic consequence for the individual
is a constant discrepancy between his desires and their
fulfilment.
The sales executive, however, looks upon the public
—his market—as an uninformed mass of people in
_ + whom certain desires must be aroused to get them to part
with their money, The assumption of the business man
“is almost always that the public has the necessary purchas-
“ing power but for some ridiculous reason—such as
. insecurity—does not want to_use it.
There is already evidence that the qualitative re-
__ . searchers plan to extend their operations beyond selling
to the manipulation of public opinion on political ques-
tions. In 1951 the Psychological Corporation tested the
effectiveness of a comic book “designed for the economic
education of industrial workers.” Entitled “How Stalin
Hopes We Will Destroy America,” the book was dis-
tributed to a group of factory workers, and “its impact
5 February 14, 1953
was tested in terms of ideas left with readers and atti-
tudes affected.” The results indicated, the research con-
cern reported, that “the booklet had an educational
effect.” It was therefore sponsored by an industrial client,
who has distributed 800,000 copies to date. Ernest
Dichter, in a series of talks he gave before the 1952
Presidential election, predicted that the campaign issues
—Korea, inflation, corruption—would have little to do
with the outcome. The decisive factor, according. to
Dichter, would be the emotional appeal exercised by the
candidates. After the election Burleigh Gardner said in
_.a letter to Tide, a news weekly for the advertising
industry:
I do think it is time to apply fresh techniques to the
problem of political predictions. We believe that the
strong Eisenhower majority could have been predicted
using projection techniques. You could probably predict
from the underlying emotional tone rather than from
Conscious beliefs.
Dichter’s and Gardner’s statements come under the
heading of sales promotion. For the two men are‘in a
competitive business. They must vie with the Gallups
and Ropers to get orders from business, and they want
to be in the first row when political groups decide to
approach the problem of voter manipulation in the same
“scientific” manner in which business now approaches
selling problems. It would be a mistake to assume that
the sociologists and psychologists who are helping to sell
soaps and cigarettes are above this kind of opinion
molding.
Avv.
DePr
©1952, PRid Enterprises, Ine
All nigots reserved
Lichty, Chicago Sun-Times
“Getting the kiddies to ask Mother to buy it isn’t enough.
We gotta get’em to scream, bite and kick until Mother
buys it.”
145
oa
s
Jens in Russia
<h ~ . * Ts Py ce
Paris
LTHOUGH the number of Jews in the upper
Ais of the medical profession in Russia has always
been high, it seems more than an accident that six or
seven of the nine “murderers in white overalls” of the
impending Moscow purge trial should be Jews. Has anti-
Semitism, it is being asked on all sides, become the
official policy of the Soviet government?
It is certainly true that there has been in recent years
a good deal of ambiguity in the Soviet government's
attitude toward Jews. At a diplomatic reception given by
Molotov toward the end of the war to which foreign
correspondents were invited, I remember Homer Smith,
an American Negro writer, going up to Kaganovich and
saying, “Mr. Kaganovich, what is your nationality?” It
seemed an impertinent question to address to so im-
portant a personage, but Mr. Smith got exactly the
answer he wanted, Looking at him pointedly, Kagano-
vich said, “I am, in fact, a Jew, but in our country there
is no racial discrimination.”
Yet for quite a number of years now there has been
a tendency to distinguish between “good Jews” and “bad
Jews” —those who have fully adapted themselves to the
Soviet regime and those who have not. There are also
jobs where the Jews “fit” and jobs where they don't.
Very few Jews are in agriculture, but hundreds of thou-
sands—whose fathers were little shopkeepers—have
enrolled in industry and the distributing trades. I have
known Jewish miners in the Donbas and a number of
Jews who became industrial executives and whose tech-
nical and administrative capacities received wide recogni-
tion in the shape of orders, medals, and even Stalin
prizes.
When I was in Russia, Jews were prominent in the
cinema and in light revues like Arkadi Raikin’s
Miniature Theater of Leningrad but were not numerous
among high-class singers and actors. Reizen was the only
famous Jewish singer at the Bolshoi Theater, and al-
though the great Kachalov was said to be of Jewish
descent, Jews were, in effect, barred from the Moscow
Art Theater. On the other hand, there were many Jewish
musicians—composers like Rachlin, violinists like Cis-
trach, pianists like the Gillels. In science, engineering,
and medicine, as the impending trial shows, Jews attained
the highest posts. In journalism a good many Jews held
small posts but fewer and fewer got the big ones; today
ALEXANDER WERTH, Paris correspondent for The
Nation spent many years in Russia as a journalist.
146
BY ALEXANDER WERTH
only two, Ehrenburg and Zaslavsky, are well-known reg-
ular contributors to the Moscow press, Ehrenburg was
used during the war as the No. 1 anti-German hate
propagandist, and although his snappy articles were pop-
ular in the Red Army, I often heard soldiers say, “He's
overdoing it a bit; it’s his Jewish point of view.”
From at least one government department Jews are
now systematically excluded. In the thirties, during the
Litvinov regime, the Soviet Foreign Office was some-
times disdainfully referred to as “the synagegue,” but it
probably no longer contains a single Jew.
The military record of the Russian Jews during the
war was remarkably good, as may be seen from a table
published in October, 1942, showing the number of fe-
cipients of military decorations classified by nationality—
128,000 Russians, 33,000 Ukrainians, and 5,000 Jews.
Considering the size of each group in proportion to the
population, the Jews received the most. This may, how-
ever, have been due to the fact that Jews, being towns-
people, usually with some education, were very often
officers or non-coms, Yet there were almost no Jewish
generals.
At the same time, a certain amount of “primitive”
anti-Semitism did exist:- for example, the Jews were
widely accused, though never publicly, of “wangling”
for themselves the best rooms and apartments and black-
market commodities. A curious phenomenon was the way
the Soviet press, in describing German atrocities, tended
to play down the Jewish angle, emphasizing the murder
of Poles and Russian war prisoners more than the mas-
sacre of millions of Jews. It was almost as if killing
Jews was not quite so bad as killing other people.
A kind of sporadic distrust of Jews has also been ap-
parent in the higher echelons of the Communist Party
itself—an inevitable hangover from the great purges of
the thirties, in which an abnormally high percentage of
_ Jews figured as Trotskyists. Soviet policy opposes not only
Zionism but its opposite extreme—internationalism and
the Trotskyist belief that only complete assimilation can
solve the Jewish problem. In steering a middle course
Soviet policy has in effect prevented complete assimila-
tion while denying Jews the full nationality privileges
explicit in Soviet law. This anomaly has tended to put
Russian Jews—both those with a national consciousness
,
é
i
q
i 4
and those desiring complete assimilation—into a false ~ |
and ambiguous position. The very laws and regula-
tions were to some degree ambiguous, In his passport,
whether he wanted it so or not, a Jew was described as
of Jewish “nationality,” though there was really no such
The NATION _
deed eels My own feeling is that ican Newman
was thinking of a small unassimilated minority when he
wrote in the New York Herald Tribune of the Zionism
of Russian Jews and of the overwhelming impression
, “offensive” was started not by the Jews but by the Rus-
sians, though no doubt the little manifestations of Zion-
; ism at the time of the establishment of the Jewish state
played into the hands of Russian anti-Semites.
In the general purge of the arts in 1948-49 phrases
like “rootless cosmopolitan” were generally interpreted
‘as a slur on the numerous Jews in literature and the other
arts who, much more than their Russian confréres, were
guilty of an interest in Western cylture. When somebody
at the 1949 Paris Peace Congress asked Ehreaburg what
was meant by the “anti-cosmopolitan” campaign in the
; Russian press, he laughed the whole thing off: “Just
| shows we have some idiots in our press, which in turn
shows that we have freedom of the press—even for
idiots.” But that was for foreign consumption. The Jews
in Russia—or certain Jews—have now been built up to
e represent a foreign body in the Soviet Union, the only
foreign body and therefore, potentially, the fifth column
par excellence.
-The Soviet authorities revealed grave doubts about the
Jews in 1948, when they liquidated the only Yiddish
paper in Moscow, the Communist Evnhezt, the Jewish
a house, the Jewish anti-Fascist Committee, and
the Jewish Theater. The last two had been associated
with the name of the famous Jewish actor Michoels, who
[The sharply adverse reaction abroad to President Eisen-
hower's new directive concerning the Seventh Fleet and to
other foreign-policy declarations in his State of the Union
_ message was pointed out in our issue of February 7; other
this week. But in a sense these developments in American
_ policy were presaged in Secretary Dulles’s TV speech to the
Better Taft than Dulles?
ia Parts
4 R. DULLES’S speech and his visit here were
I iy criticized by the press, with the exception
of a few right-wing papers which consistently eat out of
the hand of the United States. But even their line was in
effect, “Okay, but you'll have to pay more for Indo-
= / China.” -The opposition hardened-when it was noted that
made on them by the arrival of the Israeli legation. The —
foreign. policy developments are noted in our editorial pages ~
Jered in ‘in mysterious circumstances while visiting
Minsk in 1947, A Jewish theater critic named Goluboy
was murdered with him, and the crime was attributed,
probably rightly, to an anti-Jewish pro-Nazi gang; such
gangs survived in the Ukraine and Byelorussia for a
number of years after the war.
\X 7 HEN we come to the nine doctors, the mystery
thickens, The story of the wrong “treatment”
given to Zhdanov and Shcherbakov makes no more sense
than the charge that the doctors were “trying” to kill im-
_ portant Red Army leaders. It was generally known that
Zhdanoev had angina pectoris, while Shcherbakov suffered
from a grave organic illuess which caused a monstrous
form of obesity and was a hopeless invalid for at least
two years before his death. Accounts of the plot against
the generals are extremely vague. Perhaps the most sig-
nificant thing that has been published was Pravda’s attack
on the lack of vigilance shown by the Security Police—an
apparent attempt to implicate Berta.
On the one hand there is, it seems, a We for
supremacy among the top Communists; on the other, an
anti-Jewish drive motivated by the belief that if a po-
tential fifth column exists in Russia it is likely to be made
up of Jews, some of whom have a sneaking nostalgia for
Israel while others are just a trifle too skeptical to con-
form wholeheartedly to the rigid moral standards of
“Soviet Man,’’ with his tremendous inner discipline and
singleness of purpose. The arrest of the nine doctors—
all of them extremely valuable men—is the one thing
for which there is no logical explanation, even though
six of them are Jews. Perhaps, to Malenkov, no price
was too high to get at Beria.
Europe Looks at Dulles.
nation, delivered on the eve of his short swing through West-
ern Europe. For all its casualness of tone, Mr. Dulles’s address
was a carefully contrived exposition of the bases and objec-
tives of the new Administration’s foreign policy, and it was
so regarded in European capitals: Our correspondents in
Paris, London, and Bonn report below on Europe's reception
of this important statement and of Mr. Dulles.}
Britain was not responding favorably either. If Britain
would join up with the Continent, France would be more
disposed to subscribe to the rearmament of Germany.
Since it refused, Dulles was really demanding a lot and
offering nothing in return.
What, it is asked, are the alternatives implicit in the
Dulles policy? One seems to be the peripheral strategy
dear to the heart of Senator Taft; the other, development
of the Wehrmacht either as an independent force or as
, 147
part of a European army to which Britain would not
contribute. If the peripheral strategy means that American
bombers would be available to check a Russian invasion
of Europe, many
Frenchmen would
prefer it—unfamil-
jar though it still
seems for the pres-
“ent—to reconstitu-
tion of the Webr-
macht in any form.
And if, as Franc-
Tireur suggests,
France must do with-
out dollars in the fu-
ture, it could save a
lot of money by pull-
ing out of Indo-
China.
Yet it would be
rash to prophesy that
the French, so hard-
pressed economically, have been persuaded by Mr.
Dulles to follow any bold new line. It looks as if France
were facing a period of hard bargaining in which it will
be subjected to insults, threats, and a lot of bullying. The
Dulles approach seems to have already deprived the free
world of even a semblance of unity and dignity.
There is still in France a deep sense of freedom and a
livelier intellectual life than anywhere else in the world.
Whatever may be the government’s temptation to yield
to Mr. Dulles, one can be sure that the tougher his
manner, the stronger will be the French resistance.
ALEXANDER WERTH
John Foster Dulles
No Shotgun Wedding
London
HE British were startled, to say the least, by Dulles’s
tip-off that the chief purpose of his hurried visit to
Europe was to “shotgun” Western Europe into federal
unity. The usually pro-American Economist snapped:
Mr. Dulles must not be surprised if Europeans in-
quire what the real object of the policy is, to use the
European Defense Community to ward off the Com-
munist threat or to use the Communist threat to remake
Europe in America’s federal image? . . . If it is Mr.
Dulles’s policy to force Britain into full membership of
a West European federation, then his policy will fail.
Neither in trade nor in strategy nor in political affecta-
tions does the United Kingdom regard itself as exclusive-
ly or even mainly a European country. This leads them to
wonder why it should be so immoral for them to stay
out of something that the moralizer himself has never
had any intention of joining.
148
Brean Seckent “Chur chill’s Ss We eh : of
“Information and his close friend, wrote in the ncial .
Times that Mr. Dulles is “perhaps the only surviving
admirer” of Horatio Alger, but insisted that “the dis- —
ciple is a more active moralizer and his ep on the ©
obvious is firmer.” ‘
The Economist and other pro-American journals are
indignant that Mr. Dulles has borne out the charges of :
American “dictation” which they have so often refuted.
British statesmen do not like having pistols held
to their heads. A friend of mine who is employed in one
of Britain’s largest companies insists that the Conserva-
tives are now infinitely more anti-American than the
Bevanites. Nevertheless, Mr. Eden managed adroitly }
to cut off Commons debate on the Dulles visit, and the,
lengths to which the British will actually go to oppose
his policies remains tode seen.
ANDREW ROTH
Happiness at Bonn
Bonn
HE West German government, including its ,con-
eae parties and its press, received Dulles’s
speech with emotions best described by the almost un-
translatable word Schadenfrende—pleasure caused by
the misfortune of others. Adenauer and his supporters
regard themselves as model pupils of the European
school directed from Washington; they can hardly con-
tain their joy at seeing London and Paris given bad
marks,
This is no flight of fancy. The Saddeutsche Zeitung
headlined its report on Dulles’s visit to Europe: “The
School Inspector Is Coming!” The theme recurrent in the
government press is that “Paris is afraid that Bonn may
take its place” as the center of Western Europe.
Not satisfied with supplanting London and Paris in
Washington’s favor, the West German ruling groups
seemingly hope soon to meet the United States on a .
footing of equality. Now that Bonn has obtained its
army, these Germans are saying that. the French had
better look out or they will be excluded entirely from
the European Defense Community. The comment of the
liberal-rightist Stattgarter Nachrichten 1s typical:
If Europe wishes to remain in the political orbit of
the West, it must adapt itself to the new situation out=
lined by Dulles. If the politicians of Europe’s states
could achieve unity, a European “consciousness” would
exist to deal with an American “consciousness.” And
this would carry the strongest possible weight with
Dulles, who is looking—and not without good reason—
for strong partners.
Adenauer himself, echoing the views of “Inspector”
Dulles, bluntly declared: “Anybody who believes that
Europe will be insured by America if it doesn’t pay the
premiums is sadly mistaken.” CAROLUS ,
The NATION
a.
4 . &
YOK.
_ Ethics and Economics
_ GOALS OF ECONOMIC LIFE. Edited
by A. Dudley Ward. Harper and
Brothers. $4.
ANY economists have worked
_ 4¥S hard to make economics a science
sepatated from ethical assumptions and
devoted to the evaluation of efficiency.
This volume takes an apparently oppo-
site tack, Fifteen distinguished scholars
drawn from ecenomics, political science,
_ biology, psychology, anthropology, phi-
losophy, and theology combine to ex-
plore the relationship between ethics
and economics and to distinguish appro-
Ptiate Protestant roles in individual,
_gtoup, and: public conduct. The con-
_ tributors include J. M. Clark, Frank
_ Knight, Robert McIver, Reinhold Nie-
_ buhr, and Ralph Linton, among others.
The enterprise is sponsored by the Fed-
eral Council of Churches and supported
by a grant from the Rockefeller Founda-
| tion. Five additional volumes will ap-
_ pear later.
The venture promises well. The Prot-
estant, or more precisely the Calvinist,
tradition is closely connected with the
system of incentives under which free
_ enterprise has flourished. Today many
_ thoughtful Americans find the material
achievements of free enterprise no un-
_- mixed triumph. Though they rejoice in
e ‘its real promise of an end to poverty
_ and in its lightening of toil, they un-
easily sense a lack of corresponding ethi-
cal progress and suspect that men are
"not better because they are richer. Can
__ we be better and better off? Are justice,
freedom, and abundance compatible?
We anticipate much from the examina-
tion of such questions, by a group as
_ well versed as this in various aspects of
_ the study of man.
_. Much is -given to us. The general
le quality of the essays is excellent. The
five written by economists are non-
Gene
PERRET s
them J. M. Clark demonstrates the in-
| adequacy of market valuations; Kenneth
_ Boulding examines the concept of prog-
' fess and its close connection with free
competition; Clarence Danhof and
Eduard Heimann place our own system
‘February 14, 1953
rye ce
S and the
technical and extremely provocative. In .
in the perspective of other cultures; and
William Vitkrey makes conflicts among
values the central point of his essay.
The other tidbits intellectual
smorgasbord delighted this reviewer, a
novice in all save economics, even more.
There are Mr. Emerson’s detailed com-
parisons of the ways of animals and
men and his suggestion that much in
human behavior is explained by home-
ostasis, the effort of the individual or-
ganism and conceivably of social groups
to maintain healthy physiological and
psychological balances; Mr. Snygg’s list
of psychological theories (an economist
cannot repress an unworthy joy that Mr.
Snygg blames physiology for some of
psychology’s defects much as economists
in this
“now and then scold psychology for eco-
nomics’ deficiencies); Mr. Green’s phil-
osophical defense of stability in values
and his proof of the existence of God;
and Mr. Niebuhr’s eloquent call upon
Christian love to harness a human self-
ishness he sadly recognizes as strong
and persistent. Each of these essays. illu-
minates its own intellectual field, no
small tribute to essays which average
only thirty pages. - ¢
Nevertheless, judged by its stated
purposes, the enterprise is a failure full
of -merits incidental to its objectives.
The obvious mark of failure is the
book’s disunity. Although the contribu-
tors refer respectfully to their col-
leagues’ contributions, they rarely use
them to modify their premises, verify
their techniques, or amend their conclu-
_ sions. The sad fact is that we are treated
to separate essays translated from sev-
eral technical languages on a variety of
subjects and never shown how these
partial insights into man’s condition can
be combined to form a more complete
understanding. Each expert, firm and
confident in the handling of his own
subject, grows reticent as he approaches
its frontiers and mute when he passes
beyond them. The two theological essays
and the single philosophical one are par-
tial exceptions to this generalization.
Their merit is an attempt to see man
whole. Their fault is a level of abstrac-
tion so high as to obscure their view of
concrete human behavior.
Indeed, it is difficult to understand
how either a sincere Protestant or a sin-
cere unbeliever can alter action or atti-
tude because of what he reads here.
Though various authors inform him
that free enterprise and state control
must be combined, that different cul-
tures have adopted different values, that
psychologists disagree on man’s nature,
that love of God is a crowning posses-
sion, and much else, no one guides him
on the path of daily life. As a good
Christian should he enrich himself? All
contributors agree that self-interest is a
powerful drive. All share the belief that
it has proper limits. But what are these
limits? How, by examining his. con-
science or this book, can a person decide
that he has amassed too much or that his
methods were unworthy? For no longer,
our theologians agree, can wealth be
taken as a sign of grace.
No answers are vouchsafed to these
difficult questions, and, in truth, few
concrete suggestions are made. Even
more surprising is how little impact
their common Christian faith has on the
contributions of these scholars. As far as
we can judge from this book, theology,
instead of influencing other disciplines,
has assumed a place alongside them as
one more analytical framework on which
to hang partial truths. Although this
symposium interests and informs, like
most others it conspicuously fails to
integrate. ROBERT LEKACHMAN
Struggle for a Soul
THE CORRESPONDENCE BE-
TWEEN PAUL CLAUDEL AND
ANDRE GIDE. Introduction and
Notes by Robert Mallet. Prefaced and
Translated by John Russell. Pantheon
Books. $4.
HE famous correspondence of Alain-
Fournier and Jacques Riviére takes
one into the very climate of French in-
tellectual life as no historical survey
could. And so too does this present vol-
ume of letters written between 1899 and
1926. The very fact that publication in
France occurred in 1949, while the two
long-estranged antagonists were still
alive, is of the first importance. Gide
149
i
and Claudel alike recognized that their
struggle for Gides soul transcended
private bitterness; it was a moment in
the conscience of the race. And the
French public, because it is what it is
_ and still respects the opinions of writers,
accepted their recognition. It is hearten-
ing to see this kind of controversy con-
ducted net in a courtroom or before
investigative committees but within the
pages of a book. Even today representa-
tive intellectual controversy is front-page
news in France, with the frail Mauriac
fending off both Sartre and Cocteau.
These letters contain some new infor-
mation for the student of Gide. They
tell us that “Le Retour de l'enfant
prodigue” was partly conceived as an
answer to Claudel; that the Freudian
motivation of ‘La Porte étroite’’ was an
afterthought; that as late as 1914 Gide’s
homosexuality was not known to some
of his close associates. But the first and
lasting interest is the struggle for a
soul. “You are the stake, the pro-
tagonist, and the cockpit of a great
struggle whose outcome I cannot fore-
see, but I think that what is best in you
will end by opening its wings.” So
Claudel wrote in his last letter, but by
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150
1947 he had given up all hope. He then ¢
‘saw Gide at the beginning of the down- |
fall of all the young men who wrote
him letters after having “gone astray.”
And he would recognize in Gide no
talent ‘‘at all.”
The Catholic and non-Catholic cannot
be expected to read these letters with
the same eye. In fairness to Claudel one
must grant that Gide’s slipperiness at
times bordered on deception; more than
once he presented himself as closer to
conversion than The brutal
proselytism of Claudel, deeply offensive
to me, will seem nobly disinterested to
What at least deserves
open discussion is the attitude of cer-
tain French Catholics toward suppres-
sion of the truth. Francis Jammes set
the pattern when he complained of a
passage in “Le Voyage d’Urien.” Du
Bos, Maritain, and others pleaded with
Gide to suppress “Si le Grain ne
meurt.”” And in the crucial pages of
this correspondence Claudel begs Gide
to remove a passage with homosexual
connotations from “Les Caves du
Vatican.” These vices “are neither per-
mitted, nor excusable, nor avowable.”
Nor avowable. If the confessions had to
be made publicly, they should at least
be made posthumously. Against this
position Gide argued, as always, his
he was.
many others.
hatred of hypocrisy.
ALBERT J. GUERARD
Rise of Chinese Communism
A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF
CHINESE COMMUNISM. By Con-
rad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz, and
John K. Fairbank. Harvard University
Press. $7.50.
he five years China has supplied
one of the most controversial issues
in American politics. The issue has been
used to blacken reputations and ruin pri-
vate lives; it has helped some political
figures to build their careers; and it
played, I believe, a role in the defeat of
the Democratic Party. Perhaps one of
the most lamentable effects of the con-
troversy has been the shrinking of ex-
amination and free discussion of the
developments in China. Many a student
of Chinese affairs who could contribute
to the discussion today keeps silent for,
fear of championing an unpopular
notion.
In view of this growing aridity it is
only Tota useful acBeke but remain a
standard work on Chinese communism, a .
The book, its authors explain modestly,
is a study of the Chinese Communist
Party line, “not a history of the move-
ment as a whole, much less a history of
the Chinese revolution.”
underestimate the value of their own
work. For this fat volume is a history of
the Communist movement. What is
missing from the forty Chinese Commu-
nist documents is ak in the twenty-
Harvard scholars. It reflects no dis
credit on the authors that they do not
give definitive answers to the questions
they raise.
These questions and conclusions are
of great moment to the United States.
Is Red China the latest of Russia’s satel- .
lites? Is there any possibility of Mao
Tse-tung becoming another Tito? Was ©
the Chinese revolution a product of
Soviet intrigue, and could any conceiv-
able United States action have arrested”
its progress?
It is not easy to detect any clear an-
swers in the Chinese documents, for in
China as in Russia the party line has
been a series of violent zigzags rather
than a straight line. Yet the picture that
emerges does carry a lesson. The party
itself was created in 1921—by Mao
among twelve Chinese—in the Bol-
shevik image and in the ptesence of a
Comintern emissary. For the next seven
or eight years it was directly, closely,
and disastrously supervised by Moscow.
Late in 1922 Karl Radek forecast the
next turn in China by advocating an
‘ alliance between the Communists and
the Kuomintang. The Chinese Commu-
nists obediently and formally approved
this step six months later. Joffe, Borodin,
Mif, Galen, Roy, and scores of other
less well-known figures begin then to
appear behind the Chinese Party, guid-
ing it, warning, watching, and at times _
summarily firing its leaders. Tragically
for the Chinese Communists, their
greatest crisis coincided with the titanic
battle between Trotsky and Stalin. Mos- -
cow’s ignorance of the Chinese scene
compounded the confusion among the °
Chinese Communists and caused the
death of uncounted thousands. °
While the party line zigzagged madly,
The NATION
The authors’
good . |
and a few of ther britfiine fee the °
his ow For years as ce Noctents
‘in the book show, he had believed that
tion could grow sturdy roots in
_ the countryside. By 1927 the Hunan
_ peasant associations he had organized
had more than 2,000,000 members.
_ That September he led an abortive peas-
ant revolt, and in November he set up
_ the first Soviet. In this year Mao was
left off the party Politburo, and the
Central Committee declined to submit
to the party congress his land-redistribu-
‘tion plan. The Comintern, and Stalin
himself, still insisted that the “initiator
and guide” of the Chinese - revolution
must be the urban proletariat. But the
_ papers of Mao presented in the book
_ show he~had already decided that the
poor peasantry would serve very satis-
factorily as the “‘revolutionary van-
~ guard.” In this respect, the authors
_ suggest, Mao had given a new twist to
Leninism.
- In the next few years the Moscow-
_ controlled party organization in the cities
crumbled, while Mao and his rural asso-
ciates gained strength. Finally the
Comintern agents, including Chou En-
lai, who survived the ;urban disaster,
came to Mao’s country strongholds to
_ seek refuge and assignment. With no
choice before it Moscow adopted Mao as
its favorite son. And being both a Len-
ie inist and a shrewd Chinese compromiser,
_ Mao took the proffered olive branch—
for years there was little more than this
~ branch.
@ As the “Documentary History”
' shows, the party line continued to zigzag
' under Mao, less at the time in response
to Moscow’s wishes than to the need to
retain peasant support and win the
backing of the anti-Japanese, national-
_ ist segments of the population. It was
flot until the Communists had defeated
Chiang Kai-shek and Mao had made his
‘pilgrimage to the Kremlin that the
_ party line made a violent twist back to
the orthodox notion of a revolution
\ guided by urban workers. Unfortunate-
~ ly, the book stops with 1950. It thus
3 touchies but lightly on this twist or the
_ other important developments since
_ then. The authors suggest, however,
| that one of the effects of Moscow’s ad-
_ venture in Korea was to fix China with-
_in the Soviet orbit, and another was to
ee ren
| Februar 14, 1953
Is the Chinese Comininist Party a
Soviet satellite? The authors feel the
relation is rather that between a senior
and a junior partner, with the powerful
Chinese nationalism barring any swal-
lowing of China by the Soviet empire.
On the other hand, they say, while
Communist propaganda may keep the
Sino-Soviet bonds firm over a_ short
term, in the long run Chinese national-
ism may assert itself, as did that of
Yugoslavia. . MARK GAYN
The Crane Legend
THE LETTERS OF HART CRANE,
1916-1932. Edited by Brom Weber.
Hermitage House. $5.
MERICAN poets can seldom
hope to be elevated to mythologi-
cal status with such splendid Byronic
rapidity as Hart Crarie. The American
imagination is nothing if not prudential.
But Crane is our astonishing exception;
somehow he burst our bonds of native
caution and humor, not only among the
sentimentalists of state poetry societies
but among otherwise sober and learned
men. The process was begun during his
brief lifetime, and now for a dgcade
or more he has been securely lodged
among the constellations. And it is per-
haps unfortunately true that he has been
more useful to American letters as a
myth than he was—or would have been
had he lived longer—as a working poet.
Whether you are an idolater or a de-
tractor, you can deal more effectively
with a myth than with a real live poet,
human and corrupt.
Moreover, it is perhaps similarly un-
fortunate that this volume of Crane’s
letters—intelligently and meticulously
edited by Mr. Weber—will do little to
reestablish the memory of the poet on a
more effable plane. The fact is, Crane
was a myth. He believed it, and he in-
sisted upon it. Throughout an incredible
series of fights, affairs, jobs, hangovers,
moves, illnesses, family squabbles, and
in spite of long periods of creative in-
ertia, he managed to subordinate every
motion and every emergency to a ruling,
consuming, conscious drive to write
poetry—and not just to write but to
drown himself in a tumultuous sea of
creative passion.
One cannot read this volume through
Ce net conte = . . . fw
without receiving the impression that
Crane was more than half* mad almost
all the time. The letters, voluble and
fluent, are full of outbursts and despairs.
They are full also of solecisms, so many
that one can scarcely think them all slips
of the pen. There are many passages of
fine prose, and the letters are worth
reading for these, as well as for the
glimpses of Crane’s contemporaries and
the comments on his own poems. There
is much fuel here for Crane’s detractors,
but there is assurance for his idolaters
too. The main objection to the volume as
such is that it may be premature: there
are sO Many Omissions, so many names
disguised by blanks, that there will have
to be a supplementary volume, when
time takes the edge off Crane’s private
indiscretions, if only to satisfy our
curiosity. HAYDEN CARRUTH
A Basic Study
CLASSIC ART. By Heinrich Wolfflin.
Translated by Peter and Linda Mur-’
ray. Phaidon Publishers. Distributed
by Garden City Books. $6.50.
NEW and thoroughly readable
translation of one of the most influ-
ential books on art history ever written.
“Classic Art’’ appeared in 1899, sixteen
years before W6lfflin’s still more famous
“Principles of Art History,’ which, de-
spite its title, is a systematic contrast of
Renaissance and Baroque art and archi-
tecture. This earlier work, which chat-
NO LUCK PUBLISHER?
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poetry, etc., perhaps we can help you. Write
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152
acterizes the painting and sculpture of
the High Renaissance in Italy, was the
- basis of the second. A third, not yet
translated, developed the contrast be-
tween German and Italian concepts of
form in the visual arts, especially in the
late medieval and Renaissance periods.
No writer on the history of art can
match Wolfflin for force of impact on
the study both of historical style in art
and of national (or at least regional)
continuity in artistic traditions. WOlff-
lin’s basic ideas have also influenced
the criticism of music and literature.
He is more responsible than anyone else
for the elimination of derogatory over-
tones from the term Baroque, which the
“correct’’ late eighteenth-century critics
used as a means of castigating the work
of prior generations.
A stiff translation of “Classic Art”
published in 1903 has long since gone
out of print. Once again, through this
fine new translation, W6lfflin’s fresh ob-
servation, his intuitive grasp of form, his
vast scholarship, and his flair for intel-
Jectual synthesis become available to
American and English readers.
S. LANE FAISON, JR.
Books in Brief
THE WEST PORTALS OF SAINT-
DENIS AND CHARTRES. By Whitney
S. Stoddard. Harvard. $20. A very de-
tailed study of portal sculpture in the
Ile de France in the fifty years following
the erection of the facade portals of
Saint-Denis in 1140, under Abbot Suger.
This volume, which is profusely illus-
trated and beautifully designed, argues
convincingly for the traditionally held
view, recently attacked by French schol-
ars, that the Royal (West) Portal of
Chartres Cathedral followed rather than
preceded Saint-Denis. Abbot Suger
therefore receives credit for launching a
type of portal composition which even-
tually became standard for Gothic archi-
tecture and must rank with the major
inventions of architectural sculpture.
The study of ornament, much of it of
superb quality, is more thorough than in
other books in this field.
PRIMARY ELECTIONS IN THE
SOUTH. A Study in Uniparty Politics.
By Cortez A. M. Ewing. Oklahoma.
$2.75. This is a useful supplement to
152
Key’s “Southern: Politics” aah ee :
“A Two-Party South?” Though primary
elections are the only real political
conflict in the South, even in the pri-
maries participation is lower in Southern
states than in other sections. The figures
“refute better than rhetoric the South-
ern apologists who maintain that the
South is as democratic as other sections.”
Rejecting WHeard’s relative optimism,
Ewing believes the South is likely to
“become more isolated from the national
political scene,” to exert less influence
in Presidential elections, and ‘‘to remain
important only in . . . Congress by
holding the balance between the two
great parties.”
Verse Chronicle
ALTIMORE, whether you know it
or not, is becoming quite a center
for poetry. There seem to be, in that
city, several groups which enjoy the
stimulating company of their peers; one
of these centers around Editions Imagi,
which has just published, as the initial
volume in a limited series of first collec-
tions, ‘First Poems,” by Marvin Sol-
omon ($1.75). Only two hundred
copiés of this handsomely made book
have been printed. In an introductory
note it is stated that the poems in this
volume do not represent Mr. Solomon's
complete production over the past five
years; there has been highly critical
editing by Mr. Solomon’s fellow-poet,
the editor, Thomas Cole. Perhaps too
highly critical, for Mr. Solomon appears
here as a good deal of a one-string
harper, the ironic note. I feel sure he
has more to say than that “‘it is hard to
find princesses-to be rescued nowadays”
in these or in other words, that he has
more sprightliness in him, and is capa-
ble of a fine light touch with the ro-
coco; I hope that next time he will
submit less humbly to editorial strict-
ness.
Another finely made book, the “Col-
lected Poems’ of Yvor Winters, has
been published by Alan Swallow ($3).
Mr. Winters is surely one of the most
romantic fellows imaginable, with his
devotion to the classic, his belief in the
virtue of his one-man crusade. It is a
good crusade, though ndét a fashionable
one—against verbalizing, against pro-
lixity, against spilling and heaving your-
talking whether or not you nat
you are saying. .
Few minds will come to this..
The poet’s only bliss
Is in cold certitude—
Laurel, archaic, rude.
Few minds indeed; the statement is
not quite true, either. There has been’ —
pleasure known, both to writer and
reader, from the poet’s eye in a fine ~
frenzy rolling; cold certitude would rule.
out too many. But Mr. Winters’s practice
lives devoutly and finely up to his pro-
fession; the precision excludes neither -
emotion nor suggestion.
Still another nice-looking book, with
good paper and seemly typography, is
“Trembling Prairie,’ by James K. Fei-
bleman (the Hammer Press, no price
stated). This is Mr. Feibleman’s fourth —
collection of verse, but he gives the im- * fj
pression of being more at home in phi- |
losophy tha poetry in so far as vocation
or even avocation is concerned. His —
poems have an amateur quality about
them, with both the awkwardness and
the disarming appeal; they seem a little ”
venturesome, a little shy, the diffident
expressions of a gentle spirit; this is
no hard-boiled old pro telling you. No
single item is sharply memorable, but °
a good deal of atmosphere is conveyed,
the mood and weather of the gulf, bay,
bayou, tide flat, levees around Mr.
Feibleman’s home country; and the eye
does not entirely miss people either.
For readers whose interests extend
beyond the contemporary American, the
following might be noted, though lack
of space prevents comment: “Early Eng-
lish Christian Poetry,” translated into
alliterative verse, with a critical com-
mentary, by Charles W. Kennedy (Ox-
ford University Press, $4); “The Song
of Roland,” translated by Frederick Bliss
Luquiens, with an introduction by
Nathan A. Smyth (Macmillan, $2.75);
“Canadian Poems,’ 1850-1952, edited
by Louis Dudek and Irving Layton,
who include their own works (Contact
Press, price not stated) ; and Baudelaire’s
“Les Fleurs du Mal,” translated by Roy
Campbell (Pantheon Books, $3.50).
These. last are especially useful to set -
off against the Millay-Dillon versions.
In conclusion, and valedictory, I refer - jj
readers of this chronicle to my letter in
the correspondence section.
ROLFE HUMPHRIES
The NATION
'
:
a
ES Pere
ey ome : SEE MS , cas ' yw BIG gaa
eo TST ee
|
=
, has pages that are characteristic
products of Tchaikovsky’s extraordinary
powers of invention, craftsmanship, and .
taste. Except for an occasional slow
tempo that doesn’t seem right to me
Schuricht’s performance with the Paris
Conservatory Concerts Orchestra on a
London record is good; and the violins,
though not Tustrous; are not veiled.
Something better than the Capriccio
Italien should have been put on the
reverse side.
All of Dvorak’s superb Slavonic
Dances are performed well on two
Urania records by Talich with the
Czech Philharmonic. Treble must be
reduced; but on a couple of sides it
must be stepped up again near the
center.
Of the Delius pieces that are played
well by Slatkin with the Concert Arts
Orchestra on a Capitol record I like the
Prelude to ‘‘Irmelin’ but don’t care for
the Caprice and Elegy for cello and
orchestra, the Intermezzo and Serenade
from “Hassan,” ‘Summer Night on the
River,” and “On Hearing the First
Cuckoo in Spring.”
Prokofiev's Suite No. 2 from the
ballet score “Romeo and Juliet’”—merely
very efficient writing for its purpose—
is played well on a Vanguard record
by Mravinsky with the Leningrad Phil-
harmonic. Shostakovich’s Ballet Suite
No. 1 (1950) is on the reverse side.
CONTRIBUTORS
ROBERT LEKACHMAN is a member.
of the Economics Department of Bar-
nard College.
_ALBERT J. GUERARD, associate pro-
: fessor of English at Harvard University,
is the author of “André Gide”
and
other books.
--MARK GAYYN is the author of “Japan
Diary.”
HAYDEN CARRUTH, formerly editor
of Poetry, is on the staff of Intercultural
Publications.
S. LANE FAISON, JR., chairman_ of
the ae Department of enna Col-
The Presidential Succession
Dear Sirs: Inasmuch as Dr. Monroe E.
Deutsch has mentioned my name in
connection with his proposal [One
Heartbeat Away, Te Nation, December
20, 1952} that the people be allowed to
vote separately for President and Vice-
President, you will perhaps permit me
to express my views on this subject.
Let me say, to begin with, that I share-
his dissatisfaction with the existing ar-
rangements regarding the Presidential
succession. I can see no merit in a system
which when a vacancy happens in the
office of President, places in the Execu-
‘tive chair—possibly for a full four years
—a man never thought of for that office
by anybody. But I cannot think that Dr.
Deutsch’s remedy would do more than
compound the evil.
Dr. Deutsch argues that if the “‘pack-
age deal” were abandoned and the can-
didates for Vice-President required to
be judged on their own qualifications,
the nominating conventions would
choose better men for the secondary
post. I see no reason to think so. The
contest between the parties would still
be for the great prize; the Vice-Presi-
dency. would still be hawked about in
exchange for votes for the Presidency.
The remarks which Senator White made
prophetically in 1803 would still be
true: “Character, talents, virtue, and
merits will not be sought after in the
candidate. The question will not be
asked: Is he capable? Is he honest? But
can he by his name, by his connections,
by his wealth, by his local situation, by’
his influence, or his intrigues, best pro-
mote the election of a President?”
Dr. Deutsch’s proposal for a separate
Vice-Presidential election, taken by it-
self, would in my view leave the caliber
of the candidates exactly where it is now.
But it would have one very serious dis-
advantage. It might, as he himself con-
cedes, bring into office a President of
one party and a Vice-President of
another. Then, if the President died, we
would not only have as President a man
whom no one intended for the office but
have what Senator Beveridge used to call
a “political non-sequitur” in the Execu-
tive branch. Does anyone really think
that the substitution of Senator Spark-
man for Senator Nixon as provisional
successor to President Eisenhower, woald
remove the difficulty of the succession
problem?
Dr. Deutsch, however, has another
plan for improving the character of
Vice-Presidents: he would attach to the
office duties of such high importance that
no one would think of nominating an
incompetent person to it; such an office,
furthermore, would become an object of
ambition to men of Presidential caliber.
The scheme is a plausible one, and it
has often been urged before—by Theo-
dore Roosevelt, by Senator Beveridge,
and, more recently, by Representative
(now Senator) Monroney.
I submit, however, that no plan for
enlarging the powers of the Vice-
Presidency can be sound. The additional
powers must be legislative or executive.
If they are legislative, the system might
work well enough so long as the Vice-
President and the Senate were of the
same political. complexion. But what
would happen if a Democratic Vice-
President with the powers of, say, .a
“Czar” Reed were thrust upon a Repub-
lican Senate, or vice versa?
The case is much worse if the addi-
“tional powers are executive. For how is
the President to be held responsible for
his Administration if high executive
duties are vested in an officer not subject
to his direction or control? It must be
remembered that a Vice-President,
armed with substantial powers and ir-
removable except by impeachment,
might use his position to embarrass or
defeat, as well as to aid, the Administra-
tion. The danger, always present, would
be especially acute on those occasions
when, under Dr. Deutsch’s plan, the
Vice-President was not of the President's
party.
I remain, therefore, of my original
opinion, elaborated six years ago in the
Atlantic Monthly, that the best solution
to the problem of the Presidential suc-
cession is to expunge the office of Vice-
President from the Constitution and to
Jet an officer designated by Congress—
preferably the Secretary of State—act as
President until the next Congressional
election, at which time the people can
elect a new President for a new four-
year term.
If the office of Vice-President cannot
be abolished, I would favor the scheme
advanced by Walter Lippmann, that the
Vice-President act as President until
the next Congressional election and that
then a new President and new Vice-
President be chosen. I admit the force
of Dr. Deutsch’s comment that such a
155
Sa
—
ren
eae
plan does not eliminate the evil of the
Vice-Presidential succession but merely
reduces the time it would afflict us. But
the shortening of the maximum term of
an accidental President from four years
to two seems to me a very sensible
advantage.
LUCIUS WILMERDING, JR.
Princeton, N. J.
“Whose Wars?”
Dear Sirs: 1 would like to congratulate
you on the December 27 issue of The
Nation, in particular on Nelson Algren’s
American Christmas, 1952, and the very
important article, Whose Wars? by
Robert Lynd.
I had been looking for some time for
a documented analysis of the economic
motive behind the growing military
strength of the United States, and
Robert Lynd has done a real service to
the cause of truth in raising this vital
question. I attended a large conference
on Point 4 in Washington last May in
which American business and industry
was a participant, and I seemed to feel
at that time some apprehensions about
the direction in which our policy was
moving and the incentive of at least
some of these people in backing social.
and technical assistance; namely, to es-
tablish our footholds in the areas of
the world where great natural resources
still lie untapped.
RUSSELL JOHNSON,
Peace Education Secretary,
American Friends Service Committee
Cambridge, Mass.
In Defense of Freedom
Dear Sirs: The serious consequences of
loyalty oaths and official investigations
in the name of anti-Communist security
measures need not be emphasized to
readers of The Nation.
This letter is written to propose the
formation of a committee of informed
and independent persons who would
undertake to keep a comprehensive ac-
count of legislation and Congressional
action touching upon freedom of speech
and thought. It would further serve as
a coordinating agency for the many in-
dividuals and organizations who would
like to pool their efforts to bring a better
understanding of the implications of
such legislation.
The committee I propose would bring
before the public in letters to the press
and in articles to periodicals more pop-
ular than scholarly the implications of
statutes and investigations which
threaten freedom of research and of ex-
156
10
Crossword Busse No. 503
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
ACROSS
Goat’s-head island? (5)
If you want to get at a lot, rub the
. wrong way—you’ll find it counts.
(9)
Certainly not the people’s choice.
(9)
Approaches where to find_R and T.
(5)
12
13
17
21
22,
23
24
25
26
Here are the rules. (9)
Be allowed to come back with
something to chew on, perhaps. (5)
Implying fleet women are O.K. by
the M.D. (Affected by ether,
perhaps!) (5, 5)
The clue is one-sided, until a real
change is made. (10)
His tiger was evidently hot, but sort
of cold. (5)
Exemplified by De Falla’s three-
cornered one? (5, 4)
Small insect of an irregular variety.
(5)
There’s ego in the air—you’ll hear
it again and again. (5, 4)
Decor for “Snowbound”? (Designed
by Anderson.) (9)
Finale of 25, arranged for woods
only. (5)
DOWN
Heavy. treads come in clusters. (6)
Nothing to drink on return? One
can’t say it isn’t material. (6)
- 16 SORCERESS;
3 The forcible impinging of devilish
behavior? (6)
4 lf your calling concerns the
Salvation Army, you might. (9, 6)
5 Implying one got a gocd deal for
what his first story might be on.
(AS ae
6 The e certainly aren’t short
salutations as used by Robin. (8)
7 When at the head, it’s still the same
—drawing. (8)
8 Uneasy without the remainder? (8)
14 Flounce with the hair down? (8)
15 Novel territory for the river. (8) |
16 You might find a sort of pest in
step! (With the white man, of
course!) (8)_
18 An obvious kind of leather? (6) _
19 A word for the lead of “Life with
Father”? (6)
20 Give us time—we must master them
to do anything well. (6)
—+—,
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 502
ACROSS :—1 FATIGUE CLOTHES; 9 ABU-
SIVE; 10 WHISTLE; 11 HEARTS; 12
FRESHETS; 14 SINCERE; 15 COTES; 17
BLIND; 19 ESTEEMS; 21’ POPULACH; 23
IMPALE; 25 NONSTOP; 26 ELUSIVE; 27
AS THE CROW FLIES.
DOWN :—1 FLASH BULB
GLISTENED; 4 EDEN; 5 LOWER BE
6 and 21 TAILSPINS; 7 ENTREAT; 138 and
8 TELESCOPIC LENS; 15 CREAMPUFF;
18 IMPENDS; 20 SWA-
HILI; 22 LATCH; 24 VETO.
; 2 TOUCANS; 3
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
The Nation, 20 Vesey Street,
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
“ground rules." Address
New York 7, New York.
The NATION
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ene
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_ | tively
eee
ion, and which penalize retroac-
possible erroneous judgment or
actions legal at the time they were taken.
It would further seek to counteract the
official investigations by elucidating in
principle and in concrete detail . the
necessity of freedom for the security of
a free society.
New York KATHERINE A. WELLS
Last Verse Chronicle
Dear Sirs: The Verse Chronicle on
another page of this issue will be,
regret to say, the last to appear over my
signature in The Nation. The policy
announced in the mid-January issue
strikes me as all to the bad. No matter
what face is put upon the matter, a
“liberal” magazine which effects econo-
mies, however grimly necessary, by firing
a good literary editor and cutting down
on the space allotted to notice of books
is altogether too mean-spirited for this
old politician.
New York ROLFE HUMPHRIES
Tidelands Campaign
Dear ‘Sirs: In making Tidelands oil a
naval reserve President Truman has
made it more difficult for Congress to
give away (quit claim) federal property
worth more than Tea Pot Dome, the
TVA, the national forests, and all the
gold in Fort Knox.
The value of this submerged land is
estimated at one hundred billion dollars,
or more than one-third of the public
debt. It is worth more than the oil in
Iran and Mexico.
The campaign to pressure Congress
into giving away this priceless natural
resource, which the Supreme Court of
the United States in six decisions has
clearly and unequivocally declared does
not now and never did belong to the
people of any single state, is clearly a
campaign to get Congress to do some-
thing the Supreme Court refused to
sanction.
Of course it is within the power of
Congress to give away Tea Pot Dome,
the TVA, and any other federal prop-
erty. The governments of Mexico and
Iran also have the “ power’ to give away
their oil land. Are our citizens less vigi-
Jant and alert than the people of Mexico
and Iran? Let us hope that Congress will
uphold the decisions and final decrees
of the United States Supreme Court in
this affair, and that readers of The
Nation will wire or write their Senators,
without delay. . J. RUPERT MASON,
President, International Union for
Land Value Taxation and Free Trade
London
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Ta e e
Indispensable
to the alert citizen and student of world
affairs, Professor Tansill’s book is equall
unique and invaluable as a textbook for
university and college classes. It is the
only up-to-date and com prehensive text-
book available for courses in general or
world diplomatic history from 1918 to
1942, as well as for recent American dip-
lomatic history... Professor Tansill’s
B AC K O book is likely to remain... the classic
work on the genesis 0 f the second World
War.” — _HARRY ELMER BARNES
Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941
by Charles Callan Tansill, Georgetown University
@ ‘The main narrative rests largely on official diplomatic correspondence, which is
digested with clarity and skill; especially for the years 1935-39, Dr. Tansill has
exploited much hitherto unused material.” —U. S. Quarterly Book Review
@ ‘It is the most up-to-date and one of the most scholarly pieces of revisionist writ-
ing on the causes of America’s entry into the Second World War yet to appear.”
—THOMAS H. D. MAHONEY, World Affairs
@ ‘To the work of the World War II ‘revisionists’ . . . Professor Tansill now adds
a much more weightily documented volume . . . a work of great learning.”
—JULIUS W. PRATT, American Historical Review
@ “Opinions and deductions apart, here is a highly documented narrative of events
which will have to be taken into account by anyone who wants to form an intelligent
judgment on the ticklish questions which are here raised.” | —Christian Century
Pp. xxi & 690. Index and Bibliography. $6.50
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ABURLINGAME
(Pustic LIBRAR
THE Z- ® Nu riingame, Calil
february 21, 1953
0¢
N ew York’s
Water Front
Jungle
by George Horne
Where Are We Going? Freda Kirchney
South African Riots Harry S: Warner
A Review of “The Second Sex”
Patrick Mullaby
Around
po ie the
Uses
Nearly Everybody
Swears in Harrison
Harrison, New York
THIS Westchester County suburb of
New York achieved fame of a sort re-
cently when its school board became the
first in the state to require a loyalty
oath from ‘the officers of all organiza-
tions seeking to use the school facilities.
The oath is also required of speakers
who appear before such organizations.
Thus the officers of the local Parent-
Teachers Association, Boy Scouts, Girl
Scouts, or League of Women Voters
must take the oath if they want to meet
in a Harrison school building.
The pattern set here has already been
copied in several nearby communities
and eventually could spread to all the
three thousand autonomous school dis-
tricts in the state.
- The local board’s action, taken over
the protest of many residents, brought
into the open the bitterness which has
been developing covertly between the
self-styled ‘‘old-timers’”” who work as
well as live in the county and the
“johnny-come-lately”” commuters. The
commuters opposed the oath and had a
bad time of it. Their moderately phrased
arguments were frequently equated with
communism and were countered nore
than once by ill-concealed appeals to race
prejudice. Perhaps half of Harrison’s
commuters are Jewish.
Without doubt the majority of the
town supports the board and the loyalty
oath. After the turn of the century the
electrification and four-tracking of the
New Haven Railroad, which serves the
community, and the building of nearby
Kensico dam, brought a great many
workmen to Harrison, many of them
newly arrived Italian immigrants who
settled there permanently. They raised
large families and as the years passed
took over the political power which had
formerly been the unquestioned preroga-
tive of the descendants of the original
settlers—Harrison was founded in 1696.
e By the mid-thirties the
white-collar exodus from New York be-
gan to lap over into Harrison as into
One of_the
motivations in this shift from city to
other Westchester towns.
suburb has undoubtedly been the New
Yorker's perennial search for better
primary schools. The Harrison system,
however, was generally oriented toward
high school as the terminal educational
experience, with emphasis on technical
and business training, while most of the
commuting families wanted their chil-
dren to go on to college. Inevitably de-
mands for changes in the curriculum
were voiced.
In the last seven years the town’s
school population has nearly doubled.
When the commuters tried to elect
sympathetic members to the school
board, the Italian American community
made a vigorous counter-effort to con-
trol it and “keep the schools from
becoming a hotbed of progressive
education.” Since Italian and Irish
Americans constitute a majority in the
school district, they succeeded in getting
a four-to-one Catholic majority on the
board.
Their domination was not docilely
accepted by the commuters. The board
meetings, which in the past had been
humdrum affairs, became the scene of
vigorous debates on educational policies.
For a while the board attempted to avoid
discussion by retiring into executive ses-
sion, but the state education law was
cited to prevent this. Fighting stub-
bornly, it rejected the voters’ offer to
form an Advisory Committee through
which technically trained residents could
assist the trustees in planning enlarge-
ment of school facilities; this, said the
board, smacked of subversive usurpation _
of the functions of elected officials. By
now the board was characterizing all op-
position as “‘pinko.’’ It seems to have
concluded that if it could discredit the
most vociferous members of the Parent-
Teachers Association its troubles would
be over.
Last October, soon after the United
oR dae eee
pe a
States Supreme Court upheld the
stitutionality of New York's Feinber
act requiring all teachers to sign a 3
loyalty oath, the board issued the in-|
dicated questionnaires to the teaching!
staff and at the same time announce od
that officers, members, and guest
speakers of organizations using school
buildings must sign a similar oath. An
early deadline was set for compliance,
Later, when it became evident that the]
board might become a laughingstock 6]
each little cub scout were asked to sigan |
the oath, the date was postponed until
after the next scheduled board meeting’
so that the ruling could be amended to
require the oath only from officers and |
speakers,
i
a
"a
i
a
© A Citizens’ Committee
consisting of an Episcopal minister,
two professors, a partner in a large
accounting firm, a well-known author
and critic, a former dean of the Harvard
Law School, and several other respected
residents circulated an impressive. letter]
of protest throughout the district. This,
together with extensive publicity in the |
local and metropolitan press, produced
the largest turnout ever to appear at a
board meeting, some four hundred per-
sons. But the cards were stacked. Secure
in the knowledge that he had majority”
community support, Joseph Vassallo,
president of the board, opened the meet- }
ing by putting the question on the
amended oath, received “a unanimous
vote of approval, and then consented to:
hear the other side.
On November 14-all the paicets of
the P.T.A. took the oath. Afterward two
of them resigned in protest, Others who”
had been active against the oath decided
they could continue the fight better in
office than on the outside. Recently ac-
tion was instituted before the state Corn- |
missioner of Education to compel the’
school board to revoke the oath require-
ment. :
Already the town is showing signs of |
the suspicion which the Citizens’ Com-_
mittee predicted would divide neighbor
from neighbor. “What have they got to
hide?” people ask about those who op-
pose the oath. Some of the protesters,
ashamed and angry at the turn of events,
are talking about selling their homes and
moving to another town.
DAVID CLINTON
{The author is a Harrison commuter.}
|
See 76 Nukes
New York, Saturday, February 21, 1953
The Shape of Things
Anglo-Egyptian Accord
The Anglo-Egyptian agreement on the Sudan, signed in
Cairo on February 12, is undoubtedly an Egyptian vic-
tory, a victory made possible by its unequivocal retreat
from previous demands for Egyptian sovereignty over the
Sudan. So long as Egypt insisted on “unification of the
Nilé Valley,” Britain rightly refused to budge from the ,
position that it would not resign its trusteeship until the
Sudanese were able to become self-governing and decide
their own future. .
Toward the end of last year General Naguib out-
flanked Whitehall by scrapping the policies of his
Wafdist predecessors and promising the Sudan not
merely self-government but complete independence with-
in three years. For the British view this was moving alto-
gether too fast, but the enthusiasm aroused in the Sudan
by the Egyptian move left no alternative to acquiescence.
And in the subsequent negotiations over the details of
the transfer of authority the British relinquished most
of the “safeguards” they had originally asked for. In
particular they modified their demand for special powers
for the governor general to enable him to protect the
interests of the non-Moslem, primitive tribes of the
southern Sudan and accepted instead the endowment of
this official with some vague general powers.
No doubt this compromise was inevitable, but many
anti-imperialists would feel happier about the new agree-
ment if it provided guaranties against exploitation of the
southern Sudanese. The good intentions of the northern
Moslem majority in this matter must be taken on faith.
So, indeed, must the promises of the Egyptian govern-
‘ment to the Sudan as a whole, and it is not very auspicious
that General Naguib’s agreement to self-government for
the Sudan should have coincided with his assumption of
dictatorial powers in his own country.
Taft and “Christian Repentance”
In its recent annual report the House Committee on
Un-American Activities for the first time agrees with
those of its critics who have long contended that the
“non-Communist” affidavit of the Taft-Hartley act is
TH VG @
aAlMOnN
EDITORIALS
more of a help than a hindrance to the Communists. Not
only is the provision difficult to enforce but, in the view
of the committee, it has provided certain unions with a
ready-made answer to the charge of Communist domina-
tion. The committee recommends that the non-Commu-
nist oath be dropped, and even Senator Taft agrees, since
he feels that to extend the oath to cover the past—the
form now reads “I am not a member of the Communist
Party or affiliated with such party”—-would rule out “the
possibility of Christian repentance.”
But this does not mean, of course, that the labor-
baiters in Congress have retreated or recanted; on the
contrary, they are now concocting a still more deadly
potion for the labor movement. Its major ingredients are
an amendment to the Taft-Hartley act authorizing an
employer to discharge Communist employees despite
union-shop agreements, bigger and better Congressional
investigations of “reds” in unions, establishment of a new
agency charged with determining which unions are free
of the Communist taint, ‘‘a great many more prosecu-
tions,” to quote Senator Taft, by the new Attorney Gen-
eral for past violations of the non-Communist clause,
legislation making it unlawful for a member of the Com-
munist Party to hold office or employment in any labor
organization, nullification of contracts held by “Commu-
nist-dominated” unions, and special security safeguards
governing unions in key defense industries.
All of which would seem to mean that the Republi-
cans do not intend to introduce much “anti-labor” legis-
lation as such; they will simply step up the tempo of the
campaign to “ferret out the reds.” The labor movement
this year is the No. 2 target on the list of all the chief
investigators, the first being American education.
Soviet-Israeli Break
The terrorists responsible for the bombing of the
Soviet legation in Tel Aviv gave the Russians another
opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the Arab world.
By promptly severing diplomatic relations with Israel,
the Kremlin has done much to wipe from Arab memory
the fact that the Soviet Union in 1947 supported the
partition of Palestine and in 1948 rushed to become the
third nation in the world to recognize the new-born
’ Jewish state.
Experts are already weighing the significance of the
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 157
Where Are We Going?
by Freda Kirchwey 159
ARTICLES
The Lesson of Austria
by J. Alvarez del Vayo ~ 161
Cartoon: What Ike Will Need by Berger 162
Kingless Jungle:
New York’s Waterfront
by George Horne 163
New Farm Program:
It's Good for Bankers
by Bruce Catton 165
Proposals for Peace—VII
by Clarence E. Pickett 166
South Africas Who Provoked the Riots ?
by Harry S. Warner 167
Margaret Sanger: Back from India
by Mildred Gilman 169
-BOOKS
Woman's Place by Patrick Mullahy 171
New Books in Brief 172
THEATER ‘by Harold Clurman 173
RECORDS by B. H. Haggin 175
LETTERS 175
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 504
by Frank W. Lewis 176
AROUND THE U. S. A.
Nearly Everybody Swears in Harrison
by David Clinton opposite 157
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Associates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street. New York 7. N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Offica
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising
and Circulation Representative for Continental Europe: Publicitas.
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Three
years $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $1.
Ohange of Address: Three weeks’ notice is required for change of
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new.
Information to Libraries: The Nation 1s indexed in Readers’ Guide to
Perfodical Literature, Book Review Digest, Index to Labor Articles,
Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index.
158
move in terms of the complex Middle East political situa-
tion. Whatever the fnswer, it surely cannot be a pleasant
one for the West. Any encouragement of Arab hostility
towards Israel can only increase present unrest in the area
and further divide the Arab states from the West. Mos-
cow’s step may ultimately spell the defeat of Western
efforts to establish a defense pact in the Middle East.
But in the meantime the Soviet action must not deter
the Israeli government from finding and punishing those
responsible for the bombing. This would be Israel’s best
answer to Rassia’s slanderous charge of official com-
plicity in the outrage. It is also the only possible answer
to the moral question involved.
Appeal to Eisenhower
Russia’s newest act, coupled with its recently launched
campaign of anti-Semitism, gives sharp urgency to the
four-point program which fifty-one distinguished Amer;
icans have suggested to President Eisenhower as a
means of averting a possible disaster to the Jews. They
have called upon the President: :
1. To issue a solemn public condemnation and warn-
ing that this attack against the Jewish people is an
incitement to massacre.
2. Asa deterrent, to declare that the help of the
United, States in terms of funds, Point Four aid, and
other forms of assistance will be withhheld from any
country which engages in such attacks.
3. To make clear to the Arab world the importance
of reaching a formal settlement of the Palestine war as
an end in itself and as a prerequisite to productive rela-
tions with the United States.
4. To place on the agenda of the United Nations a
proposal for the establishment of a “watchdog” com-
mittee to prevent anti-Semitic violence anywhere as
contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and the
principle of peaceful association between countries.
Joining in this request are presidents of colleges, re-
ligious leaders, business men, educators, and writers,
including the president of The Nation Associates. —
That American public opinion is fearful of a new
disaster is indicated not only by these proposals but by
the disapproval of the Russian campaign expressed ‘in
many quarters, notably by the National Council of
Churches of Christ and by the forty Catholic leaders
whose statement was published in the Commonweal.
With the General Assembly resuming its session on’
February 24, an opportunity exists for the initiation of
deterrent action of an impressive nature. It is hoped that
President Eisenhower will direct Ambassador Lodge to
propose such action in accordance “‘with the highest
purposes of international morality and international
peace,” as the group of fifty-one has phrased it.
The NATION”
>. aia
a ae eee
we eB + oie :
a :
N Ir. Wilson’s Noble Sacrifice
We don’t suppose people worried too much about
_ how the Charles E. Wilsons would get along after Mr.
Wilson sold his General Motors stock. Just the same
there was a good deal of comment on that 26 per cent
capital-gains tax and a feeling around that he’d made a
pretty handsome sacrifice for the sake of serving his coun-
try as Secretary of Defense. Happily nobody need give
the matter another thought. The facts about Mr. Wilson’s
stock sale and earnings have been put together by Wil-
liam J. Casey and J. K: Lasser, the tax experts, and it
seems that next year the Secretary’s after-tax income wiil
be $22,850 higher than his top income as president of
General Motors.
But that is just part of the good news. Mr. Wilson ts
not only going to be better off than he was before he got
his government job. He is going to be better off—and by
a much larger number of dollars—than if he had taken
the Defense job and been allowed to keep his General
Motors stock. Job plus income from stock and other
General Motors perquisites would have netted Mr. Wil-
son a take-home income of $102,500. By selling the
General Motors stock and investing the proceeds thriftily
in 214 per cent tax-exempt municipal bonds, Mr. Wil-
son’s income after taxes as Secretary of Defense will be
$145,600. The whole story is complex and fascinating,
but it all adds up to the reassuring fact that virtue is not
to be its own reward in the case of Charles E. Wilson:
the reward is virtue plus either $22,850 or $43,100, de-
pending on which way you figure it.
~
Business Is Just That Practical
One of our American weaknesses is that even those
who regret the thought control now spreading rapidly
through American life are little given to speculating
about its sources. This fact is strikingly revealed in the
report of the twelve-man commission set up three years
ago by the Association of American Universities, under
prants from the Carnegié Corporation and the Rocke-
feller Foundation, to seek a cure for the chronic financial
predicament of American colleges and universities.
_ The commission recommends that educational insti-
tutions turn for assistance to business and private groups
and not to the federal government. This accords with
the popular American view that business gives without
_ strings, whereas controls tend to go along with govern-
~ ment donations. To make such distinction is unrealistic.
The fact is, of course, as Business Week has pointed
out, “business men and college professors probably
never will see eye to eye.” The dire‘heed of the colleges is
for funds to finance research in the social sciences and
_ humanities. Grants to colleges for research for the cur-
+ sent school year will amount to approximately $350,-
000,000, of which 90 per cent is earmarked for work in
February 21, 1953
the physical and biological sciences. With customary
candor Business Week explains why: with the physical
sciences “the benefit [to business} is usually obvious. . . .
{But} except in a few cases, that’s not true of the social
sciences. Instead of bewailing their lot, the colleges .. .
might do better by laying out a definite program of what
they think they can do for industry in the field of social
science. . . . But such research won’t become so wide-
spread: as, or approach the scope of, the natural sciences
unless colleges offer something tangible, so that manage-
ment can sell the idea (1) to its boards of directors and
(2) to its stockholders. Business is just that practical.”
In fundamental respects the predicament of education
is that of all qualitative social values in a business society.
If its future depends upon its going begging to business,
it will have to remake itself and its great tradition in the
image of the modern corporation.
Where Are We Going?
HAT Americans and indeed all other peoples
Xi) have a right to ask, before the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration pushes its “positive” foreign policy any
further, is exactly what ultimate purpose animates that
policy. They have a right to ask what the word “positive”
means, in distinction to “containment.’’ They have a
right to know whether, if it includes such concepts as
“liberation,” it implies an ultimate showdown with the
‘Russians and Chinese, and if so what sort of a showdown
is contemplated. To find an answer to these questions
is not easy, perhaps not possible. A quick review of the
President’s State of the Union message on February 1,
Secretary Dulles’s “off-the-cuff” talk a few days before
his departure for Europe, and his brief speech after his
return, fails to yield any solid information on what we
are up to in the world.
My own fear is not that the final objectives of Amer-
ican foreign policy have been fully formulated and then
deliberately cloaked in loose generalizations. The danger,
in my opinion, is the reverse: that the objectives are still
in an amorphous, embryonic stage, but that decisions
being taken and actions launched will force the prema-
ture crystallizing of those objectives in final and irrev-
ocable shape. If the public statements of our new leaders
fail to specify what a “positive” policy means, it may
be because meaning is waiting upon acts to make it
clear. It is possible that without any formal decision
this nation is being committed to a plan not merely to
defeat or push back the Communist forces in Korea and
Indo-China but by gradual steps to “liberate” all of
China. It is possible that we and our allies are being
jockeyed into a position which will commit us jointly to
the defeat of Soviet power in the satellite countries of
Europe, first no doubt through methods of psychological
159
warfare but second if necessary through a showdown
with Russia. It is possible that we are preparing not
merely to defend Western Europe if it is attacked but
also, at a propitious moment, to challenge Communist
power in Eastern Europe to “roll back” or fight.
All this is possible-
our enemies have been told whether it is true or likely. In
-but neither we nor our allies nor
the absence of an open formulation of purposes, we can
only go by the sum of appearances. What, for instance,
does Eisenhower imply by his repudiation of “secret
understandings of the past’ which permit the “‘enslave-
ment of any people’—meaning the Yalta agreement?
Poland
Yalta conference met.
under Stalin’s thumb when the
The deal, which incidentally was
was already
not “secret,” approved an eastern frontier-already set by
Russia and endorsed an undefined cession of German
territory to Poland. This cession was later defined and
accepted at Potsdam, pending final settlement in a treaty
of peace; and then, in 1946, it was repudiated by Secre-
tary Byrnes. So there is nothing left on that front, secret
or otherwise, for Mr. Eisenhower to repudiate today. The
Yalta deal on China was in fact kept secret until 1947.
But it was negotiated and agreed to all over again after
Yalta in talks between Chiang Kai-shek and Moscow.
That it had any
tory of Mao Ts
influence in bringing about the final vic-
the China Lobby and its
backers could seriously maintain.
e-tung only
Again we ask: what does Mr. Eisenhower’s repudiation
of Yalta mean? Does it mean that we are prepared, by
force if necessary, to throw the Communists out of China,
to restore Japan’s lost islands, to give Poland its 1921
boundaries, to liberate all of Eastern Europe? Perhaps,
“suffering
” at means
in line with Mr. Dulles’s promise that those
under Communist slavery’’ can “count on us,
all this. Or perhaps it is nothing more than a propaganda
gesture, an empty and deceptive bit of psychological war-
fare, as Dr. Conant’s first statement in Bonn would seem
.to indicate. We do not know.
And what did Mr. Eisenhower mean by his Formosa
decision? Since he is a man of intelligence and a general
he knows that it amounts to nothing, either as “sense or
logic,” unless it is part of a larger plan. The original in-
tervention by President Truman in 1950 did not, except
in form, neutralize Formosa or “shield” the Chinese
mainland from attack by the defeated and exiled Chiang.
The function of the Seventh Fleet was from the start to
defend Chiang Kai-shek’s Formosa asylum from attack
by the victorious Communist army. In other words, it was
an open intervention on the side of Chiang in China's
civil war. When the Chinese Nationalists grew strong
enough to stage small commando raids on the coast, these
raids were both countenanced and protected by the
Seventh Fleet. General Eisenhower's order will have the
effect, we suppose, of stepping up such attacks while
maintaining the naval defense of Formosa. He is backing
160
ane 2 P ee ~ «
Cah wit
this gesture with the dispatch of more military aid to
Chiang and with publicized visits by Nationalist admi-
rals and generals to “inspect” American naval bases and
military installations.
All this has been accompanied by a great flurry of talk
about a naval blockade of the Chinese coast. Admirals
and Senators have expressed opinions on the subject
which have sped by air waves to every continent. The Ad-
ministration has lately been soft-pedaling the idea of a
blockade, especially since Dulles’s return, but has de- —
clared that it will demand action by the United Nations
to establish a tight embargo on all trade with China. It
has also announced a plan to build up the Nationalist
navy. Thus the Formosa move already implies further
moves, all aimed at—what? Scaring the Chinese into ac-
cepting a Korean truce on American terms? Encouraging
pro-Chiang but isolationist: Senators in and around the:
China Lobby to believe we can lick Mao Tse- tung with- :
out wasting American man-power? The final objective ts.
not announced, but the policy itself is immensely danger-
ous,
How seriously it is regarded abroad is made clear im
each day’s dispatches from India and Pakistan, from
Paris and London. If its purpose is to confuse the Rus-
sians and Chinese and throw them off balance, Washing-
ton had better give thought also to its effect on our allies °
and friends. Their minds are confused and their balance
disturbed by the same eollection of rumors, threats,
promises, and unexplained actions that are presumably
aimed at the enemy. With each day that passes they will
demand, more and more insistently, an answer to the
question the Eisenhower-Dulles policy has dramatically
raised: What is the new Administration up to in the
world? FREDA KIRCHWEY
New Look
With this issue we present our readers with a new
format. Aside from the changed cover and new-style
heads, which we think handsomer than the old, the
greatest changes are in the paper and in the use of
three columns instead of two throughout most of the
. magazine. The smoother paper gives type and drawings
greater clarity; the three-column page makes for easier
reading and slightly increases the amount of text we
can print in an issue. Along with these new features we
are particularly glad to introduce two distinguished
additions to our editorial staff: Harold Clurman as
theater critic, and Maxwell Geismar, author and literary
critic, as a-contributing editor. Regular readers will
also note the changed form of our book section, in
which a major review is featured and other important
books are discussed briefly, each by an expert in his
field. i
The NATION
The Lesson
IN ITSELF it sounds like a joke: the
260th meeting on the Austrian treaty
closes in London after two sittings and
the British chairman is authorized to call
a new meeting three weeks later. But
this diplomatic marathon, unique in his-
tory, is worthy of something more than
a cynical comment. An interesting lesson
can be drawn from it.
Austria is in many ways a different
préblem from Germany, and Soviet
policy, accordingly, is also different. At
the Moscow conference of 1943 Austria
_ was classed as a liberated country, not
a defeated one. To have applied to Aus-
tria the same occupation policy that
Russia carried out in East Germany
would have been an open violation of
the clause in the Moscow agreefhent
guaranteeing respect for the unity and
political independence of liberated
countries. In addition to this, Austria,
unlike Germany, continues under four-
power control.
No matter how much cause the Aus-
trian government and people have had
to complain of Russian occupation poli-
cies, especially in matters of reparations
and contrél of industries, the fact re-
mains that in the last general elections,
in November, 1950, the two parties most
opposed to the Soviet Union and the
Communists won a smashing victory—
and nothing happened. Similarly, each
‘ time the Austrian Communists tried to
impose their power by other than con-
_ stitutional methods, as when the Work-
ers’ Councils of Florisdorf called for a
* general strike in the autumn of 1950,
the failure of the attempt produced no
reaction on the part of the Russians.
They registered the defeat and that was
all.
But in the meantime the cold war has
been taking its inevitable course, and the
political strategists of the Atlantic coa-
lition have successfully enlisted. the in-
direct support of European countries that
could not become open allies. The posi-
_tion adopted by the late President
Renner of Austria in a famous article
February 21, 1953
J. Alvarez del Vayo
of Austria
published (January, 1948) in Nezes
Oesterreich—'‘no Anschluss, either to-
ward the northwest or toward the
southwest, either toward —Moscow or
‘toward Washington’—became less and
less tenable. The visits to Washington
of the Catholic Chancellor Fig] and the
Socialist Vice-Chancellor Schaerf and the
attitude of Austria in the last session of
the U. N. Assembly were already indi-
cations that Austrian ‘“‘neutralism’’ was
acquiring a distinctively Western color.
Negotiations on the Austrian peace
treaty, which had dragged along for
years, became still more difficult. Russia
was plainly not interested in facilitating
a solution which would benefit the At-
lantic alliance. Formally, the reason for
Moscow’s recent refusals to sign a peace
treaty was its opposition to the “‘abbre-
viated”’ draft suggested by the American,
British, and French diplomats as a sub-
stitute for “a genuine treaty, basically
already concluded, which actually assures
Austria’s restoration as an independent,
democratic, free state*-—to quote Am-
bassador Gromyko. But actually the mo-
tive for Russia’s resistance is its desire,
in the context of the cold war, to main-
tain armed forces in Austria and also,
as permitted by treaty, in the Eastern
countries giving access to Austria.
Between the meeting that closed on
February 9 and the next meeting, if it
is held, the new elections in Austria
will have taken place—on February 22.
The majority of the parties contesting
the elections have made the return to
real independence and national sov-
ereignty the major issue of the campaign.
In the fight the Soviet Union, accused
of having stalled the treaty for five
years, is the main target. The anti-
Communist forces may win on this issue,
but their success-will hardly advance the
conclusion of an Austrian peace treaty,
whose best chance was lost in 1948
when Dr. Evatt, Australian president of
the U. N. Assembly, urged that it be
negotiated together with the problem of
Germany.
The lesson to draw from all this is
important. First, it is difficult to obtain
peace in a single, limited area while other
areas are used as the basis for further
preparations for war. That applies to
Korea as well as to Austria, and it ex-
plains my stubborn skepticism toward
the speculations about an “early solu-
tion” of the Korean problem that greet
each new session of the Assembly.
Neither a peace treaty for Austria nor a
solution for Korea can be obtained so
long as each side fears that the abandon-
ment of its position means the strength-
ening of its opponent's.
Second, there is a limited moment
when negotiations are possible, and if
missed it seldom recurs. The recent pub-
lication of French and British material
on the fateful days of the summer of
1939 confirms this view. When on July
31, 1939, the French-British military
mission headed by General Doumencs
left for Moscow, it was evident that it
had still a very small margin of time in
which to settle the two major disputed
points: Poland’s reluctance to permit
Russian forces on its territory in case of
a German attack, and a guaranty of
protection for the Baltic states against
aggression, including “indirect aggres-
sion.” Molotov had stated in several
confidential notes to Paris and London:
either we agree now or it will be too
late. Daladier and Chamberlain were in
no hurry. The moment for negotiation
was allowed to pass, and the end of the
story everybody knows: the Soviet-Ger-
man pact and World War II.
Again there is only a limited time for
the negotiation of agreements to stop
World War III, and in the meantime,
while “liberation” replaces ‘‘contain-
ment” and military preparations go on
at an accelerated pace, it is pure roman-
ticism to expect any solution of isolated
issues, whether they relate to Korea or
Austria. A negotiation on Germany,
however, would be a different matter,
since Germany is the real key to the
European deadlock.
161
WHAT IKE WILL NEED ~ =
... the authority of Washington ... the humanity of Lincoln
... the wisdom of Wilson ... the resourcefulness of F. D. R.
162 7 ‘The NATION ©
-KINGLESS JUNGLE
New York’s Water Front
THE New York State Crime Commis-
sion, in the most penetrating of a long
series of expert inquiries, has opened
up the Port of New York like a patient
on the operating table. As the commis-
sion examines the port’s shocking crim-
inal record, another investigation, this
time under federal auspices, is getting
under way. But already two aspects of
the fantastic picture are clear:
1. By common consent of its inhabi-
tants New York’s vast and fabulously
wealthy water front is a veritable jungle
in which there are no rules except those
of the killer and the jackal. The thug
in control, to a lesser degree the long-
shoreman himself, the company which
employs him, the agents of the law who
should be policing the longshore miles -
—every element in this complex and
baffling community has abdicated its
responsibility.
2. Partly because New York is the
most crime-ridden port in the world, it
is also the most expensive in which to
operate. But very little of the excessive
fees charged for Cargo-handling goes
into the pockets of the ordinary dock-
worker, whose annual income—despite
a fairly high hourly wage rate—remains
below that of many wage-earners in
comparable labor fields.
The testimony taken by the Crime
Commission consisted mostly of an
incredible series of confessions. Every-
one connected with water-front opera-
tions appeared to be cheating, scheming,
stealing, coercing, paying tribute or
taking it. The swindling varied from
the extortion of weekly pay envelopes
for non-existent workers to blackmail
practices carried out in the name of
anti-communism. Witness after witness
from the ranks of stevedoring and
shipping companies admitted that im the
naming of their own hiring bosses and
loaders they followed the orders of
GEORGE HORNE 15 transportation
editor of the New York Times.
water-front overlords whose identities
they did not even know. Sometimes the
longshoremen’s union, the International
Longshoremen’s Association (A. F. of
L.), in violation of the union-employer
contract, insisted on naming the hiring
bosses. Thugs demanded regular pay-
ments from shipping firms in return for
labor peace and fulfilment of the union
contract. Pilferage of cargo by individ-
uals and small gangs was revealed as
common practice, although the sums
involved certainly never reached any-
where near the $50,000,000 a year
estimated by some experts.
A high point in the record was the
testimony concerning the arrival of a
shipload of valuable Russian furs. Long-
shore leaders, in an outburst of anti-
Communist zeal, ordered the workers
not to unload the shipment. The long-
shoremen complied, but meanwhile a
handful of local leaders arranged a
$70,000 pay-off with the importers,
and the furs were unloaded in darkness.
In this maze of evidence the mem-
bers of the Crime Commission sought to
read a single pattern or to uncover a
master-mind.° They failed. There is ap-
parently no king in this jungle, only
jackals and hyenas who are as quick to
turn upon each other as upon anyone
else. Even “Mr. Big’”—Wailliam J. Mc-
Cormack, wealthy stevedore and indus-
trialist and probably the best-known
name on the water front—failed to fill
the bill, at least so far as the evidence
given at the hearings shows. Much of
Mr. McCormack’s testimony related to
a charge that as a former state licensing
official he had squeezed $90,000
from the late Tex Rickard. This he
enthusiastically denied. As to his water-
front activities, which are the subject
of more shop talk among longshoremen
than those of any other individual, little
was brought out at the hearings which
impugned him as anything other than a
somewhat careless writer. It seems that
in August, 1951, Mr. McCormack wrote
by George Horne
a report in which he described every-
thing along New York’s dockside as
perfectly lovely, and that a few months
later he wrote another report—this one
for Mayor Impellitterimin which he said
that chaos was about to descend on the
port. Most water-front observers who
see Mr. McCormack regularly at the
Whitehall Club, and who hear his name
cropping up in longshore talk, agree
that this charge of literary inconsistency
cannot hurt his reputation very much.
After all, he is not known primarily
as a literary figure.
The Crime Commission succeeded in
amassing an impressive amount of evi-
dence, but in certain directions its
inquiries seemed hesitant. It did not,
for instance, look diligently into the role
that politics plays on the water front,
despite several inviting hints that were
dropped in the course of the testimony.
Nor did it pay more than cursory atten-
tion to the surprising number of water-
front thieves who received suspended
sentences, including many who pleaded
guilty.
There are About 40,000 longshoremen
in the port of New York, more than
the combined total employed in the
other eight or nine major ports of the
country. For two reasons the New York
dockworker ordinarily earn
enough to support himself and his
family decently. First, and most impor-
tant, there are just too many of him for
the jobs available. Second, under the
anarchic conditions which prevail, much
of his earnings must be given up in the
form of kick-backs, pay-offs, and other
types of squeeze. But it must be empha-
cannot
sized that the role played by crime in
the New York dockworker’s admittedly
unhappy lot has been exaggerated as a
result of the publicity given the many
crime hearings. At least as important as
crime is the role played by the law of
supply and demand.
In 1951, the last year for which com-
plete and reliable figures are available—
°
a
it was a good year for foreign commerce
and hence for job availability—14,774
longshoremen, or 35.3 per cent of the
men on the roster of the New York
Shipping Association, employer
agency, 1,200 hours or more
during the year. Fewer than 4,000 men,
the
worked
about 9 per cent of the total,.worked
from 700 to 1,199 hours; 23,000 men,
more than half the total, worked 699
hours or less. Of those in the last cate-
gory, 14,982 worked fewer than 100
hours in the entire year.
By comparison, the steadily employed
40-hour-a-week worker puts in more
than 2,000 hours in the course of a
year. The fact is that in the longshore-
men’s trade there are too many casual
workers who pick up an occasional day’s
pay, often at overtime rates. These ir-
regulars lower the earning ability of the
men who depend on the docks for their
living.
Now let us look at earnings. The
dockworker today gets $2.27 an hour,
with time and a half for overtime after
eight hours and for Saturdays, Sundays,
and holidays. For certain types of cargo
such as damaged shipments and _explo-
sives, he can earn upward of $4.44 an
hour straight pay. His wage rate has
risen comparably with that in other
trades; in 1914 he was earning only 33
cents an hour, while in 1940 he was
earning $1.05.
About a dozen years ago, according
to studies made at the time, the dock-
worker's average yearly income was
$900. Today it is probably around
$2,500. The 1951
statistics show that
9 per cent of New
York’s 40,000 long-
shoremen earned
$5,000 or more that
year, while 49.8 per
cent earned less than
$1,000.
we find that 8.5 per
earned from
to $2,000,
7.8 per cent from”
$2,000 to $3,000,
11.1 pert cent from
‘3 $3,000 to $4,000,
and 13.8 per cent
from $4,000 to
$5,000.
Nl The men are hited
under the antiquated
system called the shape-up. Each day
job applicants gather in a semicircle
at the pier head while the hiring fore-
man beckons to individuals or, looking
up into the sky, calls out, ““Joe’s gang!
Ray's gang! Red’s gang!’ While this
system has rightfully been attacked as
subject to many kinds of criminal abuse,
cent
$1,000
most observers agree that its elimination
would be no cure-all for the evils that
plague the water front. Were the Inter-
national Longshoremen’s Association a
really democratic labor organization, it
would long ago have devised a fairer
and more modern method of hiring.
And most objective observers agree that
so long as the I. L. A. remains the kind
of organization it is, any other hiring
method—including the much-discussed
hiring hall—would prove just as sus-
ceptible of abuse.
Actually there are favorable aspects
to the shape-up: for one thing, it en-
courages work gangs to stay at the same
piers the year around. For steamship
and stevedoring concerns, this means
that men skilled in specialized types
of cargo-handling are always available.
It is generally agreed that a real hiring
hall which distributed employment
under.a rotating system would consider-
ably increase cargo-handling costs. The
Port of New York Authority has sug- *
gested as a compromise plan a kind of
state-run employment service which
would operate regional centers through-
out the city. The plan is now under
discussion by the Crime Commission.
Much of the evil of the shape-up, as ~
In between .
that the union leadership will not per- ao
mit the employing company to appoint
the man who selects the work gangs,
extra gangs, and individual extras.
Somehow the unionsmanages to elude
its responsibilities both to the employer
and to its own membership. It repre-
sents only its own bureaucracy, and as
a result the well-being of the rank and
file suffers.
The employers must carry their share
of blame for the anarchic conditions.
They welcomed the over-supply of labor +
which tended to keep labor costs down.
They shut their eyes to crime in which
they did not themselves participate.
Some employers deliberately hired thugs
in the belief that only tough leadership
could keep the men in line. Experience
has tended to substantiate their belief;
notorious criminals are running piers
which—let’s face it—have built up ex-
cellent records for efficient cargo-
handling. In general, shipping is a
highly competitive business, and it is
difficult for the people in it to work
together, even to clean house for their
own benefit.
Some years ago Mayor O'Dwyer
named a port committee to study various
phases of the city’s water front. Its find-
ings have been gathering dust in the
City Hall for a year. Subcommittees
named to study cost factors’ came up
with some plain talk. The New York
dockworker is a sfurdy fellow with an
excellent production record in war time
as well as in peace; the port itself
offers unequaled services to the shipper.
Yet the port is more expensive for a
shipper to use than any other in the
country, primarily because of the rack-
eteers who infest it.
Let's take the institution known as
the public loader, forbidden in every
major port except New York. A thug
browbeats an operator into appointing
him public loader for a terminal. A
thousand tons of steel comes into the
terminal. The loader hires a longshore- _
man at $2.27 an hour to load the steel :
on trucks. As often as not, the lift
equipment owned by the steamship
company is used. The steel is loaded in
a few hours, and the public loader, who
sometimes appears only after the job
is finished, collects a fee of five cents
or more per hundred-weight of cargo.
The thousand tons of steel thus yields”
The NATION ~
ie ¢
few dollars he pays out to his long-
shoreman. Sometimes he gets his fee
even when the truck driver has done
his own loading. The public loader is
one of the most desirable jobs on the
‘water front, and men have killed for a
“share of the spoils.
During the current port inquiry a
firm of civil engineers surveyed port
traffic and reported that while New
York’s export-import volume was mere-
ly being maintained, the volume at other
American ports was increasing steadily.
Port officials have plenty of evidence
that shippers, whenever they can, divert
loader: about $1,000, minus the
to other ports to avoid the costs of
public loaders, feather-bedding, pay-roll
padding, and other rackets, as well as
to save money on legitimate costs (it
is generally agreed, for instance, that
the city’s pier rentals are far too high).
New York has such superb advan-
tages as a port that it has been difficult
for the shipping industry to realize that
its supremacy might one day be chal-
lenged. But that day will come unless
reform comes sooner. Two ‘possible
solutions have been most frequently
discussed. One is reform from within—
a big wind blowing through the I. L.
A.; the parent A. F. of L., at its recent
meeting in Miami, announced that the
cyclone is on its way. But Senator Tobey,
who will head the imminent federal
investigation of crime on the water
front, has already characterized the A.
F. of L. action as a ‘‘deathbed repent-
ance.”
The alternative solution is state con-
trol of the docksides, perhaps through
a harbor commission with broad admin-
istrative powers. Such a solution would
be opposed all the way down the line
and probably by the employers. Never-
theless, many persons believe that this
is the solution that the State Crime
Commission will eventually recommend.
NEW FARM PROGRAM
Tr’s Good for Bankers .. . by Bruce Catton
Washington
MAYBE this is where we came in
’ thirty-odd years ago, or maybe it is just
that one Republican-big-business Ad-
m/nistration is very much like another.
At any rate, the Eisenhower regime has
come up with a phalanx of leaders and
| counselors who will bend every effort
to save the farmer from himself. Since
the farmer is not without friends in
Congress, the wind may shift before the
year is out, The farm program taking
shape will be a lot nicer for the proc-
essors, the bankers, and the distributors
than for the farmers.
. To begin with, the program will be
‘run by men who do not particularly
‘believe in price supports. Secretary of
_ . Agriculture Benson avowedly believes
that men get along best when they feel
‘the spur of insecurity, which seems to
mean that -the farmer should never be
‘quite certain that he won’t go broke and
lose his farm by fall. Benson has
gathered about him men who feel the
same way. The farm-committee system
is likely to go, and with it the payments
of a quarter-billion dollars a year for
|| BRUCE CATTON is writing a series
| of articles on the new Washington
| Adniinistration.
oo February 21, 1953
el
proper soil-conservation practices. A
harder dollar and a tightening of farm
credit are in prospect. .
This could be very serious. Farm
prices and incomes have been going
down for quite a time; as good a Repub-
lican as Senator Thye of Minnesota has
said that 1951 and 1952 were the farm-
er’s most difficult years since 1939. Net
income for 1953 will be off still more.
The industrial boom hurts the farmer as
much as it helps him. He has to com-
pete with the giant industries for many
of his basic supplies, and he goes on a
cash basis into a matket where prices
are pretty well rigged. In one year
farmers use as much rubber and steel
as the automobile industry uses in all
its passenger cars. The defense economy
is creating relative scarcities in every-
thing he buys and putting no floor
under his income.
As a result, it takes a fair amount of
capital to be a farmer these days—at
least $50,000. the National Farmers’
Union estimates. And since the average
farmer needs a considerable period to
Jay that much capital aside from his
yearly profits, the matter of farm credit
is vital. A heavy purchaser of necessities
ranging from tractors to insecticides and
obliged to pay cash, the farmer could be
ruined by a comparatively mild drop in
farm prices if reasonable credit were not
available to him.
In the present Department of Agri-
culture the various farm-credit agencies
are under the direction of Romeo Short,
who came to the department from the
vice-presidency of the American Farm
Bureau Federation. The Farm Bureau is
generally given the credit—or blame—
for killing the Farm Security Adminis-
tration. It has opposed the Farmers’
Home Administration, which makes
loans to farmers unable to get credit
from the banks, has sought to have the
Farm Credit Administration made inde-
pendent of the Department of Agri-
culture, and has consistently dragged its
feet on the rural-electrification program.
Thus there is little likelihood that the
department will make much credit avail-
able to the farmers who need it most.
Equally significant is the development
in the department's Commodity Market-
ing and Adjustment Division. In this
division are the farm_ price-support
agencies, including the Commodity
Credit Corporation and the Federal Crop
Insurance Corporation. The boss man
here is John H. Davis of the National
Wool Marketing Corporation of Boston.
Davis has remarked that the existing
165
”
es oe
a
a
eee
ee ee ee oe ey
Rr ae
— 2 ee
price-stipport program “‘lacks realism”
and that much porcenmcnt buying of
farm commodities “could be handled
more efficiently through commercial
market channels.”
In recent years price-support opera-
tions have been closely linked with ‘the
Production and Marketing Administra-
tion, which headed up the extensive
farmer-committee system. This system
was one of the most interesting parts of
the whole farm program. It was the
mechanism, controlled almost wholly by
the farmers themselves, through which,
when necessary, the production-quota
system was extended to individual farms
and through which also farmers were
induced to practice soil conservation.
The soil-conservation program has been
immensely important not only for its
long-term benefits but because it has
added approximately a quarter of a
billion dollars annually to farm income.
The payments made under it have gone
chiefly to small farmers. They have been
denounced by both Secretary Benson and
the Farm Bureau, on the ground that
they pay the farmer to do what he
ought to do anyway. (It is a question
whether the average farmer can afford
to do it without help, but perhaps that
isn’t germane.) The committee system
has always been anathema to the Farm
Bureau, which wants to see its functions
transferred to the Extension Service.
This, in effect, would be to transfer
them to the bureau itself. It will prob-
ably be done.
The Agricultural Advisory Committee
as Benson has set it up is strangely lack-
ing in dirt farmers and heavily weighted
with processors. Jesse Tapp, vice-presi-
dent of the Bank of America, is gener-
ally considered its most liberal member.
Dean W. I. Myers of Cornell, a director
in various large corporations, ts one of
166
2
the mar ‘conserv
‘where farm matters are feeae
Among other” members are Homer
Davidson, vice-president of the Amer-
ican Meat Institute; Robert R. Coker,
South Carolina seed dealer, banker, and
corporation director; Carl Farrington,
vice-president of the Archer-Daniels-
Midland Company of Minneapolis; D
W. Brooks, general manager of the
Cotton Producers’ Association of Atlanta
anda member of the Textile Industry -
Advisory Council; and Albert Mitchell,
prosperous New Mexico rancher and
Republican national committeeman.
Finally, it may be worth while to
recall that in May, 1951, when the
meat industry was particularly irked
by price controls, representatives of
the American Meat Institute, the Farm
Bureau, the Grange, and other interested
parties met in Washington and came out
with something called the Common
Sense Meat Program, the principal aim
of which was to kill price controls on
meat. A committee which undertook to
push this program had as chairman one
True D. Morse, an executive of Doane’s
Agricultural. Service in St. Louis, who
had been preaching sound money, a
balanced budget, and no inflation. Mr.
Morse is now the Under Secretary of the
Department of Argiculture. Morse’s
name also appeared on the letterhead
of the Foundation for American Agri-
culture, along with that of Romeo Short.
R. Douglas Stuart of Quaker Oats was
chairman of the foundation and Charles
Dana Bennett was its director. It existed
chiefly to promote more intimate rela-
tions between: big -business and the
farmer and had an anti-union tinge.
Looking at the people appointed and
the things said and done in the present
Administration’s Department of Agri-
culture, it is not too hard to see what
is going on. Control over the nation’s
farm policies and programs is being
taken from the farmers and given to the
traditional enemies of effective farm pro-
grams. Secretary Benson himself is the
perfect illustration. When he first took
office he bluntly informed his coworkers
in the department that all lazy loafers
would now be required to do an honest
day’s work fot a change. And in his
first press release he made the erroneous
statement that the department was the
“largest of all the nation’s agencies,” a
swollen bureaucracy. The significance of
- meet it. But can they co
“found the plans of those wh
‘only he a man who Q
the old farm programs.
Farm programs hereafter may
grain speculators, cotton traders,
men of high and low degre
farmer himself is in danger of
all he has won in the last twent
gon te Pi
FOR four years now we Americ
been hard at work rearming, I
time, therefore, to ask a few
Do we feel more secure f
Have we created a deep ani
friendship for us among other pe
Have we achieved more thro
tiation and mediation ' tha
formerly? Are our moti
trusted? Are our ow
oe I do’ on
quota, our fechuball-ascituincd
our food-sharing. Perhaps even
portant is the new recognition that
standing qualitie
ment abroad.
Americans fill
much of the peace c
or won by the kind.
No great and stron;
made these interests prir
rity program. It is true t
understand strength and
our central purpose is t
all? The only real aid we
friendship and confide
qualities of international
require bombs and tanks 2 ds
make them accepted. Youtl
and many generous taxpayers
eager than we realize to thre
selves into a creative progra m
my belief that nothing woul
do us harm.
CLARENCE E, PICKETT @
secretary of the American
ice Committee and cowinn
1947 Nobel peace prize. —
ry be je Pre
f z be ; ty ie a
aes pete ath " Vp "ys “oh a
oOo e ; ae
ee J f
1 eee
7
AFRICA _
~ Who Provoked the Riots? by Harry S Warner
Capetown, South Africa
_ - WITH the aim of breaking all resist-
—-
/
ance—native, colored, or white—to
apartheid (segregation) as the dominant
factor in South African life, Justice
Minister C. R. Swart has introduced a
bill which would give the Malan gov-
ernment the right to suspend virtually
all law in cases of loosely defined
“emergencies.”” The government is also
seeking passage of the so-called “whip-
ping-post’” law, which provides fines,
jail terms, and the lash for any incite-
ment to violation of any law, particularly
one relating to apartheid. Both govern-
ment proposals are termed ‘'Malanazi”’
by the opposition; surely Hitler never
wrested from the Reichstag powers more
dictatorial or more destructive of de-
mocracy than these.
Everyone knows what Malan and his
Nationalists mean when they speak of
“emergencies.” In the spring of last
year the non-whites of South Africa, with
the support and sympathy of democratic-
minded whites, launched a campaign of
passive resistance to the apartheid laws.
For six months the movement spread
peacefuMy; even ‘witnesses for the
Crown—including members of the
special political branch of the Criminal
Investigation Department—have since
testified that the campaign was disci-
plined, non-violent, and directed not
against whites but against “unjust laws.”’
Then suddenly, between October 18
and November 9 last year, violent
, Clashes with the police-took place in
February 21, 1953
four widely separated locatities—New
Brighton in Port Elizabeth, the Denver
Hostel in Johannesburg, the No. 2 Lo-
cation in Kimberley, and East London.
More than forty persons were killed, all
but five of them non-whites killed by the
police. Several hundred other non-whites
were wounded. The exact number is im-
HARRY S. WARNER is the pseu-
donym of a South African who has been
in close contact with the rapidly devel-
oping race problem there.
possible to establish, for in each instance
the police, after restoring ‘‘order,” made
the rounds of the hospitals and arrested
all persons they had shot, on the theory,
apparently, that a bullet wound was
proof that the victim had been rioting.
These are the “emergencies” in the
minds of the supporters of the “Mala-
=_>
Alvin Katz
C. R. Swart
nazi’’ bills. Mr. Swart and his colleagues
argue that the riots were “anti-white’’
demonstrations to be blamed on the
leaders of the resistance campaign and
on the English-language press which
supported it. He and other ministers
have also said that the riots were
tensions’ of the Mau Mau movement in
Kenya. They have given other, and still
more contradictory, explanations. But
slowly the real facts are coming to light,
mainly as the result of investigations by
lawyers engaged in defending persons
arrested on charges arising out of the
riots. And from these facts only one
conclusion can be. drawn—that the ulti-
mate responsibility for the riots lies with
the police and the deliberately provoca-
tive behavior of their chief, Minister
Swart.
Let ‘us deal first with Mr. Swart. On
oye
November 2—after the incident at Port
Elizabeth, but before the others—the
Justice Minister made public this state-
ment:
The police have instructions to take
drastic action where there is a threat of
a clash between Europeans and non-
Europeans. They will strike when neces-
sary and they will shoot when neces-
sary. So called innocent bystanders should
get out of the way when there are signs
of trouble. If they are so innocent, what
are they doing at trouble spots? The police
have instructions to act and to act swiftly
and they have my support. The organizers
of the defiance campaign should heed this
warning. “
Note that this order requires the police
to shoot, not in defense of their own
or another person’s life—the only
time a policeman or anyone else is legally
permitted to shoot—but when there is
threat of a clash between Europeans and
non-Europeans. Not even a clash, simply
the threat of one. What amounts to such
a threat is a question for the police officer
to decide, and his decision will of course
depend on how frightened or how trig-
ger happy he happens to feel. If he
thinks angry looks amount to a threat he
is entitled to shoot.
On November 15, 1952, at a National-
ist Party meeting in the Free State, Mr.
Swart said again:
I have instructed police officers not to
wait until their men are killed or wounded
in riots before they fire. They have been
told to shoot first. The government will
deal with the unruly elements with all the
force at its disposal.
This conception of a shoot-first-and-talk-
afterward police force is in line with
Mr. Swart’s way of thinking. On an
earlier occasion he had said: ‘‘Only the
police can save South Africa from
chaos.’” After these reiterated instruc-
tions is it any wonder that the police
soon found occasions to shoot? Is it any
wonder that if no occasions arose they
began to manufacture them?
In East London the trouble started
when the police arrived to break up an
167
open-air prayer meeting. Although there
was a ban on meetings in the location,
special permission had been granted by
the Chief Magistrate to hold this one.
While the preacher was reading from the
Bible to a crowd of about two hundred,
two lorries full of armed police drove
up. The preacher was reading about the
oppression of the Israelites. The officer
in charge decided that he could not per-
mit such subversive theology, and or-
dered the crowd to disperse within five
minutes. The meeting immediately broke
up. In less than two minutes, while
people were walking away, he ordered
a baton charge by the African constables
and then a bayonet charge by the Eu-
ropean constables. Shots were fired, and
a man was killed. Almost everyone in-
jured, whether by batons, bayonets, or
bullets, had been attacked from behind.
The police then climbed into their lorries
and drove up and down the main streets
of the location firing at anybody they
saw and even into houses. One man was
killed while sitting in his kitchen read-
ing a newspaper. One man was killed
and two wounded while having a
beer party inside a house. Dozens were
injured. A woman belonging to one of
the religious sects, wearing a red robe
and carrying a cross, came round a cor-
ner unaware that there was trouble. A
policeman jumped off the lorry and ran
a bayonet into her leg. Nobody attacked
the police in any way—it would have
been suicide to do so.
Mr. Gwentshe, the chairman of the
African National Congress in East Lon-
don, went to the police station and
obtained permission to drive through the
location in a car with a loud-speaker to
calm the people. He returned to his
house and was fitting the loud-speaker
— TR ALS are oe
to his car when he saw that the police
had followed him. One took aim at him
with a rifle;y the bullet killed a man
standing next to him,
Then the police again drove through
the location, firing into the houses. This
started the rioting, first stone throwing
and later burning of buildings. It is
believed that at this stage the Europeans
were killed. The police did not stay to
put down the riot they had stirred up.
They could see that the municipal offices,
a welfare center, and a church were
burning, but they did nothing about it.
By then it was evening. That night they
stayed at the police station, which is on
the edge of the location, and with guns
propped on the window-sills fired into
the streets.
At the Denver Hostel the police
sniped at Africans standing on the
balconies. when there was no threat of
disturbances. Earlier there had been
some trouble; stones had been thrown,
and windows broken but nobody had
been injured. Feelings were high in
the hostel on that day because the mu-
nicipality had raised the rents by 80 per
cent and the tenants had decided not
to pay the increase until they had made
representations to the Native Affairs De-
partment. One man did not abide by the
decision and went to pay the sum de-
manded. A crowd tried to mob him,
and he ran for safety into the superin-
tendent’s office. Then a crowd of tenants,
joined by some poeple from a nearby
beer hall, threw stones and broke win-
dows outside the hostel.
When the police arrived, most of the
people who lived “in the hostel were
standing on balconies around a quad-
rangle, watching the excitement. For
half an hour nothing happened. Then
TO A SNAIL
Your sensitive exposed flesh as you pass
Might well disarm those deputies of doom
Who with tensed claw and beak agape
Spread menace from the air or through the grass.
But as a window hardens into glass
And so destroys the mullion whose design
Was its own tegument, you raise a shape
Of brittlest fiber upon fluid line,
Making your progress, like our human, crass
And death expected in that living room,
FRANCIS GOLFFING
-
-someone must have
TN OS re ae
Swart’s orders, and suddenly there was a
burst of firing. A man on the first bal-
cony was killed, one on the second bal-
cony injured. People disappeared into
the rooms behind. The firing stopped,
and the people thought that it was safe
to come out.- As they did so the police
began picking them off. Again they dis-
appeared and waited until they shought
it safe to come out to attend to the dead
and wounded. Again the police fired at
~ them. All those killed were shot through
the head.
To round off the day, the police ar-
rested the three wounded men and the
three leading figures on the Tenants’
Committee, two of whom were not even
at the hostel that afternoon. All are
being held on the charge of public
violence.
At Kimberley there had been dissatis-
faction about the management of the
municipal beer hall, and a boycott had
been organized. An argument took place
with some Africans who wanted to enter
the beer hall. A policeman hit a woman
on the head with his handcuffs. This
infuriated the bystanders and they began
throwing stones; then they overturned
and burned a municipal lorry parked
nearby.
Arrival of a bus-load of police armed
with rifles and sten guns put an
end to the disturbance, but the police
fired point blank into the crowd of
Africans gathered around the beer hall.
Then, as in East London, they drove
through the streets of the location firing
at anyone they saw and into the houses.
Among those killed was a women carry-
ing a six-months-old baby on her back.
Having stirred up the entire location,
the police returned to the station, while
furious mobs set fire to the location
offices, the beer hall, and other buildings _
that bore evidence te the white man’s”
administration.
At Port Elizabeth a railway policeman
tried to arrest an African for failing to
pay an extra charge for a tin of paint he .
was carrying with him on the train. An
argument started, and a friend of the
man came to his assistance. There was a
scuffle, and the railway policeman pulled
out his revolver and shot and killed the
friend. This was witnessed by a crowd,
mainly women, on the railway platform.
People ran screaming into the location
and spread the story. After a while
The NATION
remembered Mr.
a
of them ‘throwing stones. Police rein-
- forcements arrived, and again they fired
point blank into the crowd. Again they
drove through the location firing into
the houses. When they left, a furious
mob ran through the docation. They
burned down the cinema and killed the
__ owner and his son, they burned the post
office and other buildings, and they
killed a European bringing his work-
ers home on a lorry.
There is one thing the police have
learned from these events—how to stir
up a riot. In all the locations and town-
. Ships there is a feeling of dumb frustra-
tion and subdued anger which requires -
- only a spark to set it off. In addition,
there is a criminal element known as
‘Tsotsis. These are mainly young gang-
sters who have been driven to crime
MARGARET SANGER
Back from India a
MARGARET SANGER returned « re-
cently from’ a “birth control” trip that
circled the globe. She crossed the Pacific
by boat to Japan, flew to India, with
stops at Hongkong, Bangkok, Singapore,
and Ceylon; then from Tndia she flew
to Paris, and returned to America by
beat, a trip that would have been strenu-
ous for a woman half her age. She made
dozens of speeches, shook thousands of
giateful hands, visited many clinics, ap-
peared at functions large and small in
her honor, spoke at the Third Inter-
national Planned Parenthood Conference
at Bombay, and attended its nine days
of sessions.
I talked with her in ae York on
her way back to her Arizona: home,
where I imagined she would rest after
her breathless two months’ trip. But rest
was farthest from the mind of this
vigorous little woman whose eriginal .
MILDRED GILMAN has been an
educational consultant to the Planned
_ Parenthood Federation for many years.
es February 21, 1953
Biosls: :
PA Re ea ia”
by i 1 co nditions,. poverty, and, nist
of a all, the regulations concerning passes,
which make it difficult for them to ob-
tain work. They prey on their own
people and often rob and assault the
Europeans. When there are shootings
and the people’s anger is aroused, the
conditions for these thugs to take control
are created. Tsotsis then lead the violent
outbursts of burning and killing. One
would think that if the government
genuinely wished to stop riots it would
permit responsible African leaders like
‘Mr. Gwentshe to exercise leadership
in their communities. But that is not the
policy of the government. Throughout
the eastern province all the well-known
leaders have been prohibited from at-
tending “‘any gatherings.” It is not clear
whether this means that they are pro-
hibited from standing in bus queues or
attending cinemas, but it is certain that
mission forty years ago, to bring
relief to New York City slum mothers
by birth control, has grown to encompass
the whole world.
“I must get busy immediately organ-
izing North America, including all of
Canada, for the second meeting of the
new International Planned Parenthood
Federation, which will be held in Stock-
holm, Sweden, next August,” she said
to me briskly, with no thought of an
interim for rest. “Japan wants the 1954
meeting. I was elected honorary ‘presi-
dent of the federation for North
America at the Bombay conference. Lady
Rama Rau is honorary president for the
East.” India, Japan, Sweden seemed no
farther away to her than the Bronx
must have seemed back in 1916 when
she was fighting to establish permanent
birth-control centers in Manhattan.
She told me of her pleasure at the
warm reception she had received in
Japan this time in contrast to the cold
shoulder the militarists turned toward
her in 1922 and the refusal of the
-
they may not address public meetings,
One of them has said: ‘The government
is putting the Tsotsis in the leadership
of the African people.”
There are other signs that the govern-
ment does not wish a responsible leader-
ship to develop. In the western native
areas of Johannesburg, where a gang of
hooligans has dispossessed two hundred
law-abiding families and forced them to
live in an open square, no action what-
ever has been taken by the police. It is
the government's policy to create as much
unrest as possible and then to shoot
down all who are involved. There is no
other explanation for the events I have
described. The passive-resistance cam-
paign, peaceful, disciplined, and non-
racial, was something it could not handle
by ordinary means. So it decided to con-
vert it from a passive into a violent
campaign.
by Mildred Gilman
American occupation forces to admit her
in 1950, despite the expressed wishes of
the people. ‘‘This time there were actu-
ally loud-speaker trucks telling about the
coming of Margaret Sanger to Japan.
People flocked out of their shops and
doorways. Children in school yards ran
into the streets to learn what was going
on. The trucks shouted, ‘Sanger is here!
She says no abortions. Sanger is here!
She says no obortions’.”’
India, like Japan, was an old story
for Mrs. Sanger, who had attended the
All India Women’s Conference there
sixteen years ago. At that time she
helped to obtain adoption of a resolu-
tion demanding that contraceptive in-
formation and supplies be distributed by
municipalities to their health depart-
ments, particularly to all midwives and
visiting workers. This progressive step
was taken despite the opposition of
Gandhi. Mrs.
earlier visit did much to lay the ground-
work for India’s acceptance of the recent
conference, at which about five hundred
169
Sanger feels that her —
delegates from fourteen nations estab-
lished the first world-wide planned-
parenthood organization:
The Hindu religion has no injunctions
against birth control, and the present
limited opposition comes from a dwin-
dling group of Gandhi's followers and a
small number of Roman Catholics. “On
my earlier visit,’ Mrs. Sanger said, “I
found Gandhi most hospitable and
friendly. We took long walks and had
extended discussions in which I put
forth my best arguments. We both
agreed that families should be limited;
he felt three or four children to a family
were enough, but he insisted that inter-
course, therefore; should be restricted
to three or four occasions during the
entire married life of the couple. He
felt that women who wanted to control
the size of their families should ‘resist’
their husbands, in extreme cases leave
them. Needless to say his suggested
‘methods’ have had no success.”’
The spirit of Mahatma Gandhi lives
on in modified form in the present
Health Minister, who was one of his
secretaries, and in an elderly woman
named Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, who was
a devout disciple. The latter is a highly
respected person who has done much
good for India, but it is due to her in-
fluence that the four government-
sponsored child-spacing clinics set up as
experiments in India by Dr. Abraham
Stone under the auspices of the World
Health Organization have so far used
only the “rhythm” method.
Mrs. Sanger found the younger doc-
tors and public-health nurses eager to
learn safer, better methods of birth con-
trol. More. than half of the delegates
from India to the Bombay conference
were under thirty-five. Many were too
poor to afford even the most modest
hotels. Some had walked long distances
to Bombay, lacking the money for rail-
road fare. Many reported that a few
hundred rupees had been scraped to-
gether in their home villages to get the
help of a doctor and set up a modest
clinic. The conference hall “was
jammed to the ceiling,’ the greatest
interest being shown by the men.
“India’s women,” Mrs. Sanger con- *
tinued, “under the leadership of the
wonderful Madam Pandit, Lady Rama
Rau, and others, have taken great strides
toward independence, but it is still a
Jand in which girls marry as children,
170
Margaret Sanger
passing at puberty from their father’s
domination to that of their husband.
Laws for relieving the sad condition of
India’s widows, who may not remarry,
and for allowing daughters as well as
sons to inherit from their fathers are
being pushed in the legislature, but
there is strong opposition. Nevertheless,
many changes are taking place. More
young people are marrying for love ‘in-
stead of by parental decree. For the
first time, in both Japan and India, I saw
wives walking beside their husbands, ‘no
longer respectfully a few feet behind
them. Some of the younger men even
carried the babies on their backs.”
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, vice-president
of India, scholar, revered spiritual
leader, and president of UNESCO, em-
bodies perhaps more than any other
person the spirit of the new India. In
his opening address to the conference he
dismissed as spurious the argument that
birth control interferes with nature or,
is contrary to the will of God. “God is
not an external despot or a sultan in
disguise,” he said. “What is caviliza-
tion? Is it not progressive control of
nature? To combat disease, pesiiience,
prolong the span of life—all these mean
a fight against the drift of mature.
Abstinence [counseled by Gandhi} is
in essence a defiance of the edict of
nature. . . . Intelligence is a divine gift,
and it is up to us to use it in furtherance
of social happiness and individual de-
velopment.”
According to Mrs. Sanger, “the
widely held idea that illiterate villagers
are uninterested in birth control and will
a 7 -
Ue Eda bh)
a Pe |
aka sa
es ie he a i
not take the trouble to practice it wae i
one of the myths dissipated at the con-
ference. Preliminary investigations of
the attitudes of both urban and rural
families toward limiting the family
showed 75 per cent ready to accept it
without any prior education or propa-
ganda. Our oWn coworker, Mary Lang-
ford, who was in charge of one of the
demonstration clinics, said that two men
walked eighty miles to the clinic to learn
~ a safe method of planning families.”
One side activity of the conference
which received almost no publicity be-
cause the problem is not associated-
with the Indians was the instruction
asked for and given in the correction of
“Infertility,” said Mrs.
Sanger, “is more of a tragedy to Hindus
than to peoples whose religion dpes not
glorify fertility. The family-planning
movement is as interested in helping in-
fertile mothers to have babies as it is in
relieving the over-fecunds’
The most important thing is that
India, with a population of more than
360,000,000 people which is increasing
by approximately 5,000,000 a year, |
recognizes the need to limit its numbers,
for its own well-being and for the peace
of the world. As in Japan, the govern-
ment has sponsored steps to meet this
need. The Indian consulate general in
New York City reports that there are
200 birth-control clinics in 28 cities of
21 states of India, 15 of them being in
the municipality of.Bombay. And in his
report to Parliament on the country’s
first five-year plan, presented last De-
cember, Prime Minister Nehru included
a request for $1,300,000 for family-
planning clinics throughout the country.
This request has since been approved.
Results will be obtained more siowly in
India than in Japan, Mrs. Sanger be-
lieves, owing to India’s staggering illite
eracy rate—about 90 per cent—and its
many different languages and dialects.
In summing up Mrs. Sanger said, “I
spoke to large, eager audiences in India
as I did in Japan. I talked with individ-
uals. I am convinced as never before
that the problem is no longer one of
acceptance; it is of developing one of
the new contraceptives to the degree
where it can be used easily by people in
infertility.
- the most remote provinces, living in the
most, primitive conditions, but still eager
to achieve the human dignity of plan-
ning their families.”
The NATION
ae Fe
Beauvoir. Translated and Edited by
H. M. Parshley. Alfred A. Knopf.
$10. |
SECOND SEX” is in many
ways a superb book, brilliantly
written with a broad scope and keen
psychological insight. However, because
of certain political leanings Mme de
Beauvoir has to be read with critical
caution. s
The author is, or was, a close asso-
ciate of Jean-Paul Sartre, and her book
abounds in existentialist language. ‘““The
Second Sex,” originally published in
France in two successive volumes, dis-
cusses the problem of women from
various angles. Book One (Fact and
Mytlis) includes a critical review of
woman’s problems seen from the per-
spectives of biology, psychology, history,
historical materialism, literature, myth,
mysticism, and so on. Among the topics
discussed in Book Two (Woman’s Life
Today) are Childhood, The Young
Girl, Sexual Initiation, The Lesbian,
The Married Woman, The Mother, So-
cial Life, Prostitutes and Hetairas, From
Maturity to Old Age, Woman's Situation
and ” Character, The Narcissist, The
Womart in Love, The Mystic, The Inde-
pendent Woman.
Woman, says Mme de Beauvoir, is.
not regarded as an autonomous being.
She is “defined” by man not “in her-
self” but in relation to him. She belongs
to the category of the “Other.” “In the
most primitive societies, in the most
ancient mythologies, one finds the ex-
PATRICK MULLAHY teaches philos-
ophy at the City College of New York.
~ He also gives courses on psychoanalytic
theory at New York University and the
New School for Social Research. He is
the author of “Oedipus: Myth and
Complex,” editor of ‘A Study of Inter-
personal Relations” and “The Contribu-
tions of Harry Stack Sullivan,” and col-
laborator with Dr. Clara Thompson on
_ “Psychoanalysis—Evolution and Devel-
opment.”
bruary 21, 1953
-
iota: Place by Patrick Mullaby
THE SECOND SEX. By Simone de
pression of a duality --that of the Self
and the Other.’”’ Man, the author holds,
never thinks of himself without think-
ing of the Other. Man orients himself
in the world “‘under the sign of duality,”
though this duality was not originally
sexual in character. “But being different
from man, who sets himself up as the
same, it is naturally to the category of
the Other that woman is consigned; the
Other includes woman.” Man has be-
come sovereign, Subject, Self, while
woman has become the Other, the in-
essential, the object. Following an idea
of Hegel, Mme de Beauvoir says: “We
find in consciousness itself a funda-
mental hostility toward every other con-
sciousness; the subject can be posed only
in béing opposed—he sets himself up as
the essential, as opposed to the other,
the inessential, the object.”
But the other ego or self sets up a
reciprocal claim. To the stranger I am
the Other, the inessential, the object—
which may be something of a shock to
me. Hence I am forced to recognize that
the polarity of Self and Other expresses
a reciprocal relationship, a reciprocal
relationship of subject and object. But
why has this reciprocity not been recog-
nized between the sexes? Why has one
of these contrasting relationships been
established as the essential one? Why is
man the sovereign Subject?, In other
words, why do women not fundamen-
tally challenge male sovereignty? How
explain the submission of women? Since
other groups can in various ways free
themselves from the dominion of their
oppressors, why does woman not get rid
of or free herself from her “oppressor,”
man, and attain ‘‘an authentically sub-
jective attitude’? The answer, in part,
is that women are related to men in a
more fundamental fashion. The bond
that unites woman to man—and con-
versely, of course—is not comparable
to any other. Unlike other divisions in
the world, the division of the sexes is
a biological event, not an event in hu-
man history like, say, the division ac-
cording to “race” or class. Male and
female constitute a fundamental unity.
‘
—— eee
she is the Other in a totality of which
the two components are necessary to
one another.”
Still. the question recurs, since men
and women are complementary, why
have women not been liberated from
oppression, freed from the category of
absolute Other? “The Second Sex’’
attempts to answer this problem. I my-
self think that Mme de Beauvoir’s
existentialist categories are not logically
necessary, that they add nothing to her
analysis, but this issue is a minor one. ~
Though today woman is heavily hand-
icapped, her situation is beginning to
change. But is the change a good thing,
and if so, why? The answer to this
presupposes an ethical philosophy, in
the author’s case an existentialist ethics.
Perhaps the following will give a hint
of what this is: “Every subject plays his
part as such specifically through exploits
or projects that serve as a mode of
transcendence; he achieves liberty only
through a continual reaching out toward
other liberties. There is no justification
for present existence other than its ex-
pansion into an indefinitely open future.
. .. Every individual concerned to justify
his existence feels that his existence in-
volves an undefined need to transcend
himself, to engage in freely chosen
projects.””
And if the prospect of woman’s
“transcendence”’ iseanxiety-provoking to
some, Mme de Beauvoir attempts to
reassure them: ‘““To emancipate woman
is to refuse to confine her to the relations
she bears to man, not to deny them to
her; let her have her independent exist-
ence and she will continue none the less
to exist for him a/so: mutually recog-
nizing each other as subject, each will
yet remain for the other an other.”
Woman’s problem can be stated,
then, in terms of how a human being
in her situation can attain fulfilment,
liberty, transcendence. The author set
herself the task of discovering what
circumstances limit woman's liberty and
how they can be overcome. ‘‘The Second
Sex’”” surveys the various. factors—
biological, psychological, _historicad,
economic, social—which have brought
about her situation. But she appears to
believe that “the economic interests of
the males” are causally fundamental,
though she recognizes that other factors
171
i es Ps
_ “Here,” according to Mme de Beauvoir,
“is to be found the basic trait of woman:
have been at work too. For she says,
among other things, that while a change
in the economic condition is not alone
sufficient to transform woman's situa-
tion, it has been and remains the basic
factor in her evolution. Here, I think,
there lies an ambiguity in the analysis,
but it is impossible to go into that in
a review.
The author appears to put her ulti-
mate hopes for woman’s freedom in
“democratic socialism,” not in any total-
itarian regime. Soviet Russia “has re-
vived the paternalistic. concept of
marriage.’ Nevertheless, she seems
rather apologetic about Russia. She
makes certain claims about that country
which one would like to see reliably
documented. Only the innocent will be
convinced by her quotations from the
Soviet constitution of 1936 and the
Communist International. In regard to
the United States, she can find little to
say that is favorable.
There are times when Mme de Beau-
voir seems to resort to a form of shock
therapy. Concerning the connection—
or lack of it—between love and mar-
riage she says that adultery is ‘the form
that love will assume as long as the
institution of marriage lasts.’ There are
some who consider such a notion a prod-
uct of neurotic anxiety. It raises a
fundamental point, however, about her
outlook toward society. Brilliant as
Mme de Beauvoir is, her sociology is
a bit naive. She does-not really face the
enormous complexities which any ad-
vanced society has to deal with. In one
sense she is a romantic individualist.
References to a future utopian society
really tell us nothing. They offer no
concrete guide as to how both men and
women can solve ‘their problems—
personal and social. The fact is that
men are much less autonomous subjects
than Mme de Beauvoir would have us
believe. Of course she knows that, but
she slights it in favor of a simpler
explanatory scheme. To be sure, over-
simplification at times has its justifica-
tion because it highlights problems
which are ignored or not sufficiently
noted, if at all. We may grant that
point without forgetting that other
more comprehensive problems remain.
After she has presented us with such
a brilliant work, it is perhaps unjust to
demand more. I only wish to add that
woman's problems are part of the wider
172
ake 7 Ta ae
problem of interpersonal relations in
family, school, work place, community,
and society in general. To understand
these we need a more powerful psychol-
ogy than Mme de Beauvoir possesses
and a more powerful sociology and so-
cial philosophy. She has done an excel-
lent job of showing some of the
limitations of psychoanalysis, historical
materialism, and various ideas derived
from biology, literature, and philosophy.
But her suggestions are too simple to be
of much use in working out a solution
to woman’s problems. It is necessary to
emphasize this, I think, becaus - of the
sweeping generalizations she makes
about marriage, present-day society, and
the like.
As an individual achievement “The
Second Sex’’ is first rate. Its author has
remarkable powers of observation, a
keen and sensitive mind. On the whole
the book is a delight to read. It will
help to dispel many of the current ideas
about women derived from Freud’s
theories. In fact, it will probably do
‘much to dispel many of the contem-
porary prejudices about women.
New Books in Brief
Ways to Truth
TWO ROADS TO TRUTH. By Ed-
mund W, Sinnott. Viking. $3.50. There
can be few goals more difficult to
achieve or more ardently pursued than
the attempt to find a satisfactory recon-
ciliation of faith and reason, religion
and rationalism. This latest quest by the
dean of the Yale Graduate School comes
nearer than most. His analysis of the
nature of religion and of science is con-
cise, lucid, and eloquent; it is when he
tries to prove them two facets of the
same truth that he becomes involved in
such dubious statements as ‘““The brother-
hood of man will come only if the
fathez!iood of God is recognized. Moral
problems will never be solved unless
they are treated as part of the structure
of the universe.’ Nevertheless, although
one may quarrel with its conclusions, the
book is stimulating and provocative.
All About Jefferson
JEFFERSON READER: A_ TREAS-
URY OF WRITINGS ABOUT,
THOMAS JEFFERSON. Edited with
an Introduction by Francis Coleman
Rosenberger. Dutton. $5. Variety and
freshness mark this collection of writ-
ings about Thomas Jefferson. It begins
with excerpts from the reminiscences
and reports of fifteen of his contempo-
raries; then follows a mixed bag of
eulogy and satire in verse and of cal-.
umny in prose; then come nine essays by
experts on as many aspects of Jefferson’s
career and thought; then a sheaf of
poems by our own contemporaries;
utterances by four Presidents (one of
whom had ‘something to say); and last,
to fill up the measure, seven miscellane-
ous pieces, including one of Macaulay’s
forthright and prophetic letters to Jeffer-
son’s great nineteenth-century biogra-
pher, Henry Stephens Randall. Several
of the essays, such as John W. Davis’s
on Jefferson as a lawyer and Gilbert
Chinard’s on his classical scholarship,
are hardly accessible to most readers; the
editor is specially to be commended for
giving them a wider circulation. The
volume as a whole is neither a unified
biography nor an interpretation of Jef-
ferson; it is an engaging miscellany il-
lustrating but not exhausting its subject
and the ways in which he has aroused
the curiosity, admiration, or hostility of
people in every era and walk of life.
Magnolia Myths
MYTHS AND REALITIES: SOCI-
ETIES OF THE COLONIAL SOUTH. .
By Carl Bridenbaugh. Louisiana: $3.25. -
Professor Bridenbaugh’s book is a little
masterpiece of social history. Its thesis
that the pre-Revolutionary “South” con-
sisted of three distinct societies is not
entirely novel, but the idea has never
been so clearly and thoroughly sup-
ported by evidence. The three soci-
eties are the Chesapeake, which includes
the Albemarle region of North Caro-
Jina as well as Maryland and Vir-
ginia; the Carolina, centering on
Charleston; and the Back Settléments,
extending all the way from Mason and
Dixon’s line to southern Georgia.
In two hundred pages, never con-
gested, Mr. Bridenbaugh sketches the
life of the three, setting them in sharp
contrast; and the “myths’’ that cluster
The NATION
Chesapeake pretensions to a well-
loped literary, artistic, and intellec-
tual culture are cut down drastically;
and the newly rich planters of the Caro-
lina coast are treated even more severe-
ly. In both cases there should be no
doubt about the verdict. Mr. Briden-
baugh has special respect for the Mo-
“ ravians of North Carolina; his book
should awaken new interest in them.
_ “Myths and Realities” will delight any
reader; the professional student will find
_ it an excellent starting-point for further
work and will be grateful for its full
bibliographical notes and references. _
A Romantic Socialist
lancz. Simon and Schuster. $5. An elo-
quent, exasperating, muddle-headed, and
warm-hearted self-portrait by a romantic
3 ‘idealist and ardent Socialist who is also
a hard-headed publisher. The readet’s
temptation to close the book with a
bang will be strong when he comes to
such passages as these: “Matter at the
service of spirit, matter become one
with spirit, that should be the aim of
our Socialist commonwealth. . . . I want
to see the socialism of our day reaching
out more and more to the idea of good-
_ness."""Or: “I have always felt a vast,
single, living bliss behind everything.”
r But the over-all effect is impressive—
testimony to one man’s goodness and
his belief in the human race.
Adolescent’s Portrait
LOVE FOR LYDIA. By H. E. Bates.
Atlantic—Little Brown. $3.50. Except
a for the sudden melodramatic twists in
— this story of young love in a small Eng-
lish town, “Love for Lydia’’ moves
lethargically, and the author relies upon
cn his characters to sustain interest. But Mr.
Bates does not have the mature insight
r to create a convincing portrait of adoles-
cence. His characters are too shallow
and weak to give conviction to the arti-
ficial tragedies they are made to enact.
The author is, however, adept at sketch-
ing his minor characters, and in a few
competent strokes he gives the reader
two fading aristocratic aunts, a remark-
ably vulgar newspaper editor, and a
-tomboy whose ugliness conceals a fer-
menting passion. Bates’s failure to
MY DEAR TIMOTHY. By Victor Gol-
an
“Love for pg
“trivial ond inadequate novel.
Labor’s Lansbury —
THE LIFE OF GEORGE LANSBURY.
By Raymond Postgate.
Green. ‘$4.75. There are few more at-
tractive figures in the history of the
British Labor movement than George
Lansbury, who died in 1940 in his
eighty-first year. Agitator, local admin-
istrator, editor, member of Parliament,
and Cabinet minister—in all these roles
he worked ceaselessly and unselfishly to
promote the achievement of the Socialist
commonwealth which to him was the
essential goal of a Christian society. For
four years he led the attenuated Labor
Opposition in the House of Commons,
doing much to restore the party’s morale
after its shattering defeat in,1931. His
resignation was due to his whole-hearted
pacifism, which seemed increasingly un-
realistic to his colleagues. While wisely
refraining from any attempt to estimate
his place in history, Raymond Postgate
does not disguise his belief that Lans-
bury was a great man. This may be the
partisan opinion of a devoted son-in-law
and collaborator. But great or not,
“G. L.,” as he was affectionately known
Theater
Harold Clurman
PLAY, in stage terms, is a scenario
or a plan of action to be performed
by living persons. The basis of drama,
then, is action. But action cannot be
abstract. It is seen through people who
are characters, and in most plays the
characters speak words which, though
primarily intended to define and carry
forward the action, possess a quality of
their own. Action is also modified by
place—not only the locale of the story
itself but the actual place of performance
or “‘stage practice,’ which must ulti-
mately determine something in the na-
ture of the action. Every character,
‘besides having an ideal identity in the
scheme of the play, has a real identity
through the actor who embodies him.
For this reason the theater, which is an
io BA Net ;
to vast numbers of workers, was cer-
Longmans, |
tainly a good man, and a very lovable
personality. His story was well worth
telling both for its intrinsic interest and
for the light it throws on the vicissi-
tudes of the British Labor movement.
Birds in Hand
OUR AMAZING BIRDS. By Robert
S. Lemmon. Paintings by Don R. Eckel-
berry. American Garden Guild and ;
Doubleday. $3.95. Bird books are evi-
dently popular, and they are “angled” |
in many different ways. This one is
neither a field guide on the one hand
nor merely something for the library
table on the other. A member of the
graphic staff of the National Audubon
Society has provided a lavish number of
lively black-and-white paintings; a for-
mer editor of House and Garden has
contributed portraits of
something more than a hundred species.
Tle result is not only pleasant to look
at and very easy to read but might
well serve as an to« the
birds for those who are not ready to
cope with more ambitious books. Most
of the species the Easterner is likely to
see first are there. Incidentally the mod-
est price makes it quite a bargain as
handsomely illustrated books go.
informative
introduction
/
“ Ne = Seer a ae
art of many parts, achieves unity only as
one- conceives all of them with a view
to grasping their central spirit, the root
of their organic life.
“Love's Labor's Lost,” perhaps the
first of Shakespeare’s plays, is based on
a very fragile line of action. Its char-
acters are almost pastel sketches. Yet —
how lovely and lyric, how bright and
gay, youthful and joyous is the feeling
of the play. It is all fun and tender
merry-making. It bathes blithely in .that
“sweet smoke of rhetoric’? which Shake-
speare liked both to laugh at and in-
dulge in. Euphuism and airy conceits,
pride in pedantry and glowing satisfac-
tion in new learning—all these Shake-
speare affectionately mocks because he —
knows he is enthusiastically guilty of all
saa
pet
x 3 ¢ 2
ce
A Se aoe ee Td
=
B z sie
5 rE ae
eeenihe tetetesed ee
of them. He has in him something of
the fantastical Spaniard Don Adriano de
Armando, lovably mad, who “hath a
mint of phrases in his brain,” a quixotic
loon without a shirt to his name, whom
the aristocrats use as a sort of court fool.
“The music of his own vain tongue doth
ravish like enchanting harmony,”
Just as Shakespeare in this early flight
spreads his sumptuous plumage of splen-
did words, so his theme, expressed
largely through that happy blade
Berowne, is the excellence of love, the
pleasures provided by womankind, the
ptimacy of passion. “Abstinence engen-
ders maladies.’’ How this play revels
in its own youth, its discovery of lan-
guage, laughter, and bubbling genius!
The play is a harbinger of the Shake-
speare to come: it -has the glamour of
an awakening to a brilliant dawn.
I do not know how the play should
be done—except that there must be
gaiety and freshness in it. I do not
know where it takes place—except on a
stage—for the Navarre which is the
locale of its action is nothing but the
playground of the poet’s fancy.
Albert Marre, who directed the City
Center production—the first in New
York since 1891—has chosen to do the
play in an Edwardian mode, which
is as quaint and as near or far as need
be. To translate the play in this fashion
is as legitimate, it seems to me, as to
approximate any pseudo-historical time.
The “translation” is consistently carried
out and certainly amusing. It makes the
play a pleasant college boys’ romp—and
that in a way is just what it is. This
“Love’s Labor's Lost’’ has really been
YUL BRYNNER
RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN'S
The Bing and I
A New es Play
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
$T. JAMES aA West 44 St.
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
Fears ire Gatuchovatas 228: $4.20to 1.80.
MONDAY EVES. ONLY: CURTAIN AT 7 SHARP
MARTHA WRIGHT
GEORGE BRITTON
South Pacific
with MYRON WILLIAM , MARTIN
McCORMICK ° TABBERT ° WOLFSON
and JUANITA HALL
MAJESTIC THEATRE, West 44 St.
Eves, at 8:30; $6.00 to 1. "80. Wed. Mat. at
2:30: $3.60 to 1.20. Sat. Mat. $4.20 to 1.20,
HOL. MATINEE, MON., FEB. 23
MON. EVES. ONLY: Curtain 7 sharp
&
H
174
directed—which is a rather rare thing in
our theater. It has been given a theatrical
form—in terms of the eye and the feel-
ing which goes with what the eye sees
—and that, in part, is what we mean
when we speak of'stage direction. The
costumes are charming—as if for a
Wilde play done as an operetta; the use
of the musical accompaniment is quite
winning.
The cast has a young complexion
which goes well with the rest. Its diction
is a bit over-deliberate, showing a modest
caution that is to be recommended even
though it constrains and dulls the pace
somewhat. But better a hesitant Shake-
speare that is heard than a confident one
that is blustered or blurred.
The men have better rolés than the
women. Priscilla Morrill as Jacquanetta
has a merry eye, and Nancy Marchand as
the Princess of France a good presence.
Philip Bourneuf as Holofernes and Hurd
Hatfield as Sir Nathaniel are particularly
humorous (Hatfield's real talent, I now
discover with pleasure, is for character
acting), and Joseph Schildkraut is
charmingly foolish and forlorn as Don
Adriano. Mr. Schildkraut, who it is no
news to say is a fine actor, must however
overcome one serious fault: he tends to
draw his audience’s attention to the pre-
cise effect he is making so that he seems
not only to be acting his part but to be
demonstrating how he is acting it. When
he is commendably simple, as here, he
seems to be asking his audience to ap-
preciate the fact of this simplicity—
which makes his performance not quite
so simple as he intends.
“The Emperor’s Clothes”
A PLAY must be constructed to work
on the stage if it is to be shown on the
stage; that’s a first rule. But sometimes
plays are written and produced as though
for the stage alone. A spectator observes
that they move well, that tension is ris-
ing and flowing toward a climax, that
the characters are being drawn and
shaped by their impact on one another,
but little or nothing of this comes across —
the footlights. He feels that if he had
been up there in the thick of the play,
the circumstances might have been both
clear and important, but as it happens
he is the witness to events he cannot
share and only partly understands. The
err ee ong a
= a ” TO?
dines of fore are selk content and dei
not project into the auditorium.
Such a play is George Tabori’s “The |
Emperor's Clothes.” It is full of matters
that concern an audience: the power of
the single spirit to resist the pollution
of the total state; the problem of hon-
esty in close relationships; the essence of
truth in the confusion of facts; love,
honor, courage, and the like. The scene
is Budapest in 1930, the plot concerns
a-small professional man who, both de-
spite and because of his son and wife,
succeeds in taking his stand. Mr. Tabori
does not appear to have much new to
say on these subjects, but that is not a
serious fault, for they are always worth
discussing in familiar terms. The fault
is that he has been so mich concerned
with how his play would perform that
he has thought little of how it would
communicate. His back is to the au-
dience. The characters do not seem
entirely consistent, nor are their reac-
tions evidently gauged to their expe-
riences. But you cannot really attack
them on this score, for you are never
abreast of the proceedings. At the end
you see that there has been a triumph,
but you cannot be sure that it is ‘a valid
triumph. In any case, it does not greatly
concern you, for you were not party to
the struggle.
The play was written behiftd the
footlights, and it has been produced
there. Lee Cobb, Maureen Stapleton,
and Brandon de Wilde fill the stage
with noise and motion. They are sure
actors, their support from the minor
roles is deft, and they have been well
orchestrated. Nevertheless, their per-
formances are theatrical, not dramatic.
Harold Clurman has directed the play
in terms of its stage virtues perhaps be-
cause those were the virtues available to
him. The production is a model of exits
and entrances, of crossings and clashes
and the rise and fall of vocal tides. If
Cobb has a tendency to intone his lines,
it may be because the lines will not go
in plain speech. The play is full of bro-
caded philosophy, a little too rich for its
coritent. :
There might be another approach that
would get ‘The Emperor’s Clothes”
across to its audience, but there is also a
high degree of probability that it would
collapse if extended that far.
ROBERT HATCH
The NatION
ent
ee
B. H. Haggin
ACH’S Clavieriibung has been is-
sued in its entirety on seven Haydn
Society records. Three records are de-
voted to the six Partitas of Part 1, one
record to the Italian Concerto and
French Overture of Part 2 and the Four
Duets from Part 3, and one record to’
the Goldberg Variations of Part 4—all
played on the harpsichord by Ralph
Kirkpatrick; and one record to the Pre-
lude, Chorale Preludes, and concluding
Fugue of Part 3, played on the organ
by Paul Callaway.
In his accompanying notes Kirkpat-
rick, placing this work of Bach in the
category of works like the Etudes of
Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Debussy,
contends that the “keyboard practice’
of the title is to be taken “in the sense
of an exercise, an activity of the spirit,”
and cites Bach’s own statement that the
various pieces have been ‘‘composed to
delight the spirit of music lovers.”’ But
Bach’s way of exercising the spirit was
to exercise his prodigious craftsmanship
and knowledge of techniques and styles;
and some of the results offer more to
delight an interest in the skilful use of
techniques and styles than to delight the
spirit. All six Partitas are no doubt
fascinating to anyone interested in their
“astogishing assimilation of French,
Italian, and German keyboard styles’;
but as a mere music lover I find only
No. 1 in B flat and to a lesser degree
No. 3 in A minor interesting to listen
to simply as music. Similarly, the French
Overture and Italian Concerto may ex- .
cite some listeners with Bach’s “[appro-
priation} to the harpsichord [of} pre-
vailing French and Italian orchestral
styles of the preceding fifty years,” but
listening to the music I am excited only
by the wonderful slow movement of the
concerto. Again, however interesting
Part 3 may be to some for the elaborate-
ly organized “mathematical and sym- ,
bolic structure” that Bach erects out of
the chorales to illustrate the basic tenets
of Lutheran doctrine, what affects me
as ‘great music is the magnificent opening
Prelude and several of the longer
Chorale Preludes—the other longer and
shorter ones being, for meé, less interest-
=
February 21, 1953
ing, and the concluding Fugue impres-
Sive as a piece of fugal construction.
The Four Duets may interest some as
“the most highly concentrated two-voice
music that Bach ever wrote,” but I find
them quite dull. And while everything
in the Goldberg Variations may sound
like ate invention” to some
ears, I hear exa:nples of mechanical use
‘of the variation process as well as things
as wonderful as the three slow varia-
tions in minor mode.
Much of Kirkpatrick’s playing is re-
laxed, sensitive, clear, and strong; but
at times it is tight, stiff, stolid: the
Pracludium of the Partita No. 1 hasn’t
the easy flow, the Sarabande the cohe-
sive note-to-note continuity that I can
recall hearing in other performances;
the slow movement of the Italian Con-
certo flows less easily than in Mr. Kirk-
patrick’s own Musicraft performance
years ago. And in those slow Goldberg
variations in minor mode there isn’t
the spaciously elaborating inflection—
both powerful and subtle—that I have
heard give them overwhelming expres-
sive effect in other performances. Im-
portant in connection with all this is
the delicate, lovely sound of the old
- Chickering harpsichord Mr. Kirkpatrick
uses: it adds to the pleasure from his
best playing, and makes the occasional
stiffness and stolidity easy on the ear.
Callaway’s performances of the organ
works also seem excellent; but the thick
= ..
eae?
sounds of the Washington Cathedral
organ are made even less clear by the
excessively long reverberation.
From Columbia has come a set of
three records with organ works played
by Albert Schweitzer—the first offeripg
Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in
C, Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, and
Fugue (again without the Prelude) in’
A minor; the second six of Bach’s
Chorale Preludes; the third the less
familiar Preludes*in C and D and Can-
zona in D minor (Schweitzer Edition
Vol. 2 Nos. 10, 12, and 13), and Men-
delssohn’s Sonata No. 6, of which I
find only the Canzona interesting. Even
when Schweitzer’s first recorded per-
formances of the fugues were issued
years ago I found that their simplicity
was carried to the point of occasional
ineffectiveness; now I can see that he
is entirely without the performer's art—
the legitimate art of pacing, articulating,
and shaping a piece of music—that is
requited for the effective presentation
to the listener's mind of even a Toccata
and Fugue of Bach. But now as then
the method—and in particular the slow
pace—works well with the Chorale
Preludes, producing clear and moving
statements of the wonderful “Ich ruf’
zu Dir,: Herr Jesw-.Christ,” -3Nee
Heiden Heiland,’ “O
Mensch, Siinde gross”
(first and second versions, of which
the second is especially wonderful),
and “Wenn wir in hdchsten Noten’
sind.” The sounds from the organ of
the Parish Church in Gunsbach, Alsace,
are not as compact and clear as those
from the organ Schweitzer used in the
earlier performances.
komm’, der
bewein’ dein’
Letters
New Farm Commission
Dear Sirs: As a farm reader I want
vigorously to object to Eisenhower's
acm commission.
. First, the fourteen-man commissidn
is overweighted with food processors
with an interest in buying cheap from
farmers and selling dear to consumers.
By the same token it is underweighted
with dirt farmers or their spokesmen
with an interest in maintaining a decent
standard of living for working farmers.
Second, the New York Times, in a
recent editorial, was completely wrong
in suggesting that sentiment for high- —
level supports exists chiefly in Washing-
ton. ‘It is the other way around. The
sentiment for high-level supports is so
strong at the grass roots that the politi-
cians and bureaucrats in Washington
are forced to get on the bandwagon.
Third, the Times is wrong in suggest-
ing that 90 per cent support is “high”
- level. The parity formula is simply a
. device for keeping farm prices in line ~
175
with costs of operating. Why should
farmers be forced to operate for 90 per
cent or 60 per cent of their costs, which
they can only do by reducing the stand-
ard of living of their families?
_ Fourth, the nature of our farm econ-
omy requires a government program of
stabilized prices at full parity levels.
Farmers cannot set their own prices as
do most businesses via a standard mark-
up. Farm prices fluctuate widely, while
cost items, such as machinery, repairs,
commercial feeds, local taxes, gasoline,
and seeds are all relatively insensitive
to price changes. The result is that
farmers are often caught in a price
squeeze that hampers farm efficiency
and may produce bankruptcy.
Farmers do not enjoy generous tax
write-offs or cost-plus-10-per-cent con-
tracts—110 per cent of parity—as de-
fense industrialists do. Farmers only
ask for stabilization at 100 per cent of
parity! We should all have learned
under Roosevelt that our prosperity is
based on adequate income (buying
power) among farmers and working-
men. Let us hope that Mr. Eisenhower
and his new farm commission grasp this
simple proposition before it is too late.
JAMES M. YOUNGDALE
Benson, Minn.
An American Replies to
Elio Vittorini -
Dear Sirs: The problems of an organized
society are a good deal more complicated
. than either the Stalinists or those com-
mitted to freedom in the abstract would
admit. The problem revolves around the
necessity both for discipline, taking the
form of organization which tends to-
ward dictatorship, and for individual
spontaneity, which tends toward an-
atchy. Both discipline and individual
spontaneity are necessary for real free-
dom. While the Stalinists are committed
to rigid discipline, Mr. Vittorini’s posi-
tion [Roads of the Ex-Communists, The
Nation, December 6], on che other
hand, leads toward anarchy. Neither of
these tendencies can result in peace and
freedom.
There is unfortunately a general tend-
ency for intellectuals in the West to
underestimate the role of organization
in providing them with the individual
freedoms they prize so highly. They
seem to think there are natural freedoms
that are not a result, as they are, of a
particular type of organization in an
economy at a particular level of develop-
ment.
Organization and individual sponta-
neity taken as absolutes are dialectical
176 3
10
11
12
14
15
17
21
23
28
29
81
32
383
ee
fo nm
Crossword Puzzle No. 504
BY oe = LEWIS
a ae
— CUmres
ca
tw
Peiee
Pe} ese ae
ACROSS
See 11 across.
The sort of officer that gets your
goat? Its relative, rather, with good
taste. (8)
and 19 down. Indicates the degree
of shaking, with finesse. (10)
Evidently the result of applying a
marinade looks good. (1, 6, 6)
This plant produces much with us.
See 28 across.
Move quickly? Just the opposite, be-
cause it’s stable in part. (5)
and 81 With which the government
has been concerned during seizure?
(Uniform sizes are not guaranteed!)
(3-2-3-4)
Eckstein might be disturbed by them
(if too loud?). (8)
Don’t kill the gag—Adam did. (8)
and 26 Berle’s travels, appearing in
the back pages, perhaps. (They’d
better not over their lines!) (5, 5)
and 13 Pale, yet putting on weight
—despite the implication of fast
living. (6)
and 80 Calves aren’t quite covered
with them; organists are. (5,
See 15 across.
Two famous men here named
Washington second or third. (8)
The pen has an agreeable sound at
first, but the result might be frothy.
DOWN
Salesmen who suggest a business
cycle? (8)
Not derbies (brown) with which the
old sailor used to go around. (7)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
_
—
a
oO
3 These meh be folded done or
wound up. (5)
5 How to make a profit once more. (5)
6 Yanks are not always so considered.
7 Remark not originally made by a
caterer? (7)
8 A damaged Blanes pet not likely.
Ephemerid, rather. (38, 3
9 Making more speed about the begin-
ning of the end. (8)
16 and 27 Provincially it sounds like a
long distance around the neck per-
haps. (3, 5)
18 Furniture, somewhat higher placed
than the top of the bureau. (8)
19 See 10 across.
20 There might be dirty work here, so
it’s no place for boating! (8)
22 Examines by employment? (7)
24 Obscure uprising fades away, some-
what like 29 down. (No wonder
they’re worn.)
25 Ship at a place under fire, perhaps.
27 See 16 down.
28 Sweat might make it or eliminate it.
29 Not a first-class would-be sailor. (5)
BES
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 503
ACROSS :—1 CAPRI; 4 TABULATOR; 9 UN-
POPULAR; 10 N NEARS; 11 PRINCIPIA ; 12
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z “af 70 it s. They
of growth in individual life and in the
ue
ot
ee Cea ee a) de
are part of the process
life of society. While the ideology of
the West idealizes individual sponta-
neity, the ideology of the East idealizes
collective action.
It is this factor that leads many in the
West incorrectly to equate Hitlerism and
Stalinism, a misconception I believe Mr.
Vittorini has accepted. There is a quali-
tative difference between the regimes
despite many similarities. The difference
is the difference between John L. Lewis,
one of our great trade-union leaders,
and Joseph P. Ryan, president of the
International Longshoremen’s Associa-
tion. Although both discourage demo-
cratic activity and require obedience to
their decisions, John L. Lewis makes a
serious effort to achieve a better life for
the coal miners. Mr. Ryan’s only interest
is personal power and wealth.
It is my opinion that 100 years from
now men will look at the Soviet Union
and deplore the fact that socialist de-
mocracy began with forced labor camps
and political purges, as we deplore the
fact that capitalist democracy in America
began with slave labor.
It is the job of humane men in the
West to synthesize the democratic spirit
and ideas of Jefferson with the scientific
socialist ideas of Marx, which, as Mr.
Vittorini says, are based on the great hu-
manistic traditions of the West. The
major responsibility for this accomplish-
ment rests on the American labor move-
ment and its leaders.
New York - HAL KOPPERSMITH
Commendation
Dears Sirs: 1 can’t help writing you to
comment on the article you published |-
in The Nation of January 24 entitled
I Have a Thing to Tell You, by Ruth
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Ralph, S. D. JOSEPH PINTAR
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Depression:
Can the G. O. P.
Block it? = 2 so
by Fritz Stern berg
Asia Eyes Formosa W. Macmabon Ball
Perjury or Heresy? An Editorial
Tm Still Waiting James Kuicher
Around
’s the
U.S.A:
Soliloquy
Alfred, New York
N THIS season of the sessions of
investigating committees, my mind is
full of the substance and shadow of
violence and threat.
Ruin has taught me to meditate about
the ambiguous upraised arm: of the
Statue of Liberty. In my present state
of remembering things past I wonder
whether the poised arm is potential blow
or benison. Surely the most remarkable
single intellectual fact of my life has
.been the hobnailed entry of investigat-
ing officialdom into the classroom. (Not
enough people raised their voice against
the robot captivity of the college pres-
ident’s office by the comptometer of the
treasurer's office, a coup d’état that de-
posed scholarship and raised up warriors,
politicians, and corporation executives
to lead American education in the
twentieth century—and so the bloodless
revolution was successful.) As an under-
graduate I saw teachers picked off the
college roster by the do-or-die inspired
investigating committees who were an-
ticipating the judgment day of the god
of history. Town versus Gown? Hardly.
The State against Ideas. The horse hoofs
of mounted policemen struck sparks ‘of
learning on campus streets.
‘ De te fabula. . . . 1 am today in the
shoes of the teacher whom I saw threat-
ened when I was a learner. The flux of
things creates the sensation of having
been there before. I see graduate teachers
I know of by their scholarly work,
violated by dismissal, threatened by pro-
fessional blacklisting. I am no longer
spectator. I am of them. The men of
ideas are being pursued down the cor-
ridors of thtir school buildings by the
hounds of conformity, by the wilful be-
trayers of the promise of the land we
live in. The beacon of the American
Enlightenment was almost snuffed out by
the sneerers at the brain trust. Their
laughter was epidemic, signifying the
degradation of American intellectualism.
More recently America has grinned at
the discomfiture of the eggheads.
Behind the anti-intellectualism is the
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repeated canard: “Those who can, do!
those who can’t, teach.” Gleefully the
sentence is applauded and the sense of “J
it enjoyed and reprinted by corporate |
well-wishes and their incorporated ©
hangers-on. The teacher in America is ©
being debunked by legislative official- %
dom. The academic art of informing has ~
changed to the technique of the academic J
informer of miraculous memory.
e But if the teacher has —
democratic vistas in his mind, let him be J
mindful of his own dereliction. For too -¥
long has the teacher of the humanities
merely rehearsed the review-book les-
sons of Wycliffe’s nonconformity, Chau- _
cers humanism, Montaigne’s skepti- '
cism, Emerson’s protest, Mill’s liberal- ;
ism, and Shelley's dissidence. We are in
danger of losing the pamphleteering —
skill. of Erasmus, Voltaire, Milton,
Paine, and Thoreau. We suffer from
too much vicarious liberalism. We have
become a mutual-admiration society,
hugging our books to our chest, know-
ing ourselves the saving remnant, fatal-
istically optimistic that it can’t happen
here in the land of promise. To realize
freshly that the liberalism we teach has
been well-intentioned toward the past
but vicarious about the present is to
reestimate our position and redirect our
attention against officialdom that censors
libraries and cashiers teachers, against
the epidemic joy in the pejorative use
of “brain trust’ and “egg head,” and |
against the conformists who misinterpret
as accomplished the American promise
of a world of free men freely examining
the flux of ideas. The success of the
American promise—we have a short-but
significant tradition—is the explicit as-
surance that the world will note and
imitate what we have done here and
what we now do here. =
Reviving in himself the promise of
America, the teacher will scorn to change
his state with the conformists who curse
his classroom bell, his library book, his
midnight candle. And the upraised hand -
of the Statue of Liberty will lose its
ambiguity of threat and be a sign of :
benison. And teachers will slough off
the creased coils of violence and fear
and stir themselves in the sun of the
American promise.
MELVIN H, BERNSTEIN
[The author is a member of the fac- |
ulty of Alfred University.} - 4
The Shape of Things
Feints and Jabs _
By a process that might be described as “‘sleight of
tongue” the Administration seems to be moving toward
a definition of its positive foreign policy. Several verbal
feints have been made in the past week or so. For in-
stance, at his first press conference, on February 17,
President Eisenhower declared that the question of a
naval blockadé of Communist China had neither been
brought up to him nor been studied in the proper sec-
tions of the government, “meaning,” said William S.
White in the New York Times, ‘‘those sections powerful
enough to make high policy.”” Next day Secretary Dulles
at his first press conference declared that measures to
check the flow of goods to China, ‘“‘one of which is a
naval blockade,” are under “intensive scrutiny” by the
State Department. He did not say whether any particular
actions had been decided upon, although he hinted that a
further effort might be made at the U. N. General As-
sembly, reconvening this week, to get member states to
cut off all commercial intercourse with China, Eisen-
hower and Dulles agreed on one point: that as fast as
South Korean troops could be trained and sent into the
line, United Nations forces would be pulled back.
As for President Eisenhower's promised repudiation
of World War II “secret” agreements that had brought
about the enslavement of peoples, it finally simmered _
down to a mild resolution rejecting “‘interpretations or
_ applications” of those agreements which have been used
. to subjugate free peoples, and expressing the “hope”
- that such peoples would again enjoy the right of self-
* determination and self-government. As Senator Hum-
phrey said, this resolution was “primarily public
”
relations.” But it was definitely not repudiation and as a
- result it caused far less worry among our European allies
than did the President’s original promise—or threat. But
in the degree to which it reduced anxiety abroad it gen-
erated dissatisfaction among the Republican fireeaters in
Congress. Regarding Mr. Eiserhower’s failure to wipe
out the results of Yaita, Teheran, and Potsdam as deplor-
able softness, they were ready as this week began to fight
for a tougher resolution.
Only a few liberal Democrats spoke up warmly in de-
fense of the Administration’s version and for unity be-
al, 1M O
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
hind the President! Foreigners can perhaps be excused
for the air of puzzlement with which they often observe
our political behavior.
°
Roll-Back Policy?
But however inconsistent and apparently shifting, the
week’s pronouncements from Washington added up to
something. “The shape of things to come” began to
emerge. Still vague, it looks like a scheme to avoid imme-
diate dramatic acts in Korea or elsewhere which would
engage larger American resources, further alarm our
allies, and possibly drag Russia into the fight, while lay-
ing down a long-range strategic plan to-challenge Soviet
power on every front. Even the President’s soft resolu-
tion establishes for the record a position from which he
could launch almost any sort of “‘liberation’’ move.
Put together, the Formosa decision backed by in-
creased aid to Chiang, the preparation of South Korean
. forces for a major role in the war in the peninsula, the
plans for building up of a stronger Vietnam army with a
native officers’ corps, the rearming of Japan, the urgent
threat-plus-plea for European unity and quick action on
the European army agreement, the new emphasis on
psychological warfare, all fit into a single frame—a
frame whose outlines were lightly roughed in by the
President’s resolution. It seems to add up to a strategy
which would make nonsense of any further talk about
negotiated agreements with Russia.
Just Another Day
John L. Lewis, last of the “big three” labor leaders,
celebrated his seventy-third birthday on February 12. No
special event was planned, the news stories said, it being
“just another day” in the busy life of the president of the
United Mine Workers. And so it was, in a sense, for Mr.
Lewis issued a statement urging approximately 120,000 —
U. M. W. members in West Virginia to give all-out sup-
port to Governor William €. Marland’s important tax
program. West Virginia’s new thirty-five-year-old gov-
ernor is himself an ex-miner and was elected last fall
with the active support of Mr. Lewis and the coal miners
of the state. By levying a severance tax on the state’s
natural resources, Governor Marland hopes to raise
$18,000,000 in new revenue to be earmarked for high-
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 77
Perjury or Heresy? 179
ARTICLES
A European “Legion”
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 181
Depression: Can the G. O. P. Block It?
by Fritz Sternberg 183
Asia Eyes Formosa:
Ike Worries His Allies
by W. Macmahon Ball 185
G. O. P. Money:
Will It Be Hard or Soft?
by Bruce Catton 187
I'm Still Waiting: ;
Four-Year Loyalty Case
: by James Kutcher 188
Proposals for Peace—VIII by Lord Cecil 189
BOOKS
Evolution Has Evolved
by Joseph Wood Krutch 190
New Books in Brief 191
THEATER by Harold Clurman. 192
FILMS by Manny Farber 193
MUSIC by B. H. Haggin 194
LETTERS 195
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 505
by Frank W. Lewis 196
AROUND THE.U. S. A.
Soliloquy
by Melvin H. Bernstein opposite 177
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey
Carey McWilliams
Lillie Shultz
Victor H. Bernstein
J. Alvarez del Vayo
Editor and Publisher
Editorial Director
Director, Nation Associates
Managing Editor
Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Masic
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., sey Street, New York 7. N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
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Next Week
Our Foreign Policy and the United Nations
Canada’s Coming Elections
Camus vs. Sartre: France’s Great Literary War
178
a 4 ¢ a ee ee aie
‘ways and schools, including West Virginia University
i SE, sn :
i Toya oat .*¥ q a 7
. € ; ° és Pa Nae eS
~ medical school. "HE tae Se _ <a
Of the $18,000,000 Snsht the soft-coal industry
would pay, on the basis of 10 cents a ton, a total of about
$14,500,000. The rest would come from lumber, oil,
gas, limestone, sand and gravel, brine, and other se-
sources. Mr. Lewis points out that the tax can be charged
against the cost of production and deducted from federal
income taxes.
Hearings have opened in Charleston, and a lively
legislative battle is shaping up on. the issue. If enacted,
the measure would provide an attractive blueprint for
other states which like West Virginia have suffered from
the uncompensated exploitation of their natural resources
by absentee industrialists. Hale and hearty at seventy-
three, Mr. Lewis apparently feels that the best way to
celebrate a birthday is to support a measure which, if en-
acted, will contribute, as he says, to the well-being of
“each member of our union, his family, his neighbors,
and his fellow citizens.”
Transforming Social Security
In giving wide distribution to reprints of an article
by A. D. Marshall, manager of the Employee Benefits
Department of the General Electric Corporation, which
appeared in the December, 1952, issue of American
Economic Security, the Chamber of Commerce of the
United States has laid down the opening propaganda
barrage in its campaign to transform the present social-
security program. The chamber’s plan is cleverly baited.
Old-age federal insurance coverage would be, immedi-
ately extended to include not only all the gainfully
employed but the aged destitute, who now receive locally
administered’ old-age relief. At the same time federal
grants for old-age relief would be eliminated. The catch
in the plan consists in the proposal that current benefits
and the taxes required to pay these benefits should be
brought into approximate balance. Under the present
form of financing, payments into the fund currently
exceed withdrawals, but the amounts withdrawn are
certain to increase in the future as more and more
persons reach the eligible age for pensions. The effect
of the proposal, therefore, would be to eliminate the
current reserve fund and the interest it earns, with the
consequence that the rate 6f future contributions would
have to be increased. The chamber is thus endangering
the stability of the whole social security system.
Two-Punch Attack
Two articles in this issue (Fritz Sternberg’s on page
183 and Bruce Catton’s on page 187) present fascina-
ting complementary aspects of the new G. O. P. fiscal
policy. Taking the long view, Mr. Sternberg argues that
within a few years there will be a decline in the high
T. ie NATION
ey
a threat
~ tal investment. This, he says, Wi
of depression which an unimaginative G. O, P. is likely
to try to avoid by again stepping up the dangerous
business of gun-building. Mr. Catton, watching day-to-
day developments in Washington, in effect says that Mr.
Sternberg is already proved right in at least one respect:
the stage is being set for a reduction in private invest-
ment through an increase in interest rates.
It is, of course, too early to draw conclusions, but it
looks as~if the Republicans were in there again with
their aggressive two-punch attack: wham, deflation;
wham, inflation.
Eatarado Bucks the Tide
It is encouraging to note that at least one legislative
body has turned thumbs down on a proposal to investi-
gate the schools. Under pressure from the Veterans of
Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Colorado
School Protective Association, and a handful of individ-
uals including the ever-busy Robert Donner, millionaire
“angel” of countless ultra-rightist causes, the Colorado
state senate recently adopted a resolution calling for an
investigation of textbooks and teachers. The vote was
close—seventeen to fifteen. Of the eight senators from
Denver—five Democrats, three Republicans—only one,
a Republican, voted for the probe. In the lower house
both Democrats and Republicans condemned the pro-
posal as a “needless costly witch hunt,” voiced annoyance —
with groups that blame the schools for every evil in
society, and pointed out that under the state constitution
local school boards, not legislative committees, are “re-
sponsible for the selection of textbooks and teachers.
With only one legislator speaking in favor, the resolu-
tion was overwhelmingly defeated. x
We're Entitled to the Title
The best type of propaganda, of course, is the partisan
pill coated with the sugar of objectivity. Thus William
A. Eddy, in a letter to the New York Times chastising
Israel for various alleged offenses against the United
Nations, signed himself as ‘Former United States Min-
ister to Saudi Arabia.” Mr. Eddy was indeed minister
there from 1944 to 1946; what he neglected to mention
was that he has since become a consultant on Arab rela-
tions with the Arabian American Oil Company
(ARAMCO). ARAMCO owns the Saudi Arabian oil
concession and the pipe lines which originate there and
run through Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, all of which
depend for their smooth operations on the good-will of
three of the four Arab countries which immediately
adjoin Israel.
-- Put into this perspective, Mr. Eddy’s disapproval of
Israel is altogether understandable, even if it bears little
* February 28, 1953
ae es | i .
,
gelation to the facts. The ethical question | remains
whether anyone has the right to attach a former govern-
ment title to opinions expressed in the interests of a
commercial firm. Or does Mr. Eddy believe, after the
pattern set recently by another distinguished American,
that what is good for ARAMCO is necessarily good for
the United States?
The Last Mile
Nothing that President Eisenhower said in his state-
ment denying clemency to the Rosenbergs has convinced
us of the wisdom or justice of his decision. Apart from
certain weaknesses in the case, even their assumed guilt
does not, for reasons we have previously pointed out,
justify the death penalty. It has lately been argued in
various quarters that the Rosenbergs deliberately for-
feited the opportunity to win commutation of their sen-
tence by refusing to “cooperate” with the government. a
Had they “talked” they could have saved their lives. In
our view this is a bargain that should not be offered once
a trial is over and the sentence pronounced. For a doomed
couple to be put under such pressure to force confession
savors of totalitarian justice in a peculiarly cruel form.
Either the circumstances justify execution or the penalty
should be reduced.
As Judge Kaufman stayed execution again pending
another appeal to the Supreme Court by defense counsel,
the White House, in the course of a single week, re-
ceived nearly 15,000 letters protesting the penalty. Many
of them were from Western Europe. It is too easy to
dismiss such letters as Communist-inspired when even the
soberly conservative Gazette de Lausanne of Switzerland
speaks of certain “disturbing facts” in the case, including
what it terms the “scanty content of the treason” charged
against the defendants.
If the sentence is carried out, we predict that the
President will live fo regret his decision.
Perjury or Heresy?
THE motion recently filed by Owen Lattimore’s counsel
to dismiss the seven-count indictment charging him with
perjury raises, with remarkable clarity, a major public
issue: the perversion of the judicial process through the
‘attempt to punish political beliefs, opinions, and atti-
tudes as crimes against the state.
A perversion of the judicial process is implicit in the
circumstances which finally resulted in Lattimore’s in-
dictment. Senator McCarthy's privileged statement that
Lattimore was “one of the top Communist agents in
the United States” had, in the atmosphere of the times,
the effect of a grand-jury indictment. The Tydings com-
mittee investigated the charge and found it to be “a
179
Te
<i
os
:
ace
= : we eee
fraud and a hoax perpetrated on the Senate of the — ehcae to Has MeCarte 2 com rte
United States and the American people”—in effect a
verdict that Lattimore was “not guilty” as charged. One
might have thought that this would end the matter, but
the principle of double jeopardy has of course little rele-
vance in political prosecutions. So the McCarran com-
mittee, after a five months’ study of the files of the
Institute of Pacific Relations, summoned Lattimore and
questioned him at great length in executive session.
The committee then held a series of open or public
hearings which lasted from July 25, 1951, to February 21,
1952. During this period, while the press was being fed
a carefully timed and spaced collection of “sensational”
disclosures, Lattimore vainly sought an opportunity to
get his side of the story before the public. When he was
finally given a chance to testify, six months after the
open hearings started, the committee prevented him from
making the same effective presentation he had been per-
mitted to make before the Tydings committee. He was
cross-examined for twelve days—the longest interroga-
tion of one witness in the history of Congressional in-
quiries—and was hardly able to get in a word of direct
uninterrupted comment. He was told to answer questions,
not to think, and his counsel was repeatedly instructed
that he was not to speak until spoken to. At no point was
Lattimore given a chance to confront or cross-examine
the witnesses against him or to examine documents on
the basis of which he was being minutely questioned. He
was asked about letters, events, and conversations dating
back over a period of fifteen troubled and chaotic years.
Although there was no perceptible order or sequence to
this interrogation, the questions had been carefully writ-
ten out in advance, so one must assume that the purpose
was to trap him into possible perjury rather than to bring
out the facts. At the end of the hearing the committee
solemnly found Lattimore “guilty,” though not of the
offense originally charged by Senator McCarthy, and this
“verdict” precipitated his indictment.
BY ANY common-sense reckoning, therefore, Lattimore
was tried twice and twice acquitted of being a Com-
munist, a Communist spy, or a Soviet agent before he was
finally indicted for perjury. Both “trials” took place be-
fore presiding officers who were not judges and were
conducted by committee counsel who have yet to be
designated prosecuting attorneys. No jury was ever sworn
or questioned as to its competence to hear the case.
Should Lattimore actually go to trfal on, May 11, the
original charge will long since have been forgotten. Thus
his third “trial” will be for the curious purpose of de-
termining which of the Congressional committees that
heard the case reached the correct conclusion.
But the perversion of the judicial process is more
strikingly revealed in the nature of the counts upon
which Lattimore stands indicted, In a prepared sworn
180
- shall enjoy the right .. .
os =~
~ ee
nae
CrGeecEs
he was not and never had been.a ‘Comniaise a Soviet
agent, a sympathizer, or any other kind of promoter of
communism or Communist interests. He is now charged
with having falsely denied that he was ever “a sympa-
thizer or any other kind of promoter of communism or
Communist interests.” Perjury, of course, consists in testi-
fying to the truth of a fact that the accused does not
believe to be true. But the first count raises an issue of
opinion rather than fact. The issue it raises is literally
incapable of objective proof or disproof for it turns, in
the last analysis, on the integrity of Lattimore’s judgment
of his own beliefs and attitudes. It might more properly
be determined by a psychoanalyst than by judge or jury.
If the count is not dismissed, it will mean that for the
first time since the heresy and witchcraft prosecutions of
another day American citizens can be tried, in a criminal
case, for statements of opinion and belief. It will also
mean that anyone in public life who has advocated poli-
cies or expressed opinions with which a Congressional
committee does not agree can be questioned concerning
his opinions and then indicted for perjury because the
committee does not believe that he has honestly described:
his own state of mind or, more crudely put, because the
committee thinks he should be punished for believing
what they think he believes. As his counsel pointed out,
what the government is seeking to accomplish by Lattt-
more’s indictment is its right to enforce the power of a
Congressional committee to make “an unrestrained, ab-
stract, and limitless ey into an individual citizen’s
political frame of mind.” i
The perversion of established judicial procedures is
even more obvious in the light of the Sixth Amendment's
requirement that “in all criminal prosecutions the accused
to be informed of the nature
and cause of the accusation.” What is a “sympathizer”?
What are “Communist interests”? Did President Roose-
velt promote Communist interests when he furnished
Lend-Lease to Russia? Did General Marshall promote
Communist interests when he criticized Chiang Kai-
shek’s government? No bill of particulars could possibly
cure the vagueness of the indictment’s first count. As well.
anticipate what Senator McCarthy is likely to charge next
The NATION
Eopport a ‘charge as vague as @ this one.
The other counts in the indictment are based on trivial
discrepancies, of which two examples will have to suffice.
Lattimore had denied that he knew that one Ch’ao Ting
Chi was a Communist. In drawing up an indictment on
this count the grand jury not only rearranged the order
of his testimony but ignored this significant passage:
“Whether Dr. Chi is a non-Communist expert working
under the Communists, or whether he is a Communist,
I don’t know.” The committee kept insisting that anyone
who “collaborates with Communists for the furtherance
of Communist purposes” is a Communist; Lattimore as
steadily insisted that this definition made little sense.
Another count has to do with his indentification of one
“Asiaticus” as a “left-winger,” perhaps a Socialist, when
the committee insisted that, by their standards, Asiaticus
was a Communist. Pressed to give a yes or no answer on
the basis of the committee’s definition, Lattimore reluc-
tantly but clearly stated: “J think the answer would be
‘No’.” Apart from their triviality these and similar dis-
eee nccs are not shown to have -been “material’’—in
the sense of having a bearing on any legislation which
the committee might have recommended,
But the pettiness of the discrepancies and the failure
to demonstrate their relevance is of minor importance;
what is serious is the manner in which the indictment
perverts the purpose of perjury prosecutions. The perjury .
sanction, as Dr. Clark Byse has pointed out,” is not an
end in itself; it is a means to an end, which is to protect
the investigatory process. The current fashion, however,
is to use perjury prosecutions as a means of avoiding the
difficulties of proving a charge of espionage where no
evidence of: espionage exists or, as in this case, as a means
by which statements of political belief can be punished
although they could not be constitutionally proscribed.
On the outcome of the motion to dismiss the indict-
ment against Lattimore hinge issues of fundamental im-
portance. If the indictment is dismissed, it will mean
that the attempt to punish political beliefs has been mo-
mentarily halted at a shadowy and uncertain ideological
frontier on the other side of which the defendants in
the Smith act cases are imprisoned. But should the indict-
ment stand, it will mean that it is no longer safe for
anyone to express his political views at a Congressional
hearing.
*University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January, 1953, p. 485.
*
J. Alvarez del Va¥o
A Furopean
THE latest idea for defeating Stalinist
Asia is to let the Asians do it by creating
an “Asian Legion.’’ Various American
specialists i in Far Eastern affairs have es-
‘timated the forces which can be drawn
upon for such a body at some 19,-
000,000 in the non-Communist Asian
countries. A “European Legion” would
be both smaller and more difficult to
achieve, but the idea has been gaining
jn popularity.
_ There will be no lack of money. A
1951 amendment to the Mutual Security
Act, sponsored by Representative Charles
J. Kersten of Wisconsin, was the first
official step taken toward financing polit-
ical organizations to fight communism
both inside and outside the Iron Curtain.
The amendment earmarked $100,000,-
000 for aiding people who escape or
wish to escape from the Soviet Union
ebruary 28, 1953
‘ Legion 2
and other Communist countries and en-
rolling them in the defense system of
NATO. Provision is also made, though
less explicitly, for ‘aiding active subver-
sion behind the Curtain. In the most
violent speech he made at the Sixth
Assembly of the United Nations in
Paris, Vishinsky asked the Assembly to
condemn the amendment ‘as an “‘aggres-
sive act.’’ Then and on other occasions
the Soviet, Foreign Minister presented
evidence intended to show that the real
aim of the amendment was “‘to finance
and encourage the formation of ‘battle
formations’ within the Soviet Union and
the countries of its orbit.”
Official aid is, however, only half the
story. Large grants have been made by
private American organizations to carry
on both open propaganda and secret,
conspiratorial activities. Such agencies
as the National Committee for a Free
Europe and the East European Fund are
functioning in broad daylight. The East
European Fund is ‘a subsidiary of the
Ford Foundation; it gives scholarships
to refugees and helps them find homes,
jobs, and so on. The Fund considers it- .
self “non-political”; however, it has con-
tacts with other “‘friendly organizations”
which may be less so. The National
Committee for a Free Europe, with
headquarters in New York’s Empire
State Building, is a voluntary group for-
merly headed by C. D. Jackson, pub-
lisher of Fortune, who has recently been
appointed by Mr. Eisenhower as Presi-
dential adviser on psychological war-
fare.
Some of these agencies have offices
throughout Western Europe and organ-
ize conferences and rallies. According to
181
information put out by the Committee
for the Liberation of the Peoples of
Russia, the following organizations took
part in a large conference held in Wies-
* baden, Germany: the League of Struggle
for *People’s Freedom, the National
Labor Alliance, the Russian People’s
Movement, the Union of Struggle for ,
the Freedom of Russia, the Georgian
National Council, the North Caucasian
Anti-Communist People’s Alliance, and
the Byelorussian Democratic Republican
Council—all national and political in
character.
The political leaders of the embryonic
European Legion are given abundant
opportunities to present their views
through the Voice of America and other
American radio stations broadcasting
from Europe, such as RFAS (Radio in
the American Sector) in Berlin and
Radio Free Europe in Munich and
Frankfurt. Radio Free Europe, which is
financed by the Crusade for Freedom,
has specialized in broadcasts to Eastern
European countries other than Russia.
At first Moscow did not take the Voice
of America broadcasts too seriously. But
as can be seen from the Department of
State Bulletin for December 22, 1952,
American propaganda has become a
much more potent weapon since those
days. In December, 1952, ‘60 per cent
of our total radio effort and a good two-
thirds of all our facilities’ were devoted
to “the European countries east of the
Iron Curtain and to China.” The Voice
makes considerable use of reports by
refugees from Communist areas, pre-
sented as interviews or as direct broad-
casts. These may be stories of personal
sufferings or appeals for desertion and
rebellion. The Voice naturally regards
it-as a victory that, according to H.
Wilson Compton, recently resigned head
of the International Information Admin-
istration, in Bulgaria “Communist gov-
ernment officials had to turn off electri-
city in rural areas” to prevent the people
from listening, while in “Albania and
elsewhere those who have radios are
under constant surveillance.”
It is not easy to estimate what actual
part the Voice of America has played
in the thousands of escapes from Iron
Curtain countries reported monthly by
Western intelligence services. But there
are some cases which prove its claims.
Thus the twelve Polish seamen who
stormed the bridge of their mine-
182
. ¥
sweeper, locked up their officers, and
brought their ship into the Swedish
port of Ystad, told port officials that
“their mutiny was inspired by United
States broadcasts.”
However, in the opinion of European
leaders of the anti-Communist crusade,
the Voice of America is the most inno-
c
cent and ineffectual part of it. They are
placing their hopes on the “active
groups’”” working within the various
countries. Some of these are doubtless
recruited from disaffected native ele-
ments; members have also been smug-
gled across the frontiers in disguise, or
have entered illegally, by parachute or
other means. The leaders regard the
present period as one of training and
preparation; “‘active groups’ are to in-
tensify their operations and become a
true underground when the international
situation grows mote critical. _
It is true that the efficiency of many
of these groups is impaired by the cold
war which they ate waging among
themselves and which has sorely tried
the patience of Admiral Kirk, General
Bedell Smith, Mr. Allen Dulles, and
others who have tackled the herculean
task of creating political harmony
among them. They are united only in
their anti-Communist passion. Apart
from that they represent innumerable
conflicting tendencies, ranging from old-
fashioned monarchism through fascism
to the many minute subdivisions of the
anti-Communist left. In most of the na-
tional committees, however, the extreme
reactionary, intransigent elements have
come out on top. In the context of cold
war this was inevitable. Unrecon-
structed Nazis, Iron Guardists, fascists
of every vintage give tone and impetus
to the movement. Many committees are
nothing but fronts fabricated to draw
off American money for the benefit of
~ ae
+a
the people in charge. 1
would be a serious error S
mate the contribution of these groups to
the anti-Soviet crusade or their capacity
to turn the American people into. en-
thusiastic supporters of such a crusade.
I attended last summer the Annual
Conference on American Foreign Policy
held at Colgate University. The panel
that attracted the greatest interest was
devoted to examining “Soviet vulner-
abilities at home and the possibilities of
exploiting them.” The star of the day
was Alexander Kerensky, who, even
when speaking English, fully justifies
his fame as‘an orator. In fact, such was —
the confidence with which he and other
speakers discussed ways and means of
destroying “from within” the Soviet
government and its satellites that the
former American Minister to Hungaty,
Nathaniel P. Davis, felt called upon to
pour cold water on the exalted hopes of
speakers and audience. And this hap-
pened last summer, before President
Eisenhower had made his American
Legion speech and before Secretary
Dulles had described the “peaceful”
methods—including sabotage and weap-
ons dropped by parachute—available
for restoring the freedom of the “en-
slaved lands.” .
As for the actual “‘liberation” of the
Red satellites, James Burnham, who has
assumed the role of major strategist of
the crusade, has presented his views in a
new book, ‘‘Containment or Liberation.”
Mr. Burnham declares himself in favor
of decisive action by America to destroy
Communist power regardless of the re-
luctance or opposition of the other
members of the Atlantic coalition. ““The
leader of the coalition,” he writes,
“should be ready to welcome every ally
but should not depend on one.” Still, he
maintains that an active policy of sub-
verting and undermining the Commu-
nist strongholds can be carried out with-
out the risk of a general war. “Those
strong actions that have been taken since
1947 have not brought~on a general
war, though some of them, as in Greece, °
Korea, and Turkey, have been in them-
selves undeniably provocative {italics :
mine}. From Moscow's point of view, a
mass revolt in a part of her empire,
capable of spreading like fire in the dry
season, is hardly a happy moment for
starting a general war.”
Needless to say, the Germans occupy
The NATION -
>
i?
promoters of a European Legion.
Last October the West German authori-
ties became alarmed at the activities of
“a rightist radical underground. organi-
zation whose members were trained as
-partisans to fight the Russians’—but
who were more privately prepared to
liquidate German Socialists, liberals,
and Communists. According to the As-
sociated Press, Dr. Wilhelm Hoégner,
Bavarian Minister of the Interior, stated
that the organization “had contacts with
the Americans.” More recently and more
sensationally, the arrest by the British of
the Naumann group, based on the Ruhr
on ono! is mae pians oe all ;
a i Diisseldorf, revealed the propor-
tions which the Nazi conspiracy was
assuming. The magnitude of the help
given to the new Nazis by the Ruhr
magnates was especially surprising.
Some people, I know, think that if
the West fails to enlist these Germans
to fight on its side against Russia, the
Russians may get them to fight against
the West. This, of course, is possible.
But I was living in Germany in the early
twenties, and I can remember the Ger-
man right’s successful flirtation with
Russia at that time—it was carried on by
the pro-Russian aristocrats
around Count Reventlow and the officers
DEPRESSION
Can the G.O.P. Block It?
TWO factors are primarily responsible
for our current prosperity: the increase
in military expenditures and the con-
tinued high level of private capital in-
vestments. Forecasts differ in detail, but
most business men and economists agree
that it is unsafe to assume that both
factors can continue to operate in-
definitely.
It is dn the basis of this calculation
that some quarters expect an economic
recession as early as the second half of
1953. Others set the date at 1954 or
even 1955. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., chair-
man of the board of the General Motors
* Corporation, for instance, declared re-
cently that “while armament will de-
termine the levels of work and employ-
ment to a degree, other factors indicate
a period of economic adjustment -in
1954 or 1955. . . . Business cannot con-
tinue its vast spendings for capital
goods.” On this point Mr. Sloan finds
support among several economists who
for a long time worked closely with
President Truman’s economic advisers.
FRITZ STERNBERG is the author of
the widely discussed book “Capitalism
and Socialism on Trial.” It is soon to be
published in France, Yugoslavia, and
a
F February 28, 1953
One of these economists, Professor Ger-
hard Colm, states in his unusually read-
able book, ‘“The American Economy in
1960”:
If defense spending should level off or
contract at the same time as business in-
vestments are on the downgrade of the
cycle, a serious recession would de-
velop. .. . It is possible that an economic
downswing ‘might begin even before de-
fense spending is reduced, if business
should begin to curtail inventories and
reduce investments... .
Thus we have no assurance that a fur-
ther rise in defense spending may not lead
to renewed inflation (unless counteracted
by a stronger stabilization program). Nor
have we any assurance that a contraction
in defense spending may not coincide
with, and aggravate, a downturn in the
business cycle (unless counteracted by an
effective recovery program).
Some circles brand as false or exag-
gerated the fear that a decline in military
spending may lead ultimately to a crisis.
The following argument is adduced:
In 1953-54 military expenditures will
presumably not decline more than $15,
000,000,000; in 1945 at the war’s end,
they fell by many times that amount. If
no crisis eventuated in 1945-46, why
should it now?
To refute this argument it is necessary
to emphasize the differences between the
grouped ~
grouped around General von Seckt. No-
body felt happier about this flirtation
than the Machiavellian leaders who di-
rected the destinies of the German Com-
munist Party; but some of them lived
long enough to see the German army in-
vade Russia in 1941 to the applause of
those Germans who had used their over-
tures to Moscow as a form of blackmail
to force concessions from the West.
Whatever the future may hold for the
European Legion, its actual and poten-
tial members and their activities today
are one more obstacle to a peace by
negotiation and one more factor work-
ing for war.
by Fritz Sternberg
present situation and that which existed
at the end of the war. True, military
spending did decline severely then; Pro-
fessor Colm points out that between
1945 and 1947 federal spending was
reduced by $110,000,000,000 (in 1951
dollars), and production declined by
$50,000,000,000. Despite these drops,
unemployment rose by only 1,600,000.
This relatively small effect on employ-
ment can be explained by the extensive
use of overtime during the war and the
retirement from the productive process
of several million war-time workers—old
people, youngsters, and women. Today
the situation is entirely different. There
is less overtime, and the young, the old,
and women are not utilized nearly so
much as during the war. Professor Colm:
rightly states: “If total production
should drop from 1952 to 1954 by 14
per cent—that is, the same percentage
by which production dropped from 1944
to 1946—a considerable rise in unem- |
ployment, probably beyond the margin
of an acceptable rate, would be inevi-
table.”
There are other points in which the
situation today differs materially from
that at the end of the war. At that time
the decline in military expenditures was
to a great extent made up by increased
183
ere
—
pe:
he
s
But What If We Get off the Track?
expenditures for consumer goods and by
a rise in private investments. Today the
danger lies precisely in the possibility
that there may be a simultaneous decline
of military spending and private invest-
ment. It was- this danger that persuaded
two economic advisers to the Truman
Administration, Messrs. Keyserling and
Turner, to devote considerable space in
a recent report to policies which they
said would be needed to sustain pros-
perity. “Some time beyond the horizon
of the immediate outlook,’”’ they wrote,
“the predominant economic risks to be
counteracted may be deflationary rather
than inflationary.” To combat an im-
pending recession they propose what is
in effect another New Deal program.
However Mr. Clark, the third eco-
nomic adviser to Truman, has gone on
record against Keyserling’s and Turnet’s
interpretation, rejecting outright the sub-
stance of their proposals and declaring
that it was not yet necessary to deal with
the question. Considering the make-up
of the present Administration and of the
Congress, it is entirely possible that no
serious effort will be made to prevent an
economic recession.
Once a recession starts, however, it
is clear that the government will have to
do something. “There is today a gen-
eral recognition,” writes Professor Colm,
“that in case of a serious recession the
government would have to adopt posi-
tive counter-measures. While there can
be no insurance that such’ measures
would be adopted promptly enough to
prevent a recession, at least they can be
184
re en
mapectedd to prevent
a recession from
developing into a
deep depression.”
Similarly, Mr. Sloan
has said, “It is clear
that the people will
never again accept
the hardships of a
severe depression
they will, in
desperation, de-
mand something
different—sound or
unsound.”
International as
well as domestic
considerations will
probably impel the
government to take
counter - measures
sooner than it did during the depression
which started in 1929. Unlike the Rus-
sia of 1929, the Russia of today ranks
second in the world as an industrial
power, and any sustained weakening
of the United States would automatically
strengthen it. Moreover, to the countries
of Western Europe, an American depres-
sion would be a body blow whose effects
would be much more severe than those
of the 1929 depression. There was no
such thing as a dollar gap then, nor was
all Western Europe, including England,
in debt. Today the area’s debts exceed
all its capital assets beyond its borders,
and it has been suffering a dollar gap
since the end of World War II. Thus
a depression now would hit a Continent
incomparably more vulnerable than it
was in 1929, a Continent which is able
to maintain its foreign trade and balance
of payments only with American aid.
One must reckon, too, that in the
event of a recession the American for-
eign-trade sector would itself be particu-
larly sensitive. “The Economic Cooper-
ation Administration has estimated,”
writes the London Economist, “that
when United States consumption falls
by 4 per cent, its total imports fall by
about a quarter and its imports from the
sterling areas by about a third. Accord-
ing to a recent United Nations estimate,
a fall of only 4 per cent in the level of
American employment might increase
the world dollar gap by as much as
$10,000,000,000 a year.’ Britain has
larger gold and foreign-exchange stocks
than, say, Germany, but even Britain's
a. was before wo War IL as th
United Nations “Economic Survey of 3
Europe’’ for 1951 clearly showed:
. . there are several reasons why even
minor disturbances now have serious re-
percussions on international payments . . .
one important reason is that exchange
reserves have not yet recovered since the
war to 4 point~commensurate with the
great increase in international prices and
the volume of international trade from the
“pre-war to the post-war period.
Thus during the 1938 recession exports
of the sterling areas as a whole to the
United States fell by more than one-third
in volume and by almost 50 per cent in
dollar value, compared with the 1937
levels. . . . These movements, however,
gave rise to no serious alarm; even after
this decline the United Kingdom’s gold
and dollar reserves were still almost equal
to the total imports of the entire sterling
areas from the dollar area and from
Western Europe during the year 1938. By
contrast, at the end of 1951 the gold and
dollar reserves of the United Kingdom,
although still well above the low point
reached in September, 1949, were equal to
only about one-third of the total value of
the sterling area’s imports from the dollar
area and Western Europe during the year.
Granted, then, that a sustained Amer-
ican recession could bring grave danger
to Western Europe—and to Japan, too
' —and thus deal a serious blow to our
foreign policy, the question arises: How
shall a recession be combated? Or, to
use Mr. Sloan’s phrase, how will an
“adjustment’’ be brought about?
A government in the Roosevelt tra-
dition would presumably answer with a
new New Deal which would reach even
more deeply into the American economy
than the original did. For the original
was never able to liquidate unemploy-
ment entirely. A néw New Deal would
no doubt attempt to meet the challenge
set forth by Professor Colm:
. in the transition from an-economy of
rising defense expenditures and rising de-
fense investments, consumption must rise
not only in absolute terms but also per-
centage-wise. . . . As about two-thirds of
personal income consists of wages and
salaries, the adjustment to the lower level °
of defense spending and defense-support-
* ing investments requires that the aggregate
wage and salary receipts increase in this
period slightly more than the rate of
growth of the economy.
The employment of state powers to
increase wages and mass consumption,
however, is not likely to be the path
The NATION:
C———
hee. OS a ee ee
‘oe
aly Wine
P
| follow. In
bilities remain: first, expansion of the
Point Four program; second, another
increase in military expenditures.
It is virtually impossible, as things
stand, to expect a Point Four program
which will be large enough to counter-
balance a strong recession. Present plans
call for an annual reduction of $15,
000,000,000 to $20,000,000,000 in mili-
tary expenditures; in contrast, Point Four
expenditures for 1953 amount to only
a few hundred million dollars. There is
nothing to indicate that either the Ad-
ministration or Congress is ready to ex-
pand Point Four spending by the ten or
twenty times that would be necessary to
take up the slack. Even if the will were
there, it would be simply impossible to
increase the Point Four program sud-
denly from a few hundred millions to
the necessary billions.
Yet intervention in any world eco-
nomic crisis would have to be quick,
and, to repeat Mr. Sloan’s comment,
“the people will in desperation de-
mand something difgerent—sound or un-
sound.” Thus pressure will undoubtedly
heory two other possi-
. 7
i. ed
arise for a renewed increase in military
expenditures. M ,
Reasons for such a policy would not
be hard to find. When military spending
began to climb with the advent of the
Korean war, it was argued that negotia-
tion with the Russians was possible only
on the basis of our own military strength,
and that in any case we must catch up
militarily with the Russians. Some ex-
perts believe that we shall attain military
equality with the Soviets in 1954 or
thereabouts. But advocates of renewed
military spending will argue: why
should we stop with a fifty-fifty ratio?
Why not create a sixty-forty ratio
which would give us overwhelming mili-
tary advantage? After all, the United
States today produces more than three
times as much steel as the Soviet Union.
With this steel we could build up mili-
tary production to the point where we
could increase our strength in both
Europe and Asia.
These could be persuasive arguments
when backed by increasing unemploy-
ment and decreasing wages on the do-
mestic front. Certainly they will sound
more persuasive to the policy-makers of
the present Administration than would
any New Deal measures, which they
would put into effect only reluctantly
and on a small scale if at all.
The dangers of such a policy are ob-
vious. For one thing, it could lead us
another step nearer to war. The long-
range economic effects could be disas-
trous. It is difficult enough to shift away
from a military budget of $50,000,-
000,000 or more; ig would be much
more difficult if military spending were
to rise to $80,000,000,000 or more.
It is not impossible that the first signs
of an economic recession will become
perceptible during the months immedi-
ately preceding the 1954 Congressional
elections. Those who oppose renewed
military spending as a cure for a reces-
sion must lay their plans now. The New
Dealers among the Democrats, the trade
unions, the economic experts who have
already recognized the dangers which lie
ahead must avoid the error of waiting
sfor the recession. to come. It will be too
Jate then. In contrast to what is likely
to be the Eisenhower policy, the opposi-
tion must plan not merely to combat a
recession but to prevent it.
ASIA EYES FORMOSA
Ike'Worries His Allies . . by W. Macmabon Ball
Melbourne, Australia
GENERAL EISENHOWER’S decision
on Formosa may not produce any quick
or dramatic change in the local military
situation, and it may have wider conse-
quences of a sort that he can hardly
' desire. It seems likely to obscure or
* obliterate the moral credentials of the
* United Nations in East Asia, to deepen
+ suspicion and hostility between East and
' West, to put new strains on Western
_ friendships, to increase the risks of a
third world war.
As a security organization, the United
W. MACMAHON BALL, a contribut-
ing editor of this journal, is professor
of political science at the University of
Melbourne.
a
February 28, 1953
Nations was founded on two simple and
clear principles: that its decisions would
be joint decisions and that they would
have only one aim—to prevent or resist
aggression. The U. N. was not estab-
lished to suppress any particular ideology
or to promote the strategic interests of
any one nation. On Formosa General
Eisenhower clearly made a unilateral de-
cision, without consulting his allies in
South Korea. Yet it is ridiculous to con-
tend that what the United States does
about Formosa is entirely its own busi-
ness, while what it does about Korea is
the United Nations’ business. Whether
operations are carried out from Korea
or from Formosa, they are part of the
same campaign, and every country sup-
porting the United Nations in Korea is
directly implicated in America’s Formosa
policy.
Here, then, is the basic question for
the U. N. Is the U. N. to be restored to
ats original design—to. act only after
consultation and agreement, to work
only for collective security—or is ‘it to
take a different shape? Is it to become a
power bloc made up of nations driven
by the fear of communism to identify
their own national. interests with those
of the United States and to accept and
support Washington decisions on all
major intérnational issues? There need
be nothing illogical about such an ar-
rangement. If you believe that militant
communism is an immediate threat to
everything you treasure, dwarfing all
other dangers, that your only defense is
185
nts
pte
ed
the possession of superior physical force,
that America is the only country able
to maintain or acquire this ‘superior
force, then it is doubtless sensible to
subordinate everything else to increasing
the force at America’s disposal. In these
circumstances the strategic interests of
the United States and of the new United
Nations will be identical.
The fear of communism has been the
main factor keepiag so many nations
aligned with the United States. But it
is doubtful whether this fear by itself
could long supply the United States with
sufficient reliable allies. For American
political leaders the fear of communism
is the master fear. For some of the
peoples whose support America desires it
is hardly a fear at all; for others it is
only one fear among others. Despite the
repression, the executions, and the im-
prisonments in Communist China, it is
doubtful whether the Chinese people
could be brought to fear Mao Tse-tung
more than the return to power of Chiang
Kai-shek. It is doubtful whether the
Annamese could be brought to fear
permanent victory for Ho Chi-minh
more than a permanent victory for the
French. The masses of East Asia cannot
be easily excited about the need to de-
fend the démocratic freedoms from
Communist tyranny. They want only
food and shelter and peace.
This, perhaps, is the most important
consideration of all: that for many mil-
lions in Asia and Europe the fear of war
is greater than the fear of communism,
whereas for many Americans the fear of
‘communism is greater than the fear of
war. Asians and Europeans -are not in-
terested in the promise of liberation after
186
a, Set eG et a
iS’ Megs in eas
mei
the next war; they are only interested in
averting war. They must accordingly be
convinced that each step in America’s
policy, besides strengthening America’s
military position in the event of war,
will increase the chances of averting
war. And from the purely military
standpoint it should always be remem-
bered that the force available consists
not merely of weapons and bases but of
men who are ready to fight and die.
And men will be ready to do that only
if they believe in their cause. Moral
leadership is not less important than
material leadership. It may be unwise to
ignore the conscience and the judgment
of your friends, to count too confidently
that fear and want will always bind them
to you. If henceforth critical interna-
tional decisions are to be taken by the
United States alone and not by the
United Nations, the military position of
the non-Communist world will hardly
be strengthened.
The decision to enable and encourage
the Chinese Nationalists to strike at the
mainland is an application of General
Eisenhower's principle that if fighting
has to be done in Asia, Asians should
fight Asians. The trouble about this
policy is that the regimes backed by
America—regimes dominated by Chiang
Kai-shek, Syngman Rhee, and Bao Dai
—are regarded everywhere in Asia as
Western puppets drawing their nour-
ishment not from the soil of Asia but
from American dollars. In the eyes of
an ordinary Asian it is one thing for a
Western country to send a gunboat or an
airplane to enforce its will—Asians are
used to that; it is another thing to try
to set brother against brother, father
against son. That is to assault the soul as
well as the body of Asia.
The tragic conflict between Asia’s
need for America’s economic help, com-
bined with its fear of communism, and
its need for solidarity is perhaps no-
where so stark as in Japan. Japan's busi-
ness leaders, who control its political
leaders, not only fear communism but
would face something like immediate
economic disaster if American procure-
ments, part of America’s “positive’’ mili-
tary policy in East Asia, should dwindle
or disappear. Yet they know that, in the
long term, Japan’s economy is hardly
viable without trade with China and
Manchuria. And they know that, in the
short term, the best they could hope for
Par
~ the
tion” after all their cities Ee had a
stronger taste of what Hiroshima. ae %
Nagasaki experienced in 1945. That is
why Japan is such a reluctant ally.
If the Chinese Nationalists in Formosa
launch hit-and-run attacks on the main-
land, if they try to blockade the main-
land ports, Peking can be expected: to
retaliate. And it is reasonable to assume
that the Communists could hit Formosa
harder than the Nationalists could hit —
mainland. What then? Are the
Chinese Nationalists to be considered
expendable in the interest of the “free
world’? Such a policy would not en-
courage other allies. Presumably Amer-
ican forces would do all in their power,
by sea and air, to protect ‘“democracy’s
stronghold’” in Formosa, My own
country is directly concerned here, since
under the ANZUS pact any attack on
American shipping or aircraft in the
Pacific is to be considered a threat to
Australia’s peace and safety and we are
obliged “‘to act to meet the common
danger.”
It may well be that General. Eisen-
hower does not plan any assault on the
China mainland by American air or sea
forces but hopes to restrict the new
operations to Nationalist raids that will
divert Communist forces from Korea and
the Indo-China frontier. This surely is
to underestimate the intelligence of
Chiang Kai-shek. He will not make at-
tacks on the mainland just for the fun
of it or out of gratitude for American
aid. Chiang will regard these attacks
merely as the first steps toward over-
throwing the Communists and reinstat-
ing himself in China. He knows that he
could never conquer the Communists
with his own forces, that only America
has the military power to shake Peking.
It is therefore clearly to his interest to
widen and deepen the conflict, to exploit
every chance to involve America in full-
scale war in China. In no other way
could he conceivably be returned to
power. Chiang’s attitude toward war and
peace has been clearly revealed in his
official utterances during the last
eighteen months. Whenever there has
seemed a chance of the truce talks pro-
ducing an armistice, the Kuomintang
has shown acute anxiety.
To help and encourage a man whose
future depends on extending the war
seems an odd way to try to end the war.
The NATION
—— ee a
————— era
Fi Oe Far or Sotth
?
Washington
YOU always have to look around a cor-
ner to see where this Administration is
going, and even then you can’t be quite
sure. Right now, for instance, govern-
ment policy seems to be moving in two
directions at once—toward deflation and
also toward a new round of deficit-
financing inflation.
The deflationary signs are the clearest
and the most ominous. Take the Treas-
_ ury Department’s recent decision to in-
crease interest rates in the refinancing of
its short-term bonds. About $9,000,-
000,000 of one-year certificates are ma-
turing. These are held largely by banks,
insurance companies, and other big in-
vestors and serviced at present at 17%
per cent. Under the Treasury program
they can be exchanged for securities with
longer maturities bearing interest of
from 214 to 2!/ per cent.
As an immediate effect, this will
increase the government's interest pay-
ments by something between $40,000,-
000 and $50,000,000 a year. As a sec-
ondary effect, because the rise in the
annual debt-servicing charge will have to
be offset? it will necessitate either higher
taxes—in a regime sternly pledged to
cutting the tax rate—or counter-balanc-
ing reductions in government expendi-
tures elsewhere. Such reductions will
obviously be made in the welfare sections
of the budget. Since it is the lower-
‘income brackets of the population that
benefit from the welfare expenditures,
and the higher brackets that benefit from
the bond-funding program, this adds
up to a neat redistribution of income in
favor of the well-to-do.
In addition, it could very easily
happen that the rise in government in-
terest rates would raise rates in other
fields—specifically, in the view of many
competent judges, in the field of hous-
BRUCE CATTON is writing a series of
articles on the new Washington Admin-
istration. :
February 28, 1953
ing. At the present time the Federal
Housing Administration insures mort-
gages carrying an interest rate of 414
per cent. When one-half of one per cent
is added as an insurance charge, the rate
is 43/4, per cent. F. H. A. participation
in the mortgage market is now up to
about one-third of the total, and in gen-
eral the rest of the market follows the
F. H. A. rate fairly closely. Incidentally,
it could quite logically be argued that
F. H. A.-insured mortgages are in such
demand that rates ought to be lowered.
Mortgage bankers and home builders,
however, have been pressing for higher
rates, on the plea that it is hard for the
consumer to get financing under present
rates and that this fact is a serious block
in the way of a bigger building program.
Mortgage interest rates are now likely to
follow the example set by the bond-
funding operation and increase approxi-
mately one-half of one per cent.
The Eightieth Congress, which was
not given to radical judgments, estimated *
that the country needed a million new
homes a year for at least a ten-year
period. Since then, private building has
proceeded on just about that level, which
means that the country still needs from
four to five million new homes. A rise
Republican Economy
Though nothing has been printed
about it, the Republicans moving
into Washington are complaining
bitterly about the low government
salaries, high cost of living, and
niggardly expense and travel allow-
ances. This is true of everyone from
high officials and Congressmen
down to the smaller job-holders.
Men accustomed to normal business
expense accounts find their new $9-
a-day travel allowance ridiculous.
Look for pressure to change all this.
—Newsweek, February 9.
by Bruce Catton
of one-half of one per cent in the inter-
est rates on enough long-term mortgages
to build five million homes could add
up to a fairly sizable piece of change.
It could also add up to a heavy load
on the building industry—enough of a
load, taken in connection with other
factors, to start a real slow-down in
private building, which is a key element
in maintaining the general level of the
national economy. Coupled with this is
the fact that farm income is seriously
off, and that the new Administration
appears to be driving for. a general
shake-down that would encourage a con-
tinuation of the decline. As an added
factor, the rising curve of military ex-
penditures is flattening out.
The situation is further complicated by
the enormous pressure for substantial tax
reductions, pressure which the Admin-
istration was unable to block on the first
round; the House Ways and Means
Committee triumphantly voted a 5 per
cent cut in individual income taxes.
However, in his first press conference
last week the President reiterated his op-
position to any tax cut this year. But the
pressure is there, and the situation is
worth a little study. The excess-profits
tax is due to die by mid-year, and the
most anyone has suggested to date is
that it be extended for another six
months. An Administration as much in-
fluenced as this one by the boys who
would gain by the lapse of the excess-
profits tax is not too likely to keep it.
It should also be remembered that the
11 per cent income-tax rise voted be-
cause of the Korean emergency is due
to die at the end of the year, and it is
all but impossible to imagine a Congress
letting the excess-profits tax die and
keeping the rise in general income taxes.
If all this happens—and it is a fairly
good bet, as of now, that it will—some-
thing like $5,000,000,000 will be lopped
off of the government’s income. That
could mean open and avowed deficit
financing, despite Republican campaign
187
pledges. It is perhaps worth noticing that
some of the economists most concerned
about the prospect of a general down-
swing of the economy are ready to wel-
come such a step. Whatever else might
be said about it, they argue, it could
offset the deflationary trends.
The most likely outcome, however,
would be ferocious pressute on the wel-
fare sections of the national budget.
Significantly enough, on the same day
that the House Ways and Means Com-
mittee voted to cut individual income
taxes the House Appropriations Com-
mittee knocked out a request for $24,
000,000 for federal aid to schools. Prac-
tically the whole sum was subsequently
restored by the House, but the commit-
tee’s action shows what will be tried.
One of the Eisenhower Administra-
tion’s first acts, it will be recalled, was an
order calling for close review of all
federal construction projects and speci-
fying that any not crucially necessary or
substantially under way should be cut
off short. A number of things could be
affected, notably Bureau of Reclamation
undertakings in the West amounting to
$300,000,000. The fact that Congress
may have authorized a project and voted
money for it makes no difference. The
pruning knife is out and is certain to be
used if the present drift away from
a balanced budget continues.
Beyond all of that, of course, there
would be a revival of -neo-isolationist
pressure for sharp curtailment of foreign
aid. A really serious drop in govern-
SS ht Oe
mental income would giv
tremendous power.
Unfortunately, the Administration
really believes its campaign propaganda,
down to the last inspired sylible. It
really believes that enormous savings can
be made by cutting from the govern-
ment pay rolls the people whom Secre-
tary of Commerce Weeks recently. re-
ferred to delicately as “dead wood and
poison oak’’ and that business methods
can bring lower taxes, a balanced budg-
.et, and no particular cut in any im-
portant government operation. Because
it believes these things, it can start down
the paths of inflation and deflation at
the same time with a light heart. Where
it will finally land cannot even be
guessed.
I'M STILL WAITING
Four-Year Loyalty Case . . by James Kutcher
THE wheels of justice turn slowly in
“loyalty” cases. In 1948 I started out
to regain the government job I had lost
under the “loyalty” program. Proceed-
ing through the designated channels of
appeal, my case went successively before
a branch loyalty board, the head of my
government agency, the federal Loyalty
Review Board, which covers all govern-
ment agencies, a federal District Court,
and a Circuit Court of Appeals. All
tuled against me except the last.
The United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia ruled
unanimously on October 16, 1952, that
my discharge from a clerical job with
the Veterans’* Administration in New-
atk four years before was improperly
effected and must be reversed. The
American Civil Liberties Union, which
had entered a brief in my behalf as
THE CASE of James Kutcher, legless
veteran of World War I, has been mak-
ing news for the past four years. The
Socialist Workers Party is a fusion of
Trotskyite groups which split off from
the Communist Party in 1929; it is
bitterly opposed to the Stalin regime.
188
amicus curiae, called the decision a ‘‘no-
table victory.” And so it was, for this
was the first time any court had ever
“ruled against the government in a
“Joyalty’”’ case. Nevertheless, I am still
barred from my job, and it may take an-
other four years of litigation and appeal
to obtain a final legal seitlement. Laymen
who wonder why I was not automati-
cally reinstated by the court’s decision do
not undefstand the obstacles encountered
by people fighting for civil rights. Let me
explain a few things about the process.
In asking the court to restore my job
with back pay, my lawyers had raised a
number of basic questions: (1) Is Presi-
dent Truman’s “loyalty” program, set
up by Executive Order 9835 in March, —
1947, constitutional, or does it violate
government employees’ rights of free
‘speech, press, and association? (2) Does
the Attorney General have the power to
issue a list of ‘subversive’ organiza-
tions? (3) Can such a list legally be’
issued without affording the organiza-
tions concerned a chance to answer what-
ever specific charges are brought against
them? (In 1951 the Supreme Court, in
ruling on the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee
- Veterans’
Committee case, rebuked the Attorney
General for putting organizations on his
list without a hearing.) (4) Does the
Socialist Workers Party, membership in
which was the sole reason for my dis-
charge, properly belong on such a list?
In addition, my discharge was chal-
lenged on the technical ground that it
violated the standards of the President's
executive order. One part of that order
stated that membership in a blacklisted
organization was to be regarded as
“simply one piece of evidence” in de-
termining the loyalty of employees, and
that the decision was to be based on “‘all
the evidence.’”’ The branch loyalty board.
on whose recommendation I ‘was sus-
pended in October, 1948, asserted that
it had considered all the evidence, al-
though it had refused to hear any argu-
ment on the question of whether or not
the Socialist Workers Party was actually
subversive. I appealed this ruling to
General Carl Gray, Jr., head of the
Administration. Before he
acted, the Loyalty Review Board issued
Memorandum 32, informing all gov-
ernment agencies that it was ‘‘manda-
tory’ for them to discharge all members
The NATION
. Bae
- Fras -*4
_ seeking “to alter te nin of govern-
R Pigent of the. United States by unconsti-
tutional means.” General Gray then
ruled against me, saying the memoran-
dum left him “no choice.” The Loyalty
Review Board, to which I appealed,
affirmed General Gray’s decision. Un-
‘like the original branch loyalty board,
it made no pretense that it had con-
sidered ‘‘all the evidence.”” When I ap-
pealed to the federal District Court in
Washington, Judge Edward M. Curran
held that the reason General Gray gave
for ruling as he did was “immaterial,”
-and I had been fired in a proper way.
The Circuit Court of Appeals based
its opinion largely on this procedural
question. It decided unanimously that
Memorandum 32 was invalid because it
conflicted with the provisions of the
“loyalty” order. It told General Gray
that he had no right to discharge me on
the sole ground of my membership in
the Socialist Workers Party, and that he
was required to consider ‘‘all the evi-
dence.”” But the court’s reversal of my
discharge did not automatically mean
my reinstatement, since it simultaneous-
ly left standing, pending further action
by General Gray, the order that had sus-
pended me in October, 1948.
On the bigger issues the court either
refused to take a position or favored the
government. It expressed no opinion on
the constitutionality of the “loyalty’’ pro-
gram, evidently taking that for granted.
It ruled’ that while membership in a
listed group could not be cited as the
sole reason for discharging a federal
employee, it might serve as the basis for
“disbelief in the loyalty of an employee,”
. justifying his discharge when the
‘authorities stated they had considered all
the evidence. It also reaffirmed its pre-
- vious decision in the Dorothy Bailey
case—upheld by a four-to-four vote by
the Supreme Court—that the Attorney
General’s list was “competent evidence”
and that loyalty proceedings ‘‘do not re-
quire the constitutional and traditional
safeguards of a judicial trial.”
And so, after four years, I am still
suspended and facing the possibility of
going through the same arduous process
all over again. General Gray can no
longer fire me solely for my member-
ship in the Socialist Workers Party. But
he can fire me on this ground if he ac-
a February 28, 1953
ee ee
a
7 Oe ee ee _
ninpaiied. his eandectsidee is. ait hs tates
ment that he has considered “all the
- evidence,”
even if all the evidence con-
sists of nothing more than my member-
ship. The voiding of Memorandum 32
is a notable but by no means complete
victory in this fight for civil rights.
I have been able to carry the fight
this far because my case has received
exceptionally widespread support from
the American people. Shortly after I was
suspended, a number of prominent
citizens formed the non-partisan Kutcher
Civil Rights Committee to help me.
Through this committee and the na-
tional speaking tours it arranged for
me, nearly 800 labor, liberal, civic, re-
ligious, veterans’, and minority groups
were enlisted on my side. With their
aid I was able to raise the almost $5,000
already used for legal expenses alone.
(This figure, I should explain, is the
absolute minimum necessary for such
expenses; my lawyers, believing that im-
portant principles are at stake, have
charged only what they had to spend.)
Unhappily many persons are not so
fortunately situated. Some accused gov-
ernment employees are reluctant to air
their case in public by reason of their
personal or family position. Others have
not succeeded in obtaining financial aid
and have not had such public-spirited
lawyers to handle their appeals. Is it
any wonder that most of them resigned
when first accused, and that virtually
none carried their appeals beyond the
administrative stages and into the
courts? Is there any doubt that the pro-
longed and costly procedure in “‘loyalty’’
cases has worked hardship on many in-
nocent persons? A favorable decision in
my case will help them.
Four years ago I said that I was ap-
pealing my discharge not only to regain
my job and clear my name but because
I feared that the “loyalty” purge, unless
militantly opposed, would spread far
beyond the confines of government em-
ployment. These fears have been con-
firmed by the growing effort to impose
thought control on the American peo-
ple; many who were then complacent
about what was happening to govern-
ment employees have since themselves
felt the blows of McCarthyism and
McCarranism. The need for all be-
lievers in the Bill of Rights to join in
defense of the civil liberties of all be-
comes more acute every day.
Proposals for Peace
Vill
BY LORD CECIL
ALL civilized mankind hates war, and
most of its governments desire peace.
Therefore an institution like the United
Nations to foresee and avoid interna-
tional misunderstanding should be of
great service,.and we should all support
it. But the Charter, as settled at San
Francisco, went farther than this. It set
up a kind of super-state, with elaborate
machinery.to enable the five chief powers
which won the Second World War to
enforce its decrees. That was going too
far, even if the chief powers had been
unanimous. But as we know they were
not, since Russia has adopted a material-
istic philosophy inconsistent with Chris-
tian civilization. We have merely to look
at such a farcical horror as the recent
trials at Prague to see how far Russia
has drifted away from the principles
which have guided the rest of the civi-
lized world for so many centuries.
What, then, must be done? I think we
must give up the idea of an international
body with power to force all nations
to accept its decisions and substitute the
conception of a body which will make,
by majority, recommendations in inter-
national matters, it being understood that
all who voted for such recommendations
would do their best to see that they were
carried out.
That may seem to some a retrograde
step. But I believe it is the best we can
do at present. Joint action by sovereign
nations can only succeed so far as they
are agreed. In other words, international
peace can only be attained by enabling
the peace-loving nations to take the steps
necessary for it and not by trying to
force them to do things which they do
not believe will make for peace. In the
meantime it is no doubt necessary to
carry through such rearmament as may
be needed to prevent successful aggres-
sion by the materialists.
LORD CECIL has made the establish-.
ment of peace the dominant purpose of
a long and distinguished career. He was
president of the League of Nations
Union from 1923 to 1945 and is hon-
orary life president of the United Na-
tions Association. In 1937 he won the
Nobel peace prize.
189
BOOKS
Evolution Has Evolved by Joseph Wood Krutch
EVOLUTION IN ACTION. By Julian
Huxley. Harper and Brothers. $2.75.
HAT the grandson of Charles Dar-
win and the grandson of Thomas
Huxley should have published almost
very different books
about evolution is a picturesque coinci-
dence (“The Next Million Years,’”’ by
Charles Galton Darwin, was reviewed
in The Nation for January 24). It is
also something more, for it illustrates
very neatly the whole paradox of the
present status of the famous theory
which one grandfather put scientifically
on its feet and the other forced down
the throat of an unwilling generation.
In so far as it is merely “‘a description
of what happened” or a mere statement
that plants and animals did “evolve,”
that theory is so firmly established that
there is little risk in calling it not a
theory but a fact. On the other hand, the
“how,” “why,” and “in what manner”
are all very disputable indeed,
the moral, philosophical, social,
political implications of what we know
or think we know become more so with
every passing year. As scientists the
grandsons may—and as prophets they
certainly do—disagree more violently
than the grandfathers could have imag-
ined. Evolution is far more firmly estab-
lished but a great deal harder to under-
stand than it seemed in their day.
This is partly because many of the
detailed facts which have been accumu-
lated since 1859 make it impessible to
believe that the mechanisms and proc-
esses involved are as simple as they once
appeared to be. On the one hand, the
inheritance of acquired characteristics
has come to seem impossible, and that
catch-all “sexual selection” not so capa-
cious as was assumed; on the other hand,
the whole concept of mutation, unsus-
pected by Darwin, as a source of usable
simultaneously
and
and
MR. KRUTCH, former drama critic for
The Nation, 7s now living in Tucson,
Arizona. He will continue to contribute
book reviews and other articles to the
The Nation.
190
variations, has acquired more and more
If Lysenko’s “Michurin-
ism,” like the Lamarckism so exuberantly
championed by Bernard Shaw, is, as
Huxley puts it, definitely “out’’ on the
basis of solid evidence, quite a number
of subtle hypotheses are dubiously but
at least possibly ‘‘in’’—including Lloyd
Morgan’s “‘organic selection,” which may
produce phenomena that could easily be
mistaken for the inheritance of acquired
characteristics. To bring the reader up
to date in such matters as these is one
of the two main purposes of Huxley's
book; and there is no writer for the
general public who can be more safely
trusted to be, himself, well abreast of the
most recent work in his field. The other
main purpose is obviously to explore as
cautiously as is compatible with holding
any Opinions at all the metaphysical as
well as the practical implications of what
seem to be the facts.
By way of background the reader
should remember that “The .Origin of
Species” had hardly appeared before the
most portentous imaginable of such in-
ferences began to be insisted upon with
all ‘the dogmatic assurance which the
new prestige of science encouraged.
Pretty continuously ever since, the phrase
“evolution proves’ has been used to de-
mand acceptance for such remote infer-
ences as the benefits of violent, unre-
strained, wholly egotistical competition
and the inevitability of ‘‘progress’’ under
such conditions or, alternately, the al-
most magical efficacy of social coopera-
tion—vide the ants—and, as in Sir
Charles Galton Darwin’s book, the im-
possibility of any significant “‘progress”’
within at least the next million years.
In the heady excitement produced by
the new field opened for speculation few
stopped to ask even for a definition of
terms or noticed, for instance, that in
importance.
the magic formula concerning “the sur-
vival of the fittest’’ it was assamed that
“fittest” meant “‘fittest to survive’ and
that therefore the whole phrase was re-
duced to the empty statement, “Those
survive who survive.”
Perhaps partly because the orthodox
delete of
tacked the whole theory so’ welinedtaes .
> ey eek nee
sarin a nd ate--
the first philosophical conclusions which
its proponents drew were frequently the
most brutal possible. Evolution was sup-
posed to prove not only that the law of
the jungle was the only law of progress
but also that, since its processes were
completely fortuitous, random, and
mechanical, nothing could possibly ;
change them. Thus a sort of Calvinism to
which dialectical materialism merely sup-
~ plied a supplement was reestablished by
the authority of science, and the whole
concept of “meaning,” as well as the
whole concept of ‘‘purpose,” was rele-
gated to the realm of myth. The brilliant
but also egregious Haeckel formulated
“laws’’ quite recklessly and described the
history of the universe with the assurance
of an eyewitness to everything which
had happened since the earth first
cooled. Evolution was rapidly becoming
not a theory, or even an established
theory, but a dogma.
Against all this, various neo-Lamarck-
ian heresies attempted to protest, often,
as in the case of the Bergsonians, in the
name of metaphysics rather than by the
methods of what had become orthodox
science. Meanwhile, however, science it-
self was becoming a little less sure that
the final word had been spoken. The
process of evolution was turning out to
‘be so much more complicated than was
first supposed that at a very minimum
science had to admit that we do not
know exactly how they work, that pos-
sibly, even, we might have to confess,
much as the physicists are now confess-
ing in connection with their problems,
that the very adjectives “‘mechanistic”
and “‘determined” become meaningless
when used to describe certain processes
so complicated and so subtle as to lie
now, if not forever, beyond the human-
mind’s powers of analysis.
From the beginning of his distin-
guished career as a biologist Huxley has
been acutely aware of doubts and un-
solved problems. A generation ago the
title of his little book “What Dare I
Believe?” revealed clearly enough a posi-
tive desire to escape from the dismal
grip of materialistic determinism if it
was possible to do so by any method
less drastic than a pure act of faith in
defiance of all available evidence. With
the years he has become; if anything,
more cautious, more careful not to rely
The NATION
e) explicit in Pasinishing between. the
two. Nevertheless, in this most recent
summing up a principal stress is again
upon the incompleteness of our knowl-
edge and upon those aspects of what we
do seem to have learned which encourage *
optimism and in one way or another
suggest that the mechanism of evolution
—if you still insist upon calling it that
—is one which transcends the limita-
tions of what we generally mean by the
term “mechanism.”
Some of the dangers which Huxley
sees ahead are the ones emphasized
by Sir Charles Galton Darwin. He be-
lieves it to be, for instance, an estab-
lished fact that “industrial civilization
_favors the decrease of the genes con-
cerned with intelligence” or, to put it
bluntly, that the average intelligence of
‘the population is definitely sinking. Like
Darwin also he believes that, as he
phrases it, “human fertility is now the
greatest long-term threat to human
standards, spiritual as well as material.”
But unlike Darwin he believes also that
human purpose may prove possibly ef-
fective when it intervenes in the evolu-
tionary processes.
To believe that, you must of course
first believe that “human purpose” is or
can be something distinct from what the
random processes of evolution have
made inevitable, that ‘free will’ is real
in some sense, however difficult to under-
stand that sense may be. And the fresh-
est part of his whole discussion is that
which is concerned with this possibility.
“We have often been guilty of the
fallacy of mistaking origins for explana-
tions... . We have tended to misunder-
stand the nature of the difference be-
tween ourselves and animals. We have
a way of thinking that if there is a
continuity in time there must be a con-
tinuity in quality.”
Though he never uses the once pop-
ular term “emergent evolution’””—per-
haps because he is anxious to stay as
closely as possible within the limits of
orthodox biology—he does nevertheless
speak of the ‘emergence of new proper-
ties’ even in matter, and his intention
is obviously to suggest that in man him-
self powers which include some*kind of
autonomy have definitely emerged and
are novelties either in the sense that they
never existed before or at least in the
February 28, 1953
ee YO ae
ds gene thee: evthey were inkex Sitoee fully
effective. “The development of animals
is always closed; their evolution is always
restricted. Man’s individual develop-
ment, on the other hand, is potentially
open.”
It is this last affirmation which Sir
Charles Darwin denies most categorically
or at least categorically declares to be
meaningless unless one thinks in terms
of time longer than that represented by
a mere million years. For the pros and
cons the two books might well be read
together.
New Books in Brief
Watch Miss Cicellis
NO NAME IN THE STREET. By Kay
Cicellis. Grove Press. $3. A first novel
of penetration and power by a young
Greek writer whose short stories have
appeared in a number of British avant-
garde publications. Miss Cicellis, by her
own admission, learned her parents’
tongue at the age of nine, “but by then
it was too late for Greek to become my
language.”’ It is as well, for new writers
who have something to say and try to
say it with sincerity and a grasp of the
métier of the novelist are rare in English
and American fiction today. ;
The story of a few crucial days in
the life of her hero, Gregory, a middle-
class Athenian youngster about to be
sent to Germany to make his way in
industry, is taut and meaningful. Greg-
ory’s desperate desire to identify -with
some group, some -family life, some
memory, even, evokes the bewildered,
bitter harassment of youth. Kay Cicellis
is not limited, however, to delineation
of characters near her own age. One of
her finest and most believable creations
is the elderly exiled bank clerk, Richter.
A writer of compassion who has both
style and conviction, Miss Cicellis’s work
should find a growing audience.
Academic Tragi-Comedy
THE STONES OF THE HOUSE. By
Theodore Morrison. The Viking Press.
$3.50. Urbane, witty light novel of
academic life by the fifty-year-old Har-
vard professor and poet. The story con-
cerns the tragi-comedy of a college pres-
ident who is not sure that he wants, or
likes, his job. Supporting cast includes
an ugly secretary “with an insatiable
yearning for love; a neurotic professor of
philosophy who is attacked as a Com-
munist; a perennial undergraduate, now
an alumnus and would-be trustee, who is
dreadfully normal. The series of small
academic dramas which keep the story
moving are set in that decade of history
when the Republic has fathered “an
Oriental proconsul” and a_ stubborn
little President has just cashiered him.
But the novel’s expression, sensitive and
mature, is superior to its content, which
is a trifle unreal throughout. The aca-
demic types are viewed as perfect prep-
school gents, The feminine portraits are
used either for purposes of satire or a
brand of domestic mysticism in which
the sexual urges of Mr. Morrison’s hero
have conquered even the tedium of a
perfect marriage. If the early tone of
the story is reminiscent of Ellen Glas-
gow, the conclusion is straight out of
J. P. Marquand’s romances, and too
glossy for anything but pleasant reading.
The Story of One Prisoner
and Her Friends in the
Federal Penitentiary
for Women
INSIDE
by Helen Bryan
Inside is the only firsthand
account ever published of a
term in the federal women’s
penitentiary at Alderson, West
Virginia, It is written by Helen
Bryan, a Presbyterian minis-
ter’s daughter, college graduate
and social worker, who was
serving a three months’ sen-
tence. Her report is not only
a moving description of an
overwhelming experience, but
also a unique contribution to
the literature of penology.
$3.00 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO.
ar eee Te
SSS
cae
James Boyd’s Stories
OLD PINES AND OTHER S21 VUn1cy.
By James Boyd. North Carolina. $3.
Known chiefly as a writer of historical
novels, in particular that excellent novel
of the American Revolution, “Drums,”
James Boyd was also a poet and a short-
story writer of solid merit. The stories
in this volume are sharp, pungent, re-
vealing. They are also “old-fashioned”
in method; each one, with a firm grip on
realism, develops a believable situation
to a logical end. Boyd was not afraid of
horror and suspense, nor did he dodge
sentiment. The stories in “Old Pines”
were well worth bringing together both
for their general interest and as a repre-
sentative sampling of the work of a
talent that was cut off much too soon.
Oceans and Moth Eggs
WATER. By Thomson King. Macmil-
Jan. $3.50. Here, gn condensed and
readable form, is all you want to know
about this indispensable and _all-per-
vasive element, from the ocean and its
inhabitants down to dowsers and dew
ponds. Although the book touches too
lightly on too many subjects, it can be
recommended for the many curious
items of information the author has
collected, as, for example, that the car-
pet moth which drinks no water lays
eggs with an 80 per cent water content.
Actor in the Grand Style
PRINCE OF PLAYERS, EDWIN
BOOTH. By. Eleanor Ruggles. Norton.
$4.50. An unusually lively account of
the greatest of “the mad Booths’ with
_ something about his eccentric father,
Lucius Junius, and about his assassin
brother, John Wilkes.“ Edwin himself
was probably the last of the long line of
actors in the grand style who carried on
a tradition never wholly broken as it
was passed from Burbage to Betterton,
to Garrick, to Kean, and so on down
almost to our own day. He was certainly
a more colorful figure than his English
rival, Henry Irving, and he had more
fire. Miss Ruggles assures us that the
faint wax record of his voice is enough
to prove that the magic was real, and
she does a good job of convincing the
reader that the old-timers who still boast
they “saw Booth” really did have a
unique experience. Besides being vivid,
her narrative is based on extensive
192
“fee ee SO ae a ee ee eee .
S . vee ee et é
Rare ee
research and includes some new ma-
terial. Probably the best as well as
the most entertaining life of a man who
was enough of a person to make a book
much richer than the usual biography of
an actor. But it is odd that the author,
who does not usually avoid the colorful,
should identify the man for whom Lin-
coln’s assassin was named merely as
“the parliamentary reformer.” This is
surely the mildest designation ever ap-
plied to that rake-hell and radical, the
original John Wilkes.
Poe and Baudelaire
BAUDELAIRE ON POE. CRITICAL
PAPERS. Translated and Edited by Lois
and Francis E. Hyslop, Jr. Bald Eagle
Press. $4. It is generally admitted that
Edgar Allan Poe’s international repu-
tation and influence were both launched
by the translations and critiques pub-
lished by Baudelaire in the fifties and
sixties. The present volume is the only
one in which the critical articles are
available in English, and it includes a
~ ?
valuable introduction recounting the
strange story of Baudelaire’s conv
that the American poet had somehow
anticipated the processes of his own
mind. Actually of course the two men
were not quite so nearly identical as
Baudelaire imagined, since Poe was as
much Victorian as he was decadent and
might well have been shocked by the
“Fleurs du Mal.’ But what Baudelaire
found in him was really there and Poe
in fact was the inventor ‘of the frisson
nouveau. To this day Europeans see him
largely through Baudelaire’s eyes, and it
is probably for that reason that they
assess him without making the discounts
which American critics usually do. If
Poe had lived in Europe and therefore in
a different literary atmosphere, he might
possibly have founded the decadent
school. As it turned out, Baudelaire
founded it for him, in his name and
with his aid. The phenomenon is one
of the most curious in literary history,
and it cannot be documented without
the material in the present volume.
Theater
———— i — —— — = ems
Harold Clurman
AUL OSBORN’S “On Borrowed
Time” (Forty-eighth Street) is a
folksy fantasy about the old man who
decoyed Death up an apple tree. The
play achieved considerable success here
in 1938 and was a surprising failure in
London. The failure in London was a
puzzle to everybody—the play being
genial and tender.
Finding myself rather less amused at
the revival than the first time I saw the
play, and not at all touched—though
by no means bored—I wondered
whether there wasn’t a difference be-
tween the American and the English
attitude toward death. Americans in the
theater are willing to be saddened by
thoughts of death when death is softened
with kindly tears or shrouded in heroic
cerements, but our audiences dislike
thinking of death as a fact of life. For
us death must be something romantically
spectral, sepulchrally noble, or some-
thing so friendly and nice as not to
seem to exist at all.
\
In the Osborn comedy death is a
gentleman who means no harm, doing
his slightly mysterious job like a de-
corous process server. If one is clever
enough one might elude him, but when
one yields to the necessity of letting him
do his duty, one finds that one has
been summoned to a realm more in-
effably sweet than life itself.
I probably would not have thought of
the play in this light—no one else does _
or should—if the playing of it in the
present revival were more poetic, charm-
ing, tongue-in-cheek, or frankly senti-
mental. But it is only plain. Victor
Moore is perfectly cast as to “type.” He
is, Moreover, a consummately sure and
effortless performer. His is the acme of
“naturalness.” In short, he is everything
but interesting. We get very little from
him here except the impression of his
deftness. Dudley Digges, who played
the part originally, worked harder and
was not as authentically small-town
American, but he had a complete artistic
The NATION
Sin Pt
eo
yas
|
. ing the story into a
’ The resultant show,
objective in view, whereas Moore simply
plays the “‘notes,” but the “‘notes,” even
perfectly delivered, do not add up in
this case to a captivating spirit.
Some years ago Ben Hecht wrote the
scenario for a picture called “Nothing
Sacred.” It was praised by certain sophis-
ticates, but it was a box-office flop. The
reason-for the praise was the picture’s
satirical intent aimed at the crass com-
mercialism of our publicity makers. A
country girl who is reputed to be dying
of cadium poisoning is taken up by a
big magazine and sensationally displayed
for public pity. The reason for the flop
was that a dying girl as the central figure
of a lampoon shocked the picture audi-
ences—even though it found out that the
gitl was taking advantage of her sup-
posedly morbid condition to have her-
self a good time. The picture was a fail-
ure because—aside from the audiences’
revulsion ‘at its suggestion of horrid
death—its satire was just as crude and
unfeeling as the thing it was presumably
deriding. ®
Someone conceived the idea of mak-
“rowdy” musical.
“Hazel Flagg”
(Mark Hellinger), is sick to the core.
. The work of the talented show people
involved in its making-is deficient in all
’ departments. I found ne mitigation of
the misery in the material in any of the
: performances, tunes, lyrics, dances, cos-
tumes, girls—though I felt that in his
manner and appearance Jack Whiting
brought on with him a certain air of the
twenties that was almost nostalgic.
I approve of the performance of
Stephen Vincent Benet’s “John Brown’s
Body” (Century) without really caring
for it. The French have their-matinées
poétiques at the Comédie Francaise
February 28, 1953
swhete verse masterpieces : are Hinply ‘re re-
San Why shouldn’t we give our poems
more elaborate dramatic readings? Such
readings must take on added stature
when the poem, as in this instance, is
related to our country’s history. Most
Americans—those who go to the theater
at any rate—seem to have very little
genuine feeling for our national past.
There is something worthy and digni-
fied, therefore, about the unconscious
aspiration which is satisfied by the per-
formance of such a work as “John
Brown’s Body.”
As a poem it is craftsmanlike, intelli-
gent, honorable, and easy to take. But it
lacks personality and point of view. It is
a highly respectable literary gloss on
traditional memories and ready-made
reactions. It has no real story and no
true characters. Its pathos depends on its
associations, not on what it creates itself.
There are narrative passages which—
apart from the distinction of the writing
—are reminiscent of old-time Civil War
movies. The outstanding bit in the first
section is a literal quotation from John
Brown, and another excellent piece
which describes the anguish of Lincoln's
self-doubt is also partly quotation.
When “Don Juan in Hell” was read
with naked directness, it struck us not
only as dramatically cogent but in every
sense good theater. The special effects,
offstage noises, and choral aid repeat-:
edly used in “John Brown’s Body’’—like
the sound of marching feet when they
are mentioned in the text—are so naively
illustrative that for a moment I feared
when there was a reference to the smell
of a girl’s hair that the aroma was going
to be wafted through the theater by some
novel device.
Though “John Brown’s Body’ at-
tempts to picture fateful events and
evoke epic sentiments, the effect of the
whole is mainly genteel and basically
conventional. I should have been happy
to respond to a bid for raw patriotic
emotion, but here I felt as if the inspira-
tion of a high-school assembly were
being made palatable and fashionable
through the use of the sleek skills of
Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, Ray-
mond Massey, and director Charles
Laughton,
Films :
Manny
USTON’S “Moulin Rouge” is
packed with crunchy songs,
French taste in clothes, and picturesque
people, but the quality of its color is its
most striking attribute. The dramatic use
of filtered camera effects and off-key
tonalities re-creates on film the heated,
hazy quality of French Impressionist
painting. When the dwarf Toulouse-
Lautrec painfully picks his way out of a
Montmartre bistro, the scene is the
studied abyss of a blue-green interior,
with hot accents (geranium red, acid
yellow) in the foreground and scrub-
women carefully spotted for a dash of
human content. In some instances actual
paintings are “staged,” reproducing
everything but the vein of casual objec-
tivity that lay at the core of Lautrec’s
work, Other shots capitalize on canvas-
worthy things like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s
spun-glass skin next to the starchy tex-
ture of her white and orange costume,
the paint-spattered derby Lautrec wore
Farber
while painting, the ambling grace of a
Negro dancer who seems to move on
nothing more solid than space, and the
can-can girls who dance with their
whole bodies instead of just their legs.
In this fascinating visual arena the heav-
ily blurred atmosphere seems to have
drained the characters of realistic per-
sonalities, leaving the decorative details
of the composition to compete for inter-
est. In fact, Huston has crowded such
an attractive world around the subject
of this biography—such surging impres-
sions of Parisian activities—that you
never get a good line on the artist him-
self.
Mainly, this is the fault of an un-
workable script in which the double
dose of romance given Lautrec fails to
become credible before reaching a sud-
den and definitive conclusion. It fum-
bles past its hero as a real figure to feed
him such explicit literary dialogue as
“The streets of Paris have taught you to
193
strike fast'and draw blood first,’ and
moralizes on the topics of love, al-
coholism, and appreciation of art.
Lautrec was’ a wealthy nobleman,
grotesquely misshapen and a chronic
drunkard. After his first affair with a
prostitute (Colette Marchand) who is
too warped to value Lautrec’s love but
who wields a devastating power over
him, the crippled count takes up with a
virtuous dress model (chinless beauty
Suzanne Flon). You see them sightsee-
ing in Parisian settings until, incompre-
hensibly, she decides the smitten Lautrec
will never love her and leaves him with
a torch to carry the rest of his days.
Meanwhile, the pictute of Lautrec as an
artist has been built up by such disinte-
grated maneuvers as having the camera
travel down to his flying pencil on
a cafe’s tablecloth, dance over the paint-
ings that cover his studio walls, docu-
ment the production of a poster, dart
about kiosks, and peer over shoulders at
his vernissage.
Lautrec’s personal drama might have
been more absorbing if Ferrer had not
been incarcerated in his make-up, which
involved the binding of his legs to make
him as short as the four-foot-eight
painter, as well as elaborate facial
Ghanges. On those occasions when the
camera digs into his face it unearths
nothing more informative than a highly
inscrutable expression. Certainly Huston
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MAJESTIC THESTRE, eal 1 St.
yc at.8:30; $6.00 Mat. at
2:30; $3.60 to 1.20, Sat, fiat Hie 20 to h20e
MON. EVES. ONLY: Curtain 7 sharp
194
ee
as director and co-author compensated
for the fact that his main character
couldn’t zip around on his stunted legs
with avid camera movement and pro-
digious exuberance on the part of the
other performers. Marchand, for in-
stance, literally dances through her role
—jerking, slouching, making eccentric
patterns with her arms as though she
were playing to a spastic nickelodeon
piano. As for Miss Flon, I’ve seldom
seen an actress with greater presence or
stature in a role remarkable for its un- ~
important activity.
tertainment is that it attempts t to ide:
Lautrec for his deficiencies and to sim-
plify the tale of the artist by implying
that genius in painting is a by-product
of painful experience. And despite the
iron dissipline of Huston’s direction, it
frequently becomes too brightly em-
phatic; one feels that the charming
groups of blondes and redheads who
bounce about with such hilarious gaiety
are afraid to relax for fear the movie
will run down like a clock that needs
winding. 7
Music
B. H. Haggin
AY THE Boston Symphony's first
New York concert under Cantelli’s
direction one heard a beautiful instru-
ment beautifully used by a conductor
with not only the required technical
powers but other qualities that made
him especially well suited to this orches-
tra. Refinement is the Boston Sym-
phony’s distinctive characteristic—the re-
finement of sonority and execution that
Koussevitzky brought to a point of
breathtaking virtuosity; and Kousse-
vitzky himself couldn’t have produced a
more dazzling performance of Stravin-
sky’s “Jeu de cartes.’ But the perform-
ances this time had in addition Cantelli’s
refinement of musical conception—this
in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth no less than in
Haydn’s No. 93, in Rossini’s ‘‘Semira-
mide’ Overture no less than in the
Stravinsky piece. Each work came out
as something clearly and _ beautifully
shaped; and this was exciting to hear;
but there were also the youthful fresh-
ness and purity of intention and taste
that shine through and move one in
Cantelli’s performances. In all, a great
occasion.
A few days earlier I heard a “‘Rigo-
letto” at the Metropolitan that also
turned out to be something of an ocea-
sion. I discussed the new production
last year after a performance with a
substitute cast; but this time there were
two of the original cast, Hilda Gueden
and Leonard Warren, and a substitute,
Jussi Bjoerling, better than the original
tenor; and I expect it to be a long time
before I again hear this opera sung as it
was that night. I have in mind not only
the beauty of the voices—of Gueden’s
silvery soprano, Bjoerling’s lustrous
tenor, Warren’s sumptuous baritone—
but the way they were used in the phras-
ing of the music, particularly in the
duets of the second act.
With all this to delight the ear there
was a good deal that disturbed the eye.
Some of it resulted from Bjoerling’s
and Warren’s ineffectiveness and inepti-
tude on the stage; some from the fact
that Bjoerling was having to find his
_ way about in an unfamiliar production;
some possibly from the fact that Warren .
by this time may have been doing things
of his own devising rather than of the
director’s; some undoubtedly from Her-
bert Graf’s original direction; some even
from Eugene Berman’s wonderful sets.
And some, of course, initially from the
blatant inconsistencies and improbabili-
ties of the libsetto. I'll grant that a
“Rigoletto” which makes coherent sense
throughout is beyond human powers; but
not a “Rigoletto” that would make sense
at some points where Graf’s production
offers nonsense.
This has occurred to me to add to
what I said recently about Schnabel’s
playing: that the performer’s job is to
make the listener aware of what happens
in a piece of music—which he can do
only if he is aware of it himself; and
that from their performances it is evi-
The NATION
Jilin sells il
— ="
Chopin’s great Sonata Opus 58 is
played by Kapell, on an RCA Victor
record, not just with the traditional dis-
torting rubates but with an additional
extravagance in the distortion that gives
the impression of a throwing of emo-
tional weight around. And his playing in
2 group of Mazurkas also is excessively
mannered,
Together with an excellent LP trans-
ference of Rubinstein’s 1947 perform-
ance of Chopin’s Sonata Opus 35—in
which there is occasional blurred execu-
tion as well as the usual distortion—
Victor gives us his newly recorded per-
formances of Debussy’s “Poissons d'or,”
“La Cathédrale engloutie,’” “La Fille
aux cheveux de lin,” “Masques,” “La
Tecrasse des audiences au claire de lune,”’
and “Ondine.” Having heard ‘Poissons
d'or” played with sharply flashing sonor-
ities and figurations that evoked images
of its subject, I find unsatisfying a per-
formance in a delicate rubato style suita-
ble for a nineteenth-century salon piece;
and this style is no more suitable for the
other Debussy pieces.
Norman Dello Joio’s Symphony ‘‘The
Triumph of St. Joan” is performed well
on a Columbia record by Robert Whit-
ney with the Louisville Orchestra which
. commissioned it. In the first movement,
The Maid, and the third, The Saint, the
elaborately discordant writing has no ex-
ptessive relation to the titles that I can
hear nor any intrinsic interest; but it
produces a recognizable battle sound-
track for the second movement, The
Warrior. Villa-Lobos’s “‘The Erosion” is
on the reverse side.
Even if the summary of the action of
the ballet “Punch and the Child” on
the envelope were accurate it couldn’t
be sufficiently correlated with the point-
to-point invention in Richard Arnell’s
excellent score to give this the coherence
it doesn’t have when heard by itself.
On the other hand the Suite from Lord
Berners’s music for ‘The Triumph of
Neptune” offers pleasantly inconse-
quential pieces that are complete en-
tities. Beecham’s performances with his
Royal Philharmonic on the Columbia
record seem good.
Some of the music from Virgil
_ Thomson’s fine opera ‘The Mother of
e February 28, 1953
a aa Pr ite tah He
t he latteabaged fn in a aie
for Succ also needs the stage action.
It is played well on the Columbia record
by the Werner Janssen Orchestra.
Thomson’s Cello Concerto, on the same
record, js a good-humored piece which
_characteristically repeats rather than de-
velops its engaging hymn tunes. Luigi
Silva’s playing is dry-toned but other-
_ wise excellent; the orchestra is occasion-
ally distant and barely audible behind
the cello.
Letters ae
Toward Peace
Dear Sirs: The conclusion of Robert S.
Lynd’s article Whose Wars? in The Na-
tion for December 27, 1952, raises the
question of a democratic nation’s right to
wage imperialist wars and to conscript
young men for: such wars. In an age
when conformity is so generally taken
for granted, it is refreshing to have an
educator of high standing openly suggest
that in given circumstances refusal of
military service may be a politically use-
ful and efficacious, as well as conscien-
tious, act. As Dr. Lynd says, the citizen
must “brace his feet’ and ask why he
should become a soldier unless the gov-
ernment convinces him that ‘more war
in the present state of the world is in-
telligent and democratically responsi-
ble.’ He miust also take the further step
and refuse to serve until the question is
answered to his satisfaction. Govern-
ments, and in particular the military,
are notoriously inattentive to academic
questions.
The question then arises: What would
result from such a stand by democratic
youth and their elders, and what policy -
would be substituted for one which in-
volves us “in a rapidly broadening
counter-wat against the long overdue
colonial revolution,” in which, as E. H.
Carr points out, Russia is by no means
the prime mover though it profits from
the clash between Asiarand the Western
world: J-..
The great value of Dr. Lynd’s query
addressed to American youth is that it
brings into the open the need to make a
drastic choice at this point: in other
words, what might be called the need
to develop a “‘peace’” movement which
accepts the fact that in the present pe-
riod such a movement must be radically
anti-militarist—as all European, and to
some extent American, Socialist, and
labor forces were before 1914; must
be on the side of the great popular rev-
olutions and therefore independent of
both the Russian and American power
blocs; and must recognize that since the
situation in the world today is a revolu-
tionary one, peace cannot flow from
reactionary policies. Is it not possible to
bring together for serious discussion
various elements, first here and then also
in other countries, who start from some
such basis as this?
New York A. J. MUSTE
Disagrees with Farber...
Dear Sirs: Last night I went to see the
South African movie, “Pennywhistle
Blues,” at the recommendation of your
movie critic, Manny Farber, who listed
it among the best pictures of 1952 in
your January 17 issue. I was amazed and
disgusted to find some of the most
vicious racist propaganda I’ve seen on
the screen—an hour-long development
of the Negro stereotype from which
Hollywood seems finally to be getting
away.
At the opening we are shown’a few
scenes in Johannesburg. A serious, cul-
tured voice tells us that the natives have
flocked to the white man’s city to do
his heavy labor and menial tasks. And
then when he tells us they have brought
with them many tribal costumes and
customs, we see Negroes wearing zoot
suits, jitterbugging on sidewalks, and
shooting craps in doorways.
Most of the film is laid in Alexandra,
an all-Negro community of shacks ouf-
side Johannesburg. The narrator informs
us that Alexandra has a population of
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of our offer to send them any book
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Please address your orders fo
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THE READERS’ SERVICE DIVISION
20 Vesey Street New York 7, N. Y.
195
60,000, of which 40,000 seem to be
children. The people are pictured as a
naive, irresponsible, happy-go-lucky lot
who never walk when they can shuffle
or run when they can gallop and who
break into mass singing and jitterbug-
ging at the drop of a hat. They would
be happy in their poverty, we can see,
if it were not for the few exploiters
among them. Frustrated by their ghetto
existence? Don’t be ridiculous.
Nor is the film directed exclusively
at Negroes. The greedy money lender
is named Isaac and has the exaggerated
features used in caricatures of the Jew
in American hate propaganda.
Was Mr. Farber sleeping? This is
not merely a disagreement over taste or
the artistic merits of a movie. The point
is that it is shameful for The Nation,
usually in the vanguard in the fight
against bigotry and prejudice, to recom-
mend a picture of this kind. Any Nation
writer who fails to brand this film for
what it is—an effort to introduce
Malanist race propaganda into the
United States—is not worth his salt.
Minneapolis, Minn. WILL HERTZ
. Who Replies
Dear Sirs: This kind of criticism of my
criticism displays a mentality already
familiar to me in those who deplore
“Birtlf of a Nation’ on the one hand,
and “Limelight” on the other. At this
stage in the development of the film
medium I am -no longer inclined to
cope with interpretations of the type Mr.
Hertz offers, and will only say that
“Pennywhistle Blues,” a film which I
listed as “Also Placed,’’ has a loose-
jointed freshness not elsewhere found
this year. It was not, so far as I can see,
contaminated by or in any way related
to the “bigotry” Mr. Hertz chooses
to read into the film to the exclusion of
all else. MANNY FARBER
New York
Mile-High Hysteria
Dear Sirs: | am a thirteen-year-old boy
who is just starting high school. Since
my Dad has a subscription to The
Nation, 1 read most of it, in addition
to the comic books and other “‘litera-
ture” which I read.
Last month I went down to the news-
stand and purchased a Captain Marvel
Comics magazine. The first story was
about an ugly Communist evil genius
in Korea who by means of his hideous
inventions destroyed U.N. soldiers like
flies. Last week my ten-year-old brother
196
10
ila
12
13
15
21
22
23
24
25
26
pe
Crossword Puzzle No. 505
~_F >
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
ACROSS
Where to win turkeys? (Some can’t
find the plate with them.) (8)
A thing like the one Tennyson sug-
gested we follow? (6)
A same sort might be similar. (7)
Does it suggest not quite 12 inches
of stalk? (7)
See 6 down.
The way whoever wakes in England
sees things in leaf, according to
Browning. (7)
2, perhaps but then it wouldn’t be
material! (4, 3, 6)
Praises a famous English house with
a sort of date in the middle. (18)
Where even uprights could be
knocked .down. (7)
Might be exemplified by dnomaid.
(7)
This is one pier replaced by the
engineer. (7)
Figurative description. (7)
An weet does to get disguised.
(2, 4)
A trouble-maker is slightly more
than restless in the orchestra. (8)
DOWN
The way you might attribute things
looks like the devil to an Indian. (6)
The celibate sort aren’t full of 138.
(7)
Omnipotent, or just singular apparel
for the working man? (7)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
4 He doesn’t necessarily cultivate pick-
ups! (5, 8)
6° and 11 Not a supplication, saad dur-
ing German financial crises. (3, 4,
3,
7 Sort of clean an afterthought up
with it. (7)
8 Artificial harbor, tree, or bush. (8)
10 Do silversmiths, when their best
efforts are beaten? (5, 8)
14 Old ships (and sometimes the
treaties covering them) might be.
(8
16 They makes letters sound long. (7)
17 Pressing. (7)
18 Shakespeare alone bewept his state, °
when it was like this. (7)
19 Able to pay for an opening with a
note first. (7)
20 Petition, or. one who makes it. (6)
ome
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 504
ACROSS :—4 MARJORAM; 10 and 19 DIPLO-
MATIC; 11 and 1A PRETTY PICKLE; 12
LOTUS; 14 STALL; 15 and 31 RUN-OF- THE-
MINE; i7 NECKTIES ; 21 SPARERIB ; 23 and
26 COMIC STRIP; 28 and 13 WA NTON; 29
and 30 PEDAL PUSHERS; 32 TUSKEGED;
33 YEASTY.
DOWN:—1 PEDDLERS; 2 CAPSTAN; 8
LOOPS; 5 AGAIN; 6 JERKS; 7 RETRACH;
8 MAY FLY: 9 FASTENER; 16 and 27 FU
PIECE: 18 CABINETS; 20 SCULLHRY; 33
PPRUSES; 24 MIDDIHS; 25 ASHPIT; 28
WASTE; 29 PLEBE.
“ground rules." Address
requests to Puzzle Dept., The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, New York.
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, | See Deere es
purchased a Marvel Family Comics
magazine. This time the villain was a
“Commie’—to quote the book—who
again killed off “Yankee dogs” like
flies. He was a mile high.
It would seem to me that the pub-
lishers (Fawcett Publications, Inc.) are
simply copying the Communists because
they try to create horrible impressions
of us Americans. It also helps to con-
tribute to the mass hysteria we are in.
Chicago, Ill. ~ MALCOLM SHERMAN
Aid for Adlai
Dear-Sirs: At the request of Harold R.
Wolfe, chairman of Dollars for Sense,
I am writing to thank you for calling
my attention to the movement and mak-
ing it possible for me to contribute to it.
Since the new Administration has
promised to take us places, I believe
Governor Stevenson, who conducted his
recent campaign in such a dignified
manner, should go on the air from time
to time and tell us just whither we are
being taken, a matter in which all of us
are interested in these critical times.
Sedona, Ariz. L, B. WOODCOCK
How the Press Can Help.
Dear Sirs: This is to advise you that the
Loyalty Security Appeals Board has re-
instated Frank Grzelak, with full pay,
to his position as draftsman at the Jeffer-
sonville, Indiana, Quartermaster Depot.
Robert W. Zollinger and I, his at-
torneys, would like to express our thanks
to you for your article in his behalf
{Who's Your Wife? Around the
Ui St ,AS June 2128527.
Louisville, Ky. GROVER G. SALES
Busy Little Busbey
Dear Sirs: According to the Chicago
Tribune of January 30, Representative
Busbey of Illinois had this to say con-
cerning the death of John C. Mont-
gomery, head of the Finnish desk of the
State Department:
It may be no more than a coincidence
that he worked in a government agency
where Communists, Communist sympa-
thizers, and poor loyalty risks have
plagued our security... . In view of the
fact that Montgomery brought his own
life to an end, we should not assume that
he was innocent of such associations.
It appears that the late Mr. Mont-
gomery is to be given no peace, even in
his grave.
Evanston, Ill. RICHARD MORGAN
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_ 1865 Revolt Against McCarthy? Editorial 4
USE.
The Cherokee Drama *
Knoxville, Tennessee
UP A curving black-top road a few
hundred yards above Cherokee, North
Carolina, is the Mountainside Theater,
built in a natural bowl with the Great
Smokies for a back drop. Next summer
a huge outdoor pageant called “Unto
These Hills’ will begin its fourth sea-
son there, having already played to an
international audience of more than a
third of a million. The theater seats
2,900 and has been packed each season.
More than 107,000 tickets were sold in
1950; 159,000 in 1951. All seats were
reserved in 1952 and cost from $1.50
to $3. The season lasts from July 1 to
September 1.
Kermit Hunter, a young English in-
structor at the University of North
Carolina, wrote this ““Cherokee Drama’”’
in 1949 for his thesis in dramatic art.
Harry Davis, technical director of the
Carolina Playmakers, directed it. A cast
of 115 is headed by the Playmakers and
includes forty-eight Cherokee Indians.
The story begins with Andrew Jackson
being saved from death by a faithful:
Cherokee scout; he is then seen in the
White House selling the Cherokees’
homeland out from under them. Next
General Winfield Scott with 7,000
troops rounds up the Cherokee people,
herds them like cattle into stockades,
and marches them a thousand miles west
over the Trail of Tears. An old Chero-
kee, Tsali, kills a drunken soldier to save
his wife from a prodding bayonet and
then gives himself up, together with his
two sons and his brother-in-law. They
ate shot by a firing squad but gain the
right for the scattered and broken rem-
nants of the tribe to remain in the fast-
nesses of the Smokies.
ae
Pree 3"
A few years ago, under the-inspiration
of an Ashville attorney, Francis Heazel,
the Western North Carolina Associated
Communities was, organized in the
eleven counties of Clay, Cherokee, Gra-
ham, Macon, Swain, Jackson, Haywood,
Transylvania, Buncombe, Henderson,
and Madison to promote the general
welfare of the area. To produce and
manage the proposed ‘“‘Cherokee Drama”
the Associated Communities set up a
non-profit organization called the Chero-
kee Historical Association, with a Hen-
dersonville theater Harry E.
Buchanan, as chairman. Buchanan barn-
stormed for a year trying to raise funds
to build the theater and produce the
show. Interested whites and Negroes in
eleven counties contributed $20,000. The
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians gave
$5,000 out of tribal funds. But these
donations were not half what was
needed, and as a last resort a committee
of whites and Cherokee went before
the North Carolina legislature and put
their cards on the table. By a unanimous
vote in both houses $35,000 was appro-
priated for the venture.
Even with this backing ‘Unto These
Hills” opened with a deficit of $30,000.
Imagine the elation of its producers
when the debt was paid off the first
month! At the close of the 1950 season
there was a surplus of $70,000. All this
and $15,000 more was plowed back into
desperately needed improvements—
theater seats with backs, black-top
drives, a caretaker’s house, presentable
office space and equipment, and so on.
man,
© The 3,000 members of
the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
live on a 57,000-acre tribally owned
tract surrounded on the north, east, and
west by the Great Smoky National
Park. They receive no money dole from
the government. They would spurn any-
thing that looked like a handout, and
they are receiving nothing on a platter
from the Historical Association. But by
legitimate work, alongside their white:
associates, the Cherokee are earning
roughly $100,000 a year in connection
with the pageant. Some 150 are directly
on its payroll. Sales of handicrafts be-
fore the Cherokee Drama attracted
visitors ran about $75,000 a year. Count-
ing in the proceeds. from garden and
farm products and other tourist attrac-
“a re ,
ey . ‘
a, rs Sa = ms
= S . “See
= a c
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<2 an ote
Hien the Cherokee are now doing an: <
* estimated half a ‘million dollars’ worth |
of business a year. ;
Out of the red .and with surplus
funds the association has inaugurated
other projects that were written into its
charter. It has awarded its first four-year
college scholarships for Indian boys and
girls in the fields of dramatics, anthro-
pology, medicine, dentistry, and home-
making. It has appropriated $5,000 for
looms, spinning wheels, and other tools
that will enable the Indians to step up
their production of arts and crafts. It
will award $750 in cash prizes annually
to encourage the beautifying of high-
ways, homes, yards, gardens, community
centers, and the like throughout the six
Cherokee villages. Cash prizes totaling
$2,400 will be awarded for the best
products in woodcarving, basketry,
weaving, pottery, agriculture, and
forestry.
The association has built a roadside
market in Cherokee where the Indians
display and sell their wares and opened
a ‘live museum”’ on a forty-acre forested
tract a few hundred yards from the
Mountainside Theater. The museum is
an authentic reconstruction of a 200-
year-old Cherokee village. Typical
Cherokee families occupy the dwellings
and weave cloth, plait baskets, chip
arrowheads, fashion bows, arrows, and
blowguns, cultivate corn, beans and
squash, and carry on the rituals. and
customs of their ancestors, just as they
were doing when Hernando De Soto
visited them in 1540.
Probably the most significant long-
term project of the association is the
development of a superior summer
school of fine arts, arts and crafts, and
dramatics at Cherokee. When expanded
according to plans, the school may oper
ate the year round and will be open to
any boy or girl of amy race who can
qualify.
The production of the pageant was
the -work of white men. Most of its
patrons are white men. It is a rare
thing to see one race stage a confession |
of its wrongdoing toward another race
in the heart of the wronged people's
homeland, for all the world to see. Few
experiments in interracial relations can
equal this. MARLEY COLE
[The author is a student of Appala-
chian folklore and has written on the
subject for various spesiebome eee
pir S eg
, oe * ss
£ ~
Volume 176, Number 10
New York, Saturday, March 7, 1953
The Shape of Things
Sanctioning Indecency
Trygve Lie’s newest directive to the United Nations
staff raises the interesting question: Has he decided to
abandon his Norwegian citizenship along with his post
as Secretary General and join the McCarthy wing of the
Republican Party? Nothing short of this would seem
sufficient to explain his action, on the eve of a U. N. de-
bate on personnel problems, in authorizing non-Ameri-
can members to inform on their American colleagues.
The fact that the directive stipulates that they should not
discuss the “professional” operations of United States
employees but only their personal lives merely adds to
its indecency. Mr. Lie’s action, which became public
last week, was taken several weeks ago in connection
with the loyalty investigation of Americans being held
on U.N. territory, and obviously represents an effort to
present the Assembly with a fast accom plz when it comes
to discuss this most controversial subject.
Elsewhere in this issue we present a challenge to Lie
and the report of his panel of jurists by the distinguished
anti-Communist ‘Belgian senator and international law-
yer, Henri Rolin. An authority on the U. N. Charter,
M. Rolin underscores the point that the Secretary Gen-
eral is completely outside the jurisdiction of the head-
quarters state. But his behavior makes it clear that Mr.
Lie can no longer be regarded as the protector of the
sanctity of the Charter. It remains to be seen whether the
member states will have the courage to recognize this
fact, accept his resignation, and instal personnel stand-
ards which are worthy of the world’s most important
international body.
Sauce for the Shrimp
Messrs. McKay and Dulles otght to get together. The
Secretary of the Interior has told the Senate that Texas
and Florida should be given title to off-shore land within
their “historical boundaries” stretching 10.5 miles sea-
ward. Simultaneously the State Department has told the
Mexican government, which recently seized a number of
‘= eapecican ee boats as oe that it does not
"Vatton
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
miles from the coast. The high seas, it declares, begin at
the usual international three-mile limit.
Actually, there is no universally accepted limit to terri-
torial waters. The claims of Texas and Florida appear to
be derived from Spanish law; if they are sound, so is that
of Mexico, which has the same origin, But in any case
the State Department seems to have forgotten that
the United States abandoned its historical position on
the three-mile limit on September 28, 1945, when Presi-
dent Truman issued two proclamations. The first
asserted United States jurisdiction over the mineral re-
sources of the continental shelf contiguous to the United
States beyond the three-mile limit. The second established
fishing conservation zones in areas of the high seas con-
tiguous to the coasts of the United States where fishing
activities on a substantial scale have been developed and
maintained by United States nationals alone or by them
and nationals of other states. The proclamation, which
expressly recognized the right of other states to take
similar action, was particularly aimed at protection of the
Alaska salmon fisheries, which were formerly threatened
by Japanese fishermen operating well outside the three-
mile limit. We would think that sauce for Alaskan salmon.
is also sauce for Mexican shrimp.
Peron’s Double Deal
Hailed by the Argentine government press as an
“epoch-making event in Latin American relations,”
Perén’s state visit to Chile does not seem to have lived
up to expectations. The real purpose of the rendezvous
in Santiago was to strengthen the bargaining position of
Latin America’s three “strong men” vis-a-vis the United
States. But one of the three, and not the least important,
Was conspicuously absent. Getulio Vargas of Brazil ap-
parently had not the least desire to assist in building up
his Argentine colleague as the leader of a new and
powerful continental bloc.
Vargas had another reason for staying away from a
meeting that could be construed as an anti-United States
demonstration. After a conference between President
Eisenhower and Secretaty Dulles, the Export-Import
Bank recently favored Brazil with an extension of a
three- -year $300,000,000 credit. It would have appeared
_ with the credit in his.
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In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things
Revolt Against McCarthy?
“Young Bob”
ARTICLES
Lodge Sets the one
y J. Alvarez del V. ‘ayo
Camus-Sartre Debate:
Rebellion vs. Revolution
by J.-M. Domenach
Foreign Policy: Behind the Scenes
by Bruce Catton
No ABC's on TV:
Education Takes a Beating
by Saul Carson
Lie’s U. N. Purge:
A Belgian Senator's View
by Henri Rolin
BOOKS
Too Big by T. K. Quinn
New Books in Brief
THEATER by Harold Clurman
RECORDS by B. H. Haggin
Record Notes by Robert E. Garis
Gallery Notes by Irvin Haas
LETTERS
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 506
by Frank W. Lewis
AROUND THE U. S. A.
The Cherokee Drama
197
201
207
210
mae
212
214
215
215
216
216
by Marley Cole opposite 197
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey
Carey McWilliams
Lillie Shultz
- Victor H. Bernstein
J. Alvarez del Vayo
Harold Clubman
Editor and Publisher
Editorial Director °
Director, Nation Associates
Managing Editor
Foreign Editor
Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside
Caroline Whiting
Mary Simon
Copy Editor
Assistant Literary Editor
Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus,
Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar
The Nation, published weekly aie copyright, 1953, in the U. a. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc. Vesey Street, New York
N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New York, N.
. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising
and Circulation Representative for Continental ‘Europe: Publicitas. .
esha Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Three
years $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $1.
Change of Address: Three weeks’ wotice is required for change of
address, which cannot be made without the old address as well as the
now.
Information to Libraries: The Nation is indexed in Readers’ Guide to
Periodical Literature, Book Review Digest, Inde# to Labor Articles,
Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index.
198
OE SO ee
-
IS i van
pocket, e have showed up at Santingo! Fated War
Minister, General Cardosa, was despatched to the United —
States on an official visit. .
Actually the anti-Yankee position assumed by Peron
and President Ibafez of Chile need not be taken too.
seriously. Both need American dollars. It is reasonable
to assume that were the United States to extend to
Argentina the same generous economic cooperation it has
been giving Brazil, Peron would find it convenient to
temper his animosity.
But even so Perén-would like to negotiate with Wash-
ington from a position of strength, with a solid group of
Latin American states behind him. So far he has failed
to win over Brazil, and though he is apparently prepared
to exchange one “'B” for another, Bolivia will never
prove a satisfactory substitute.
Witch Hunt Plus Job Hunt
A measure of light is shed on the current friendship
between Secretary Dulles and Senator McCarthy (see
editorial comment following) by the sad and belated
Republican discovery that only 150 of 42,000 State De-
partment employees serve at “the pleasure of the Presi-
dent." Mr. Dulles, it appears, had been bewitched by
visions of lavish Republican patronage, What, then, to
do? The always-candid John O'Donnell, in his column
of March 2, provides the answer: “Let McCarthy tear the
boys apart in the State Department. They had it coming
to them. Then, after the facts are in and the Congress
and people are behind the clean-up, come in with a
White House-backed bill for a complete reorganization
of the State Department.”
7
Revolt Against McCarthy?
THIS is the year of the snake in the old Chinese almanac
cycle, and it could turn out to be a year of the snake here
too if McCarthy, Jenner, and Velde continue to rack up
bloodless triumphs as easily as they did this last fort-
night.
By a succession of swiftly executed and’ Eeiieaing bold |
maneuvers Senator McCarthy forced the new leadership
of the State eee to knuckle under in the ne
ignominious fashion. “No greater series of victories,”
reports William*S. White in the New York Times, * ‘by
a Congressional body over a senior Executive depart-
ment in so short a time is recalled here.’’ Such seasoned
observers of the Washington scene as Doris Fleeson,
Thomas L. Stokes, the Alsop brothers, and Marquis
Childs were stunned by the ease with which McCarthy,
with a few cracks of his circus-master’s whip, brought
John Foster Dulles, Walter Bedell Smith, and Donald
Lourie-into line, It used to be thought that Mr. Acheson
was easily intimidated by Congressional bullying, but
The NATION _
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— March 7, 1953
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“his behavior looks downright gallant in comparison with
the craven manner in which the new Republican chiefs
have capitulated to the town tough and prize soy-bean
speculator of Appleton, Wisconsin. “In the days of
Truman and Acheson,” reports John O'Donnell in his
syndicated column, “McCarthy was on the outside trying
to storm stubbornly defended official walls. Now he’s in-
vited inside as an ally.”
After only a month in office the Eisenhower Adminis- :
tration is being warned from all sides that a day of
reckoning with the “radical” right-wing Republicans
cannot be avoided much longer. But the chance for a
reckoning may have come and gone, Now that he has
been invited into the State Department, with carte
blanche to look around, examine files, cross-examine
employees, and encourage his bevy of informers, Mc-
Carthy will not easily be kicked out. Not more than eight
votes could be found in the Senate, Mr. White estimates,
for any attempt by that body to discipline McCarthy. In
the House_only two Congressmen, Emanuel Celler and
Roy Weir, had the courage to vote against the latest
appropriation for the House Committee on Un-American
Activities. Nor will the Administration be successful in
its attempts to appease McCarthy, for his price will prove
to be too high. Lord High Executioner of the Senate in
1953, McCarthy hopes to be in the White Hontse. in
1956. He cannot be reasoned with; he must be opposed.
The questiorf is, by whom? “Taking their cue from Presi-
dent Eisenhower,” reports William V. Shannon in the
New York Posf, “political leaders here are keeping under
cover as far as Senator McCarthy is concerned. The
question of who, if anyone, is going to do anything about
McCarthy is more up in the air than ever.”
McCARTHY, it must be emphasized, is a clever and
resourceful demagogue, though he is not so powerful as
he appears to be. He has an uncanny ability, as Hitler and
Mussolini did, to bluff his opposition. Each time he wins
a handsome stake by making a reckless bid which no one
cares to call, he acquires still more political chips to sup-
port his next bid, which is always higher. Thus he seems
invincible when in fact he is only lucky and bold. He
can afford to take long chances since he has good reason
to believe that his bluff will not be called, at least not by
those who can afford to call it. In this country as else-
* where the respectable conservative elements cannot sum-
~ mon the will—it is not a question of courage—to oppose
the anti-Communist demagogue, however much they
may dislike his methods. Sensing this weakness, the dem-
agogue is able to command the active support of some
(see the list of those who have contributed to McCarthy's
—and Joe Ryan’s—secret “anti-Communist” funds) and
the worried and guilt-ridden acquiescence of the others.
When Mr. Eisenhower failed to speak out against
McCarthy during the Wisconsin primary last year, it ap-
peared that he either lacked the courage, which was un-
'thinkable, or that he did not understand what McCarthy
was up to, which was incredible; now it seems more
likely that he actually approves
of McCarthy's objectives if not
his methods, That means the fat
is in the fire. Noting the ease
with which McCarthy occupied
the State Department without fir-
ing a shot, Senator Jenner boldly
tells off Senator Taft, and the
President, instead of rallying to
the support of Taft, takes a posi-
ition on the loaded question of
Communist teachers which is in-
distinguishable from that of McCarthy, Jenner, and
Velde. If this is to be the pattern of his relationship with
these demagogues, the President is already their captive.
Jenner
In no small measure McCarthy’s power is based on —
a failure of leadership. As long as “anti-communism”
rather than some affirmative purpose is our domiriant
political concern, leadership will continue to be a compe- -
tition in demagoguery. The opposition exists, but it
cannot find effective expression without leadership. Once
the right sentiments are voiced, the response is seldom
disappointing—witness the extraordinary chain reaction
to Mrs. Agnes E. Meyer’s brave and dramatic indictment
of the “inquisitors” before the 17,000 teachers, superin-
tendents, and top educators at the recent Atlantic City
meeting of the American Association of School Adminis-
trators.
When in the wake of this superb speech Representative
Velde attempted to smear Mrs. Meyer, she charged him
with being “a man who is conscienceless enough to use
a deliberate lie,” and Velde was forced to issue a retrac-
tion, albeit tardy, whining, and unapologetic. Incensed
by the Velde smear, Senator Morse in a fine speech
joined with Senators Lehman and Kefauver in demanding
a change in Senate investigatory procedures. A few days
later Senator Taft, speaking in Chicago, went out of his
way to say that he “would not fire anyone for being a
Communist unless it was certain he was teaching com-
munism and having some effect on the dévelopment of
the thought of students.” Senator Jenner promptly
labeled the statement “naive.”
THESE strange goings-on prompeted others to speak
up. The Very Reverend Francis B. Sayres, Jr., dean of the —
Washington (Episcopal) Cathedral, charged that Mc-
Carthy, Jenner, and Velde were “demonstrating that they
believe God and the nation are best served by the
frightened and credulous collaborators of a servile brand
of patriotism.” In a sermon called “ Study in Tyranny,”
Dr. A. Powell Davies of Washington’s All Soul’s Unitar-
ian Church, denounced McCarthy, Jenner, and Velde as
199
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PFGE NEE, Tete
PEPE
1 RS ge ens on wT
“pretended patriots . .. men of tyrannous purpose,” and
called for their repudiation. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam
attacked the same tyrannical trinity. “Our freedom
and our faith,” he said, “are in jeopardy. .. . Men who
say that in every little red schoolhouse there is a little.
Red teacher lie. . .. How long are we to tolerate former
conspirators, men who admit they sought the overthrow
of this government and who by their own admission were
traitors, coming as respected witnesses with
amazingly adaptable memories?” In Princeton, George
F. Kennan pointed out that the witch hunts were
“whipping our established institutions about like trees
in a storm,” and in New, York, Edward R. Murrow
lashed out at “these pompous, posturing practitioners
of terror, who would ride down those who are searching
for truth.” What is significant about these statements is
not so much the credentials of the speakers as the new
political diction in which they are couched. These are not
statements of the sick and frightened but of the angry
and aroused.
now
IT IS significant, too, that these interesting reactions
stemmed from the announcement that the witch-
hunters were preparing to investigate the schools and
colleges. Féw public interests are of deeper concern to
more citizens in this country than the freedom and. integ-
rity of American education, It is one thing to stage a
heresy trial of ten Hollywood writers; it is something
else again when, six years later, professors are tried for
the same offense. In 1947, when the Hollywood writers
were being mercilessly grilled, few persons would have
thought that 1953 would produce the headline: “Har-
vard Group to Study Policy on Red Quizzes.” When the
President’s Committee on Civil Rights fatuously con-
cluded in the fall of 1947 that civil liberties were firmly
safeguarded, who would have thought that 1953 would
bring the headlines: “Ford Fund Allots $15,000, 000 for
United States Civil Liberties Survey”? When a few —and
a lonely few they were—teporters charged that the Pasa-
dena School Board incident of 1949 foreshadowed a
desperate struggle for control of American education, it
was said that they were the victims of hallucinations and
nightmares. But the 17,000 educators who listened to
Mrs. Meyer’s fighting speech in Atlantic City did not
treat what she had to say as fantastic.
There is a cloud on the horizon today no larger than
a man’s fist but it is growing fast and moving faster, and
it is moving in the direction of Washington. For the first
time since the start of the current witch hunt a significant
protest is being voiced against it. A partial eclipse of the
sun marked the advent of the Year of the Snake in
China, where eclipses are regarded as a portent signify-
ing the “anger of heaven.” If we are not mistaken, the
ancestral American deities are beginning to be angered
too.
200
“Young Bob”
BY WILLIAM T. EVJUE
Madison, Wisconsin
FEW men have carried as heavy a burden of public re-
sponsibility at such an early age as “Young Bob” La
Follette. He was only thirty when he was first elected to
fill the unexpired term of his father, who died in 1925.
His task was not only to prove himself as a Senator in
the seat that his great father had occupied but to carry
on the tradition of progressive insurgency. His worst
political enemies will not deny that from the beginning
he discharged these responsibilities with honor and in a
way that would have made “Old Bob” proud of him.
He did it with simplicity, humility, and courageous
dedication to the cause for which his father had fought
all his life.
For almost a quarter of a century Bob carried on the
fight for progressive reform. In the dark days of the early
thirties, when the bread lines were lengthening, the
banks closing, and farms and homes going under the
auctioneer’s hammer, he took the floor of the Senate
again and again to implore the federal government to
act. His pleas went unheeded as just the braying of one
of the “sons of the wild jackass.” But with the advent
of the New Deal, Bob saw the things for which he had
fought become a reality. Through the formative years of
the New Deal he helped to shape and to give the force
of law to many of the reforms which his father had
brought to Wisconsin and struggled in vain to extend to
the nation,
It is one of the bitterest ironies of politics that a man
who achieved so much for organized labor by his work
on the Civil Liberties Committee should have been de-
feated in 1946 with the help of some of the labor leaders
in his home state. At that time the Wisconsin C. I. O.
was controlled by Communist elements out to get La
Follette because he had raised his voice in the Senate to
warn ofthe aggressive intentions of the Soviet Union.
Deliberately and maliciously they distorted and misrepre-
sented his record. When the votes were counted, it was
found that the strong labor wards of Milwaukee, tradi-
tional La Follette strongholds, had cast a large enough
vote to give the Republican nomination to circuit Judge
Joseph R. McCarthy.
The monumental achievements of Bob La Follette re-
main as a tribute to his memory, Thousands of words of
praise have come from men and women of all political
beliefs. But the real proof that he steered a course of true
American progressivism was his defeat. The era of the
La Follettes was ended by an alliance between the Mc-
Carthyites and the Communists.
MR. EVJUE is editor of the Madison Capital Times.
J. Alvarez. del Vayo
Lodge Sets the Tone
United Nations, February 27
THE second session of the seventh
Assembly opened in a mood no more
chéerful than that in which the. first
session closed. Again Korea is the dom-
inating and vexatious subject. A new
leading actor made his debut—Henry
Cabot Lodge, Jr., in the role of United
States chief delegate. He speaks well, has
an attractive personality, and was greeted
with a burst of applause from the visi-
tors’ gallery which the chairman of the
Political Committee silenced with a po-
lite reminder that public demonstrations
were not permitted. Mr. Lodge’s brief
address was clearly intended to prove
beyond doubt that it was no mere suc-
cessor of Mr. Dean Acheson who took
the floor. Less finished in’ style, more
vigorous and challenging, his remarks
could not be called conciliatory. In the
old League of Nations days such a
speech would have been possible only as
the first step toward a charge of aggres-
sion and the imposition of sanctions. In
the United Nations both effect and con-
sequences were much less serious.
Ambassador Lodge challenged For-
eign “Minister Vishinsky to deny ten
specific points, stated one after another
by the speaker, which showed that the
Soviet Union was “‘actively assisting the
aggressors in Korea.” He served notice
that the United States would not at this
session present any new Korean pro-
posal, that since “the rulers of the
Soviet Union can stop the war whenever
they want to—and Mr. Vishinsky knows,
it’ —it was up to them to change their
position on the last approved Indian
resolution. It was evident that any ad-
ditional steps, following the authoriza-
tion already given to Chiang Kai-shek
to undertake military operations against
the mainland—intensive air action,
_a blockade, or a total embargo.on com-
mercial relations with China—would be
decided independently without asking
for the Assembly’s approval.
No important item was added to the
agenda. Ambassador Eban of Israel
March 7, 1953
indicated that he would doubtless have
something to say later on the issue of
racial discrimination in the Communist
states. A more explicit reference to the
subject by Mr. Lodge confirmed the ex-
pectation that before the Assembly ad-
journs a large debate will develop
around the attitude of the Communist
governments toward Zionism and Jews.
With a not very inspiring session
ahead it was natural that any exciting
news from outside would be welcomed
and magnified. On the second day of the
Assembly no one spoke in the Political
Committee, but the corridors were full of
rumors and speculation based on Presi-
dent-Eisenhower’s announcement of his
readiness to meet Prime Minister Stalin
at a halfway point between here and
Moscow if it would aid peace.
At least one group that includes some
Western Europeans and the Indians at-
tributed considerable importance to the
statement. In their opinion it fits into the
theory that a new possibility for negotia-
tion has been created both by the latest
developments in Russia and the Soviet
orbit and by the presence of Eisenhower
in the White House. The campaign slo-
gan of the Communists that it made
no difference whether Eisenhower or
Stevenson was elected—that in foreign
policy they would go the same road—
is already discarded. There is a differ-
ence and a very important one, and
Moscow will be the first to realize it
and avoid partisan over-simplification.
But it is especially what has taken
place in the Communist world during
recent months that induces this group of
mild optimists to believe a better atmos-
phere for negotiation is in the making.
They consider the Prague trial, the doc-
tors’ arrest in Moscow, and the anti-
Zionist drive the final incidents of a long
ideological struggle inside Russia. Some
go even to the extreme of comparing
this period with the dramatic era of the
first conflicts between Stalin and Trotsky.
This time the forces in conflict, according
always to these delegates, were Stalin
on the one side, opposing any move that
could lead to World War III, and the»
extreme faction of Zhdanovites on the
other, urging action before the Ameri-
can-led coalition had finished its military
and atomic plans and was in a condition
to strike. They considered Stalin the
victor, but only after a longer and more
difficult process than was realized outside.
Now that Stalin has established his
position, a new chance for negotiation
has been created. That, these delegates
argue, puts the Stalin reply to James
Reston of the New York Times in its
real light; and the counter-move is the
assignment to Moscow of Mr. Bohlen,
known in the State Department as a
consistent advocate of an “exchange of
views.” Perhaps Kennan wanted to be
the man, but he arrived in Moscow in
the midst of the crisis, was received by
Vishinsky but never by Stalin, and it
was not the moment. Bohlen, they say,
will find a different climate.
This theorizing is completed with
comments on the double Indian inter-
view, the recent still optimistic statement
by Nehru, the Churchill-Gromyko meet-
ing in London, and many other items.
Unfortunately those who argue along
these lines are in the minority.
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~CAMUS-SARTRE DEBATE
Rebellion vs. Revolution . . by J-MZ Domenach
THE rupture of a friendship between
two famous writers is an exciting event -
in the literary world. But the personal
aspect of the controversy between Jean-
Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, however
sad, is of secondary importance. What
has taken place is a debate in the great
tradition of French intellectual life.
Politics has been blended with philoso-
phy, and the polemics of Sartre and
Camus have touched on some of the
basic political and ideological questions
of our time. Curiously, despite the con-
fusion and impotence of contemporary
French political Jife, these ideological
battles have lost none of their vivacity;
on the contrary, they have taken an even
more intense and tragic turn now that
Europe, after having experienced the
horror of Nazi occupation, finds itself
divided and confronted by Soviet power.
@ The prestige of both Sartreand Camus
dates from the Resistance, in which
both men fought against Nazism. After
the Liberation they exerted a powerful
influence on many’ young people in
France. No abstract libertarians, they
participated actively in the great post-
war political struggles, although as
francs-tireurs—working outside the po-
litical parties. Camus wrote editorials
for Combat; Sartre took part in a new
Socialist movement and with other non-
Communist intellectuals founded in
1948 the Rassemblement Démocratique
Révolutionnaire. (This collapsed after a
few months as a result of dissension
somewhat like that between Sartre and
Camus today.) Both writers were ex-
istentialists; both were revolutionaries.
Now these two left-wing intellectuals
have split violently. Why? :
At the beginning of last year Carhus
published a book, “L'Homme révolté,”’
which despite its philosophical tone had
- an immense popular success. In earlier
works he had described isolated man
JEAN-MARIE DOMENACH is editor-
in-chief of Esprit, one of France’s most
important political monthlies.
202
struggling against the “absurd.” How,
he asked, could man combat the absurd-
ity of his fate and the injustice of mis-
ery and death? In his mythological
novel, ‘The Plague,’’ he seemed to sup-
ply the answer: man fesists blind pesti-
lences by establishing conditions of
human solidarity. But how can one
reconcile the tragic situation of isolated
man with the pity and sense of frater-
nity aroused by injustice and oppres-
sion? To this Camus replies in his last
book—by rebellion. “Rebellion, in the
case of men, means refusing to be
treated as things or objects or to be re-
duced to simple history. It is the asser-
tion of a nature common to all men who
escape from the world of power.’”” Imi-
tating the famous Cartesian formula,
Camus proposes the logic of collective
action: “I rebel, therefore we are.”
According to Camus, rebellion creates
the basis for human solidarity. In
“L’Homme révolté’” he describes the
perversions of revolt. First, there is the
metaphysical nihilism that demands of
God absolute freedom for the individ-
ual and defeats itself in a “mystifying
dandyism’’; second, the, abstract declara-
tion of democratic values that produced
the revolutionary tyranny of 1793; third,
the Hegelianism that identifies rebellion
with history and enslaves man in dialec-
tic; fourth, the “irrational terrorism’’ of
fascism; and finally the “‘rational terror-
ism’ of Stalinism. Thus Camus pursues
the history of a tradition of rebellion
ultimately destroyed by a dehumanizing
revolution. In the end the rebellious
author, disillusioned by the long, mur-
derous, and deceptive history, retires, so
to speak, to the shore of the Mediter-
ranean, there to rediscover justness and.
proportion in the full light of noon.
SEVERAL months after the appearance
of “L’Homme révolté,” Francis Jeanson,
a young Sartrian philosopher, reviewed
the book in the May, 1952, number of
Les Temps Modernes, of which Sartre is
editor. Jeanson attacked Camus as a
“noble soul’ who evaded history while
claiming to have discovered “‘transcen-
dental principles.” Camus replied im-
mediately with a ‘Letter to the Editor,”
published in the magazine’s August-
September issue, in which he challenged
his. critics. In particular, he accused Les
Temps Modernes of following the Sta-
linist line by calling every criticism of
Marxism reactionary and _ identifying
revolution with communism, while at
the same time it feared to defend Marx-
ism openly or to discuss its present po-
litical form and tragic consequences,
especially the Soviet concentration
camps. According to Camus, the existen-
tialists of Les Temps Modernes do not
admit employing the Marxist-Stalinist
dialectic because it contradicts their own
philosophy, whose aim is to restore man
to absolute freedom. He wrote: “To
free man of every restraint only. to trap
him subsequently in ‘historical neces-
sity’ amounts to depriving him of his
reasons for struggling for freedom and
leaving him to the mercies of any politi-
cal party operating by the rules of ex-
pediency. This means proceeding, ac-
cording to the law of nihilism, from
absolute freedom to extreme necessity;
it implies nothing else but dedication to
the enslavement of man.”
Sartre answered Camus in an extreme-
ly vigorous article, undoubtedly the best
he has ever written. He set himself, not
like Camus on the heights, but at the
level of the present struggle. He refused
* to be intimidated by the “virtuous vio-
lence’ of Camus or to be embarrassed by
the dialectic of an impotent protest. He
wrote: ‘Yes, Camus, like you, I consider
the concentration camps. intolerable, but
the constant exploitation of them by the
bourgeois press is just as intolerable. I
do not say that the case of Madagascar
is more important than that of the Soviet
Union. % say that we must not exploit
suffering in the Soviet Union in order to
justify measures we have taken to sup-
»press the natives of Madagascar.” He
went on to describe the futility of a pro-
The ATI ON ch
a ge) %y
a
a
ee
Camus
test that refuses to distinguish between
different acts of violence or between dif-
ferent “oppressors.” The rebels of Viet-
minh, he observed, may be considered
former French “slaves,” but according to
Camus, they are also “‘slaves’’ of Stalin-
ist totalitarianism. For him, Sartre, the
only way to fight against oppression all
over the world is to join forces with your
own victims first.
Sartre then passed to the counter-at-
tack. He described the writings of Camus
as the work of a man who pionsly evades
history. For man’s oppression of man
Camus has substituted the*oppression of
man by the absurd; in short, he replaces
history with fatalism. In consequence,
the rebellion Camus preaches exhausts
~ jtself in an impotent aesthetic of revolt
_ and déverts the oppressed from their
real battle. In Sartre’s view it is not
against disease and death that one must
struggle but against the injustices and
tyranny that make life so’ tragic and
liberty so hard to attain not only for the
-natives of colonial empires but for
proletarians everywhere.
TWO questions, it seems to me, per-
vade this controversy—as they have
dominated French intellectual preoccu-
pations since the Liberation. The first is
philosophical and concerns the “mean-
ing of history’; the second, more politi-
cai, concerns the “engagement” of the
left intellectua). Both are affected by
Marxism, its ideological form and the
political form given it by Stalinism.
Does history have a meaning on which
one can depend? More precisely, does
Marxism give us the key to history—
conceived as the triumph of the prole-
tariat in a classless society? The question
of historical determinism is a thorny one
ch 7, 1953
for the existentialists, who do not recog-
nize a self-fulfilling “human nature’’ and
for whom man, in a state of freedom,
shapes his own destiny. It would seem
that on this point Camus has discovered
the Sartrian existentialists in a hopeless
contradiction. He asks: “If there is no
goal that man can pursue according to
some scheme of values, how can history
follow a perceivable direction ? If it does
follow one, why is not man able to
achieve his goal? And if he does achieve
it, how can he be in the terrible and
perpetual state of freedom you talk
about ?””
To this Sartre replies that he does not
know the meaning of history but feels
that it is up to men to give it a certain
design—a design created in every act of
striving for freedom: “Today our free-
dom is nothing-else but the free choice
of struggling in order to become free.”
It is here that one would like to bring
Sartre back to the concrete situation and
ask him: Who has this free choice? Do
the masses have it? If so, under what
conditions? Does historical materialism
grant proletarians this freedom that
Sartre claims for them—“the freedom
to orient history according to their
means’’? More precisely, does the Stalin-
ist system permit its subjects this free-
dom? Sartre himself, in earlier works,
answered no on many occasions. Evident-
ly there is now a contradiction between
his philosophy and his political views.
THIS contradiction can be more easily
understood when one recognizes the di-
lemma in which French left-wing intel-
lectuals find themselves. (A similar con-
tradiction may be observed between the
faith of certain Christians and their
sympathy for the Communists.) The
left-wing intellectual, however, is di-
vided between protest and “engage-
ment.” If he wishes to maintain the
purity of his protest he must denounce
capitalist oppression in the West as well
as police oppression in the East. But
his protest will be completely futile,
since the cause of the under-dog in
France is defended by the Communist
Party alone. ;
Camus, rejecting collaboration with
the Communists—guilty by association
with oppression in the East—finds him-
self cut off from the French working
class; he must limit himself to protests
against the tyranny of Franco and the
excesses of French imperialism since he
is unable to find any other pure cause.
Sartre, on the other hand, is convinced
that the major threat is offered by
American power—guilty by association
with the sufferings imposed on the
French proletariat and on natives in the
colonies; coisequently he joins sides
with the Conimunists and goes off to the
Vienna Peace Congress to discuss means
of preventing war. Anxious to deal with
immediate dangers, Sartre took this step
in the honest spirit that has always char-
acterized him.
Politically, Camus is in an untenable
position; philosophically, Sartre is in an
untenable position. I do not wish to re-
duce their quarrel, which involves fun-
damental human problems, to mere po-
litical terms. However, their split and the .
contradictions in which they both find
themselves are directly related to the
situation of the French left, whose in-
tellectual resources are richer than ever
but whose capacity for action is practi-
cally nil. It would be an exaggeration to
say that Camus has passed into the
“American camp” and Sartre into the
“Soviet camp.” Camus has chosen in-
transigent protest against all forms of
terrorism; Sartre, without capitulating,
has decided to fight beside the Commu-
nists against the immediate threat of
fascism and war. I am not so bold as to
judge the merit of their opinions. I say
simply that if in France there existed a
non-Stalinist revolutionary party which
could offer the working class an alterna-
tive to absorption by Stalinism, Sartre
and Camus would both be in it. Their
dispute enables us to evaluate both the
tragic consequences of the collapse of
Social Democracy in France and the
work that remains to be done before
‘ the spirit of rebellion can embrace revo-
lution without regret.
Sartre
¥
Abs
.
FOREIGN POLICY
Behind the Scenes . . by Bruce Catton
Washington
SOONER or later you have to pick up
the tab for all that free-and-easy cam-
paign talk. It comes hard, and the psy-
chological effects can be confusing, and
there is always the danger that somebody
will take advantage of your good nature
while you are doing it. But it has to be
done before a new political Administra-
tion can come of age.
The necessity of making glowing
promises square with hard realities is
now bringing pressure on two important
sectors of the cold-war front—the Ko-
rean fighting and the much-talked-of
repudiation of ‘‘secret agreements.’ At
the moment it seems likely that Eisen-
hower will finally settle for a new look
on a couple of old policies inherited
from the preceding Administration.
The campaign turned pretty largely
on the Korean situation. General Eisen-
hower promised that if he was elected
he would go out there at once and take
a first-hand look at it. Campaigns being
what they are, this was immediately in-
terpreted as a promise to get the Korean
war off dead center and end it. After the
election the trip was duly made and re-
ported. Presently the new President de-
livered his State of the Union message.
With all that campaign talk waiting to
be redeemed, he announced that the
Seventh Fleet would no longer keep
Chiang Kai-shek’s forces immobilized.
It would cease to “shield Communist.
. China’; there “is no longer any logic
-or sense,” he said, “in a condition that
required the United States navy to as-
sume defensive responsibilities on behalf
of the Chinese Communists.”
This was pretty much an empty ges-
ture, since the Seventh Fleet for some
time had been mostly in Japanese waters,
and Chiang’s forces were in no condition
to make a serious invasion of the main-
land. Nevertheless, the tab had been
BRUCE CATION is ¢ontributing a
series of articles on the new Washington
Administration.
204
picked up and the talk began to flow.
Senator Wiley, chairman of the Senate
“Foreign Relations Committee, promptly
announced that the order to the Seventh
Fleet was designed to “open the way to
Nationalist bombing of the 2,000-mile
railroad running from Manchuria to the
frontier of French Indo-China.” Gen-
eral Wedemeyer expressed the hope that
the “new Formosa policy” would lead to
economic and naval blockade of the
mainland and eventual invasion. Senator
Knowland urged the United States—
alone, if necessary—to impose a block-
ade of Red China. Senator Taft re-
marked that if Chiang’s troops did ef-
fectively invade China, ‘‘why, we'll un-
doubtedly help.’’ Within a week Senator
Bridges was suggesting the use of atomic
weapons in Korea. What had been taken
as a campaign pledge to end the Korean
stalemate seemed about to be imple-
mented. The Administration immedi-
ately took steps to put out the fire.
In Paris, Secretary of State Dulles,
according to the Associated Press, as-
sured anxious French officials that the
United States did’ not intend to support
Chiang in any “reckless action” against
the mainland. Later he called talk of a
blockade “premature,” and soon he was
explaining to Congress that many people
had been reading into the President's
speech things not really in it. All that
was happening, he said, was that “in-
creased attention’ was being. given to
training South Korean troops and the
fleet was being pulled away from For-
mosa, thus removing our “‘defensive re-
sponsibilities.””
The real cooling-off dose, however,
came from General Bradley. In a closed
session with the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee he is understood to have
made it clear that any win-the-war of-
fensive in Korea would require a huge
step-up in the American mobilization
program and entail very heavy casualties.
One Senator said he got from Bradley's
testimony the implication that the num-
ber of United Nations troops in Korea
might have to*be doubled; worse yet,
the degree of mobilization at home
would also have to be doubled. This, of
course, would mean higher taxes and
the quick reimposition of stiff economic
controls, which are now being thrown
out the window.
It seems clear, therefore, that the
“new, positive foreign policy” implies,
in Korea at least, an effort to redeem
campaign talk rather than a sudden
right-about-face. The Administration is
discovering that Truman simply told the
truth when he warned that there is no
quick, easy solution of the Korean
problem.
On the heels of this came the business
of secret agreements. In his State of the
Union message the President also
promised to ask Congress for a forth-
right resolution making it clear that the
United States will repudiate any secret
agreements with Russia which brought
about the enslavement of peoples. This
part of the message drew rousing ap-
plause, for it is an article of Republican.
faith that past administrations—largely
through the machinations of Alger Hiss
—sold Poles, Chinese, and others down
the river at Yalta and other places. But
when thg Administration requested
Congress to frame such a resolution, it
bumped into the hard fact that the
peoples in the satellite states were en-
slaved not by infamous secret agree-
ments but by Russia’s failure to live up
to its pledges. In consequence, the draft
suggested by the President was one any
good Trumanite could indorse. It simply ‘
stated that this country opposes the en- ~
slavement of peoples and that the en-
slavement was the result of the Soviet
Union’s violations of international
agreements.
Senator Wiley immediately declared
that this was very disappointing—as well
he might, since it draws a bead on the
bad faith of Red Russians instead of
domestic Democrats. Study would be
needed he said, to frame a resolution —
which would “‘‘more clearly and accu. —
3 The Na
- rately set forth the sentiments of the
American people.”
In the House, where the mavericks are
under fairly good control—except in
the matter of income-tax reduction—the
Eisenhower resolution is not expected
to run into much trouble. Things look
different in the Senate, however, and
the odd thing here is that if the resolu-
tion is to be saved—if, that is, it finally
goes through in a form that does
violence neither to the truth nor to the
prospect of preserving the peace—the
Administration will need the help of the
Democrats. And as things look now, it
will get it. For the resolution actually
says nothing that the Democrats have not
been saying all along. Once more the
Administration is discovering that Tru-
man knew what he was talking about: it
is a hard and rocky road to real collective
security and a world order in which
international agreements are properly
observed, so that free peoples can sur-
vive.
That simple fact lies behind the cur-
rent dust-up over foreign policy. The
Administration is learning the facts of
life. It is learning that the business of
paying the check for loose campaign talk
is dangerous because there is always a
chance that in the confusion the go-it-
alone boys may somehow get their own
way. Also, the whole business unsettles
other nations by which the ways of .
American politics are imperfectly under-
stodd. Basically, what is happening is
that a valiant effort is being made to fit
a new face on an old policy which has
been denounced from heaven to break-
fast but will be very hard to change
materially.
NO ABCs ON TV
Education Takes a Beating . . by Saul Carson
JUST as educational television seemed
to be in the bag, a commission controlled
by New York’s Governor Dewey took a
long step toward a blackout. The state’s
Temporary Commission on the Use of
Television for Educational Purposes,
after a good deal of obvious political
flimflam, suddenly whipped up a report
paying lip service to the “desirability”
of educational TV but advising the
Legislature not to spend a dime for the
purpose. As a bitter minority of the com-
mission said in a dissenting note, the cost
of putting New York State into the
business of building and operating a
network of ten TV stations would have
amounted to “the equivalent of one-half
mile of county road.” Behind the com-
mission, and behind Dewey, were forces
which have consistently opposed educa-
tional TV. Unless counter-measures are
punched back, immediately and vigor-
ously, the enemies of educational TV
are likely to win in other states as they
have won in New York.
The fight started in Washington about
three years ago before the Federal Com-
munications Commission. The F. C. C.
was debating ways to lift a ‘‘freeze”
which it had imposed on new construc-
tion of television stations. One of the
SAUL CARSON has been a radio and
TV critic for many years. He is now
writing for both mediums.
nt
March 7, 1953
commissioners, Frieda B. Hennock of
New York, a Democrat and a Truman
appointee, insisted that in the allocation
of TV channels educational needs must
be taken into account. Miss Hennock
asked that 25 per cent of the channels
be reserved for non-commercial educa-
tional broadcasters when the F. C. C. got
around to designing a national pattern
of potential TV transmitters. The man
who was chairman of the commission at
the time, Wayne Coy, backed Miss Hen-
nock; so did the present chairman, then
the No. 2 man, Paul’ A. Walker.
With Miss Hennock’s blessing and
encouragement, state universities, land-
grant colleges, and leading educational
“trade” organizations got together, or-
ganized a Joint Committee on Educa-
tional Television, and started lobbying
for the Hennock plan. Last April the
F. C. C. finally completed its studies and
issued its official list of TV channel allo-
cations. Spectrum space was set aside for
2,000 television stations—only 107 were
on the air at the time. Of the 2,000, 242
would be reserved for non-commercial
educational broadcasters. But there was
a catch in this decision. The reservations
would be held open until June, 1953;
after that time channels that had not
been snapped up by educators would be
vacant—which would mean that the
broadcasting industry could go after
them.
Except for the Joint Committee—
which was a lobbying outfit and not
prepared to go into the broadcasting
business—there were no immediate bids
for these educational channels. State par-
ticipation in educational TV, in one form
or another, became therefore an urgent
necessity. California, to which eight
channels were allocated, found seven left
on its hands, one having been picked up
by. a group of educational institutions
aided by private philanthropy. In New
York the Board of Regents applied for
the eleven reserved channels and got ten
of them promptly. The necessity of such
action by the state was made clear by
the situation in New York City, where
Fordham University was the only one of
thirteen institutions of higher learning
with enough gumption to want the
city’s sole available license. Fordham
bowed out when the state stepped in.
Unfortunately the assignment of the
licenses to New York State did not as-
sure the construction of even one trans-
mitter. For that, money was needed— ~
not much, only about $350,000 per
station, but it had to be appropriated
by the Legislature. In Albany, as in
Sacramento and other state capitals, there
was stalling.
Governor Dewey then appointed a
commission to study the entire matter;
so did Governor Warren of California.
Hearings and conferences were held. In
205
J
Sie 2 ety
ASS eS eS
ee
SRS BARES eS HS
New York 102 persons favoring the
state’s entry into educational TV ap-
peared before the commission in one
day, among them such disparate types as
Winthrop Rockefeller and Arthur Schut-
zer, executive secretary of the American
Labor Party; William Jansen, city super-
intendent of schools, and Rose Russell,
the Teachers’ Union’s legislative repre-
sentative.
“How
you get?” whispered one of Dewey’s
commissioners. The California hearings
much more unanimous can
revealed similarly extensive agreement.
When legislation is introduced and ap-
propriations are proposed in Sacramento,
California politicians may remember that
among the proponents of educational TV
were Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower, a
brother of the President, and Marion
B. Folsom, treasurer of the Eastman
Kodak Company.
AMONG the forces that do not want
educational TV to become a fact and that
_ are working quietly and efficiently to
defeat it are two that really count. These
are the advertisers, nearly all of them,
and many of the most powerful radio-
TV broadcasters. Having held down and
nearly killed education by radio, they
are hopeful of doing the same for tele-
vision. The last thing they want is to
see their domain threatened by state-
owned or university-operated stations
independent. of sponsor control. In ad-
dition, various organizations of tax-
payers, real or trumpery, are against
state participation on the ground of
economy. They are joined by free-enter-
prise tub-thumpers who raise the cry of
“socialism,” ladies who think TV hurts
their children’s eyesight, and people who
oppose state “meddling” in education on
grounds made familiar by opponents of
the public-education system a hundred
years ago.
Advertising and broadcast executives
with a feeling for public relations do not
say that they oppose educational TV per
se. They have two arguments: first, com-
mercial broadcasting is able and willing
to do the educational job; second, it can
do it better than the dreamy educators.
Commercial TV, they contend, is already
doing an educational job—although, if
pressed, they might concede that they
“have only just begun.’ The answer to
the first argument is that commercial
broadcasting, though able, has not
206
proved itself willing; to the second, that
on the basis of past experience the com-
mercial station or network cannot be
expected to supplant the educator in the
job for which the latter has been trained
and hired.
It is true that commercial television is
doing a certain amount of educational
work. Courses are conducted over the
air by the University of Michigan,
Northwestern, and Syracuse University,
by the Board of Education in New York
and in Philadelphia, and by school sys-
tems in Chicago and Minneapolis. There
are some good programs emanating from
museums. The ABC-TV network in co-
operation with Columbia University con-
ducts a program called “‘Seminar’’ in
which graduate students under the guid-
ance of a professor discuss important
works by serious authors. We may ap-
plaud these programs, but we should
remember that the broadcaster is obli-
gated by his license to perform certain
functions. The F. C. C.’s acknowledg-
ment of the need for educational TV
reminded the industry that the existence
of educational stations will not absolve
the commercial stations of their duty to
continue serving ‘‘the public interest,
convenience, and. necessity.”
Most of the so-called educational pro-
grams on commercial stations are any-
thing but educational in the real sense.
They may supply information—as did
the broadcasts of the political conven-
tions. They may have cultural overtones,
sometimes even cultural value—one
thinks of CBS-TV’s “What in the
World?” which originated at the Uni-
versity Museum in Philadelphia, and of
NBC-TV’s monthly operas. But very
little education is on the air now, and
not much can ever be expected from the
commercial side of the broadcasting
industry. Certainly there is less risk in
trusting the educational job via television
to the educator than to the broadcaster
—and the advertiser who subsidizes him =
—who made a failure of the job in
radio. For twenty-five years, until TV
became. a force, radio temporized, in-
sisting that it was able and ready to do
educational work—but never getting
around to it.
THE Dewey commission in New York
could have been told something about
that shameful failure. by one of its
members, Dr. Paul A. Lazarsfeld. In
1947, when radio was at the height of
its power and profits, the National As-
sociation of Broadcasters conducted a
national survey among radio listeners to
learn their opinion of broadcasting.
Lazarsfeld and Patricia A. Kendall an-
alyzed and interpreted the data gathered
and published the results in 1948 in a
book called ‘‘Radio Listening in Amer-
ica.’ There we find the following in-
teresting comment: ‘‘At the time when
radio was first developing as a mass
medium there was great hope that it
would usher in an era of adult educa-
tion. .. . But this hope was never real-
ized... . It seemed that radio education
was not here to stay.”
This conclusion was drawn’ seven
years after the formal dissolution of an
organization of outstanding citizens and
educators who in 1930 had organized
the National Committee on Education by
Radio because they “feared that educa-
tion [by radio} would be dominated
and tainted by the profit incentive’ if
left entirely in the hands of commercial
broadcasters. In its eleven years of exist-
ence the National Committee on Educa-
tion by Radio had seen commerctal
broadcasting chop down one educational
station after another and had acqui-
esced because it believed the arguments
of the radio men, the same arguments
that their TV successors are advancing
now. In 1941 the National Committee,
according to its final report, had thought
its “objective attained.’”” The verdict of
Lazarsfeld and Kendall shows that after-
ward someone managed to put the
kibosh on their hopes.
The organizations backing educa-
tional TV will not be hoodwinked a sec-
ond time by the commercial broadcast-
ers. They are in the fight—and-in the
broadcast business—to stay. If they are
licked, it will be the fault of the civic
spokesmen, educators, women’s-club
leaders, and trade-union officials who
f mis 5 ~
TION |
e a ms api
.
|
F
:
,
F
q
ornia, Gotnacl educational
ati the legislators in the back
rooms of the state capitols.
There is danger that Dewey's shenani-
gans with educational TV, responding to
ony > -
, but failed to carry through by
att Prestice feat meta faercial broadcast-
ers and advertisers, may set a pattern for
the rest of the country. They can be
countered, however, not only in New
York but in other states. The F. C. C.
can help by extending the June, 1953,
deadline—even Dewey's commission ex-
Se ee ye
‘ nN ce eRe
ptessed that pious hope. More important
is identification of educational TV's
real, behind-the-scenes opponent. The
educators should unveil their hidden
enemy, then apply counter-force to the
fullest. They have lost one round, but
they need not lose the fight.
LIES U.N. PURGE
A Belgian Senator’s View .
[The Sep ostnia United Nations per-
sonnel policy which has led to the
“loyalty” purge of American employees
is on the agenda of the current session
of the General Assembly. The following
article is by a member and former presi-
dent of the Belgian Senate who has
many times represented his country at
the United Nations. M. Rolin is also a
professor of international law at Brus-
Sels University. The article is an abridged
version of an address made recently be-
fore the eel Senate.}
WE ARE all attached to the idea of
world-wide international cooperation.
The United Nations has brought disap-
pointment, but it remains a hope and a
necessaty effort. It is the only place
where we can hope to have some day, if
net reconciliation, at least conciliation.
While in the present political crisis the
attainment of this goal seems far dis-
tant, the possibility must be kept open
and the instrument maintained; and
when I speak of the instrument, I am
thinking above all of the U. N.’s in-
ternal mechanism, the Secretariat.
The draft of the Charter drawn up at
Dumbarton Oaks and submitted by the
great powers to the United Nations Con-
ference at San Francisco contained noth-
ing about the status of the Secretariat
and no guaranties for its independence.
It was on the insistence of the smaller
powers and especially of the Belgian
delegation and several British” domin-
ions that the provisions which now ap-
pear in the Charter were introduced.
In 1945 I was the representative of
Belgium on the First Commission of the
conference. I have therefore some right
to be concerned today about how the
provisions we drew up are being ap-
plied. Those relating to the question be-
fore us are Articles 100 and 105. Since
1952 the Staff Regulations adopted at
the sixth session of the Assembly have
also been in force.
The basic principles of the provisions
and regulations are not contested. The
independence of the Secretary General
and of his staff is recognized as total.
Member states have a’correlative obliga-
tion to respect their independence. The
inviolability of the building and the
archives is unquestioned. The Secretary
General is completely, immune from
United “States jurisdiction, and as to the
staff, that immunity extends at least to
their official acts. The Secretary Gen-
eral’s right to renounce that immunity
is recognized, as is the international
character of the staff, who, in the words
of the Staff Regulations, are not to be
inspired in their actions by any other
interest than that of the United Nations.
Finally, it is laid down that they cannot
be asked to renounce their political or
religious beliefs.
Since the Korean war the Americans ©
have been especially concerned, and it is
certainly their right to be concerned,
with tracking down foreign agents in
their country. The United States Senate
has set up a Judiciary Subcommittee
which is engaged in extensive inquiries
into the loyalty of officials, great and
small, and into their attitude toward the
Communist Party or groups connected
with it. On the opening day of the last
session of the Assembly this subcommit-
tee had the singular idea of summoning
before it twenty American citizens on
by Henri Rolin -
the Secretariat staff without first official-
ly informing the Secretary General.
Several of the persons summoned be-
lieved it was their right as American cit-
izens and Secretariat officials to refuse
to answer the questions put to them.
Now, the Constitution of the United
States contains a provision, the Fifth
Amendment, which declanes that in a
* criminal case no one can be compelled
to bear witness against himself. This
right to silence is a corollary of the
principle that an accused person is pre-
sumed to be innocent until he is proved ©
guilty. Any person who believes that
his answer to a question could place
him in jeopardy has the right to refuse
to reply.
The Fifth Amendment was invoked
by some of the staff members on Octo-
ber 13. On the fifteenth the chairman
of the Senate investigating committee
made a vigorous protest. The Secretary
General, who at about the same time
had reminded his staff that it was their
duty not to reply to questions concern-
ing their official functions, was embar-
rassed and decided to consult a panel of
jurists. It soon appeared that he had
gone rather far in the direction of con-
cessions, for on October 29 the New
York Times disclosed that he had made
a secret agreement with the State De-
partment to rid the Secretariat of Amer-
icans who were or had been Commu-
nists.
Disquiet mounted in the staff. Not
only Americans but their foreign col-
leagues felt the growth of a threat to the
freedom of opinion which had been
guaranteed them. They were, to be sure,
207
SOGY Bete
nr
He SSS
: :
MMI Te,
Extracts from Relevant Documents
UNITED NATIONS CHARTER
Article 100: (1) In the performance of their duties the Secretary General
and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or
from any authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any
action which might reflect on their position as international officials respon-
sible only to the United Nations. (2) Each Member of the United Nations
undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the responsi-
bilities of the Secretary General and the staff and not to seek to influence them
in the discharge of their responsibilities.
. Article 105: (1) The Organization shall enjoy in the territory of each of its
Members such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the fulfilment
of its purpose. (2) Representatives of the Members of the United Nations
and officials of the Organization shall similarly enjoy such privileges and im-
munities as are necessary for the independent exercise of their functions. . .
STAFF REGULATIONS
Regulation 10:2: The Secretary General may impose disciplinary measures on
staff members whose conduct is unsatisfactory. He may summarily dismiss a
member of the staff for serious misconduct. ‘
forbidden to engage in political agita-
tion but not to maintain intact opinions
which previously they had been able to
express legally.
SEVERAL weeks later, on November 29,
the three jurists consulted by the Secre-
tary General submitted a report which
became the point of departure for a
number of wholly regrettable decisions.
On receipt of the report, the Secre-
tary General decided to conform to it
and notified tht various American offi-
cials concerned that he would terminate
the appointments of those who in the
future refused to reply to questions put
to them by the committee of inquiry.
On December 5 he carried out the
threat and dismissed all who had not
given the required assurances. It was
only then that he felt obliged to com-
municate the report to the delegations.
At a meeting of the Fifth Committee
of the Assembly on December 16 many
delegates, including those of the Neth-
erlands and Belgium, voiced their dis-
satisfaction. Some went farther and
stated clearly that they had serious
doubts about the validity of the con-
clusions reached by the three jurists. At
that meeting the Secretary General ap-
peared to be planning a retreat, for he
declared that if any measures he had
taken were contrary to the Charter or to
the Staff Regulations the Administra-
tive Tribunal could annul them.
Unhappily, this did not end the mat-
ter. One of the last orders of President
208
Truman’s Administration, issued in Jan-
uary, 1953, lays down the procedure to
be followed in communicating to the
Secretary General information concern-
ing American citizens employed in the
Secretariat. I have no objections to the
principle of the order. Every govern-
ment has the right to communicate all
the information in its possesion to the
Secretary General. What disturbs me is
that in thé’preamble the President of the
United States took account on the one
hand of the conclusions of the jurists
and on the other of the Secretary Gen-
eral’s expressed intention to make use
of those conclusions in carrying out his
responsibilities for the recruitment and
dismissal of United Nations personnel.
It seems to me that this intention cannot
be upheld.
The three jurists consulted by Mr. Lie
were an American, an Englishman, and
a Belgian. The American is a member of
the New York Bar who held high posi-
tions under Presidents Coolidge and
Hoover. The Englishman was for-
merly in charge of censorship in the
Ministry of Information. The Belgian is
an eminent lawyer and a professor at
the University of Louvain, where he
taught private law.
None of these three jurists has ever
belonged to any international organiza-
tion whatever, or even had to do with
the foreign affairs of his country. None
of them has ever exercised the functions
of judge or arbitrator between states or
been a member of the Permanent Court
of Arbitration; and I may add that none
of the three has ever taught interna-
tional law or written a line about it.
None of them belongs to the Permanent
Court or the Institute of International
Law, or even to the International Law
Association, which has dozens of mem-
bers in Belgium and hundreds in Anglo-
Saxon countries.
Now, when I think of the many inter-
nationalists in the United States and
England whose opinion would have
been received with respect and consider-
ation, when I think that the Secretary
General two or three years ago drew ulp
a list of all the persons qualified to be
designated by the Security Council for
international missions and included not
one of the men to whom he appealed
this*time, I confess that I cannot under-
stand what dictated Mr. Lie’s choice or
rather the choice of the governments
to which he turned. In any case, I stress
that the signatures to the report ought
not to impress the Assembly.
According to the report, officials are
responsible to the international organi-
zation, but the organization, not pos-
sessing sovereignty, cannot claim their
allegiance. There is no question of an
official’s loyalty to the United Nations
since the loyalty relation exists only be-
tween an official and his country of
origin. In my opinion this dictum loses
sight completely of the first article of
the Staff Regulations, which in formal
terms directs officials to exercise their
duties with the interest of the United
Nations alone in mind.
The jurists forget an opinion on re-
sponsibility and protection delivered by
the International Court of Justice in
1949 apropos of the assassination of
Count Bernadotte in Israel. On that oc-
casion the Secretariat believed the U. N._
should exercise its right to protect its
officers and not allow Sweden to act
alone. The International Court of Jus-
tice gave full approval to this attitude.
I COME now to the essential part of
the jurists’ report, the opinion expressed
on the three principal questions put to
them: (1) What should be the attitude
of the Secretary General toward U. N.
officials condemned by the country of
nationality or of residence for an act in-
volving a lack of loyalty? (2) What
should be his attitude when officials, in-
voking the constitutional guaranty, re-
The NATION —
i
"
nem
eican authority ? ra) What should
be his attitude when there is reason to
believe an official is engaging,.has en-
gaged, or is likeiy to engage in activities
implying a subversive purpose ?
I agree with the jurists on one point.
If it is established by the courts that a
U.N. official has engaged in political
activity against the institutions of any
country, his own or another, the fact
must be considered res adjudicata. The
official has therefore been guilty of
gtave misconduct and must be dis-
missed. But the legal experts proceed on
the assumption that in criminal matters
the judgment must be respected by the
whole world. They seem to have for-
gotten that this authority of res adjudi-
cata extends no farther than the sover-
eignty of the state, especially in criminal
matters. If, for example, I am con-
demned in France for any crime what-
ever, the verdict has not the authority of
res adjudicata in Belgium and is not sus-
ceptible of execution there. If we accept
the opinion of the three jurists, it would
_ be enough to stage a Slansky trial and to
implicate international officials. We
_~ would then be obliged, since the affair
was res adjudicata, to abide by the deci-
sion of the tribunal and reap the conse-
quences—namely, permit the dismissal
of the condemned officials.
With regard to the second question,
the three jurists declared categorically
that the,Secretary General must dismiss
anyone who refused to say whether he
was engaged or had been engaged in
espionage or other subversive activities
in the United States or whether he had
ever been a member of the Communist
Party or any other organization declared
to be subversive. Not overlooking the
_ Fifth Amendment to the American Con-
stitution, they admitted that the persons
questioned had a legal right to refuse
to reply but held that this right did not
bar the infliction of disciplinary sanc-
i 5 < * =
tions. This interpretation makes a farce
of the Fifth Amendment.
Refusal to reply may be inspired by a
host of considerations. Many of us if
interrogated concerning our opinions on
this or that matter by a judicial author-
ity would reply, “That's none of your
business.” I remember that during the
war some of us were invited to fill out
- declarations as to whether we had Aryan
e 2 Semitic grandparents. If we refused
oo: “reply, was that ra _
that our grandparents were not Aryan?
The question put to the jurists is con-
nected with a controversy which has
been going on for more than a year in
the United States between liberal minds
who wish to protect civil rights and the
witch hunters. The judicial authorities
“were at first hesitant, but for some time
they have been coming out in an impres-
sive way against the demands of the
witch In April, 1951, the
United States Supreme Court heard an
appeal by three organizations named as
subversive on the Attorney General's
list. They had applied in vain to a lower
court to obtain their removal from that
list. The Supreme Court reversed the de-
cision which had refused to receive the
complaint. More’ recently, on December
15, 1952, the Supreme Court by eight
votes to none held unconstitutiondl an
Oklahoma law which required govern-
ment employees to take an oath that
they did not belong to any organization
alleged to be subversive. But if the Sec-
retary General follows the opinion of
the three jurists, the protection of the
courts will not be available to the ofh-
cials of the U. N., who will find them-
selves without any effective recourse
against dismissal.
hunters.
ON THE third point the reply of the
jurists was at once the most ominous
and the most unintelligible. Asked what
action the Secretary General should take
if he had reason to believe that an offi-
cial was engaging or had engaged in
subversive activities, the three jurists re-
plied that dismissal was required in the
second case as well as in the first, and
that dismissal should also take place if
there were sufficient grounds to believe
that an official was likely to engage in
subversive activities, that is, if he was
what they called “potentially disloyal.”
This notion that potential disloyalty is
ground for dismissal is in contradiction
to the Staff Regulations, Article 10 of
which says very clearly that the Secre-
tary General can dismiss officials sum-
marily in case of grave misconduct. Po-
tential disloyalty can hardly be equated
with grave misconduct, especially if all
that is shown is that there are ‘‘serious
reasons for believing’ in that potential
disloyalty.
It is not surprising therefore that
some of the most authoritative organs of
:
af
the American and English press have
expressed surprise at the conclusions
of the jurists. The New York Times
said on December 2 that it did not see
how the Secretary General could be
asked to dismiss an employee solely be-
cause the latter had refused to say
whether he had at some time_in the past
been a member of a certain party. The
London Times of the same date declared
that it was proper to raise the question
whether the advantage of having the
headquarters of the United Nations in
the United States was not gained at too
high a price if the great principles on
which the organization had been erected
must be sacrificed.
Some weeks ago the outgoing Presi-
dent of the United States, Mr. Truman,
opening an exhibition of the American
Declaration of Independence, the Con-
stitution, and the Bill of Rights, de-
clared that the idea of liberty was being
threatened not only by communism but
also by those who wanted government
.to exercise influence over the minds of
citizens. The external threat to liberty,
he said, should not cause us to strangle
liberty with our own hands. If the de-
mocracies have recourse to Communist
methods to check Communist ageres-
sion, the moral disaster will be more
serious than a material defeat.
I hope that these words will have an
effect not only in internal affairs but
also in the field of international organi-
zation, where the failure to recognize
their truth would lead to the ruin of our
plans. I also hope that the great soldier
who so brilliantly led the armies of
liberation in Europe will find it in his
heart to introduce into the relations be-
tween his country and the Secretariat
that respect for the principles of liberty
without which the United Nations can-
not survive.
REED Se
of
eh
wi Beagle
be
ee
—w
MAE
BOOKS
Too Big by IT’ K. Quinn
BIG BUSINESS: A NEW ERA. By
David Lilienthal. Harper and Broth-
ers. $2.75.
HEN this book was serialized in
Collier’s a few months ago, in
somewhat different form, liberals and
progressives were surprised and disap-
pointed to find that David Lilienthal
had gone overboard for Bigness. It
might have reminded them how close
the extreme forms of our collectivized
capitalism are to totalitarianism, though
Mr. Lilienthal himself appears to be-
lieve that one can be as individualistic,
free, and créative in any huge organiza-
tion—the army, the government, or a
sub-sub-division of General Motors—as
in a personally owned enterprise. To his
own satisfaction and perhaps to that of
many a favorably disposed reader, Mr.
Lilienthal has accomplished in 209
pages the impossible task of reconciling
individualism and economic collectiv-
ism.
To make his case, he denies, as he
must, our great liberal political leaders
—Jefferson, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson,
both Roosevelts, John Sherman, Charles
Evans Hughes, and Justice Brandeis.
He rationalizes concentrated economic
power and passes lightly over the danger
of trusting the welfare of the nation to
a select few. He nobly proposes that
“these matters, controversial as they are,
need to be discussed in the open air of
reason.” Of course no series of articles
expressing an opposing view would be
likely to appear in Collier's or any
other popular magazine, since all de-
T. K. QUINN was formerly vice-presi-
dent of the General Electric Company,
chairman of the board of the General
Electric Finance Company, director gen-
eral of the War Production Drive, and
is now president of the Monitor Equip-
ment Corporation. He is the author of
“Liberty, Employment, No More Wars,”
“Labor and Management Manual,” “I
Quit Monster Business,’ “Sons of
Riches,” and of a forthcoming book,
“Giant Business: Threat to Democracy.”
¢
2A
pend for their very existence on big-
business advertising. This is precisely
the sinister point—that concentrated
economic power has already assumed
such gigantic proportions that 80 per
cent of our newspapers and all our mass-
circulation magazines are under its in-
fluence or control.
I suspect Mr. Lilienthal knows that
we cannot welcome monster-big, collec-
tivistic business without also welcoming
a socialistic solution*of our political
problems. Karl Marx understood this,
and William Ropke makes it abundantly
“The Social Crisis of Our
Times.’’ Our experience confirms it. As
private corporations have swelled into
giant industries, we have been driven to
ask government for protection against
their depredations. Government subsi-
dizes food growing and farming, as well
as industry through tariffs. Government
subsidizes air and steamship lines. It
guarantees bank deposits and 80 per
cent of the mortgages on G. I. homes.
It provides the funds for slum clearance
and billions for defense plants. We
have direct government ownership, fed-
eral and local, of much of our water
and power supply. We have the
R.E. A. the-T. V. A2wandithe Ro E.G:
We have socialized education and public
hospitals and- clinics. The government
has been forced to exercise a high de-
gree of control over commerce, the issu-
ance of securities, banking and public
utilities. Government intervenes through
income taxes in the distribution of in-
come. We have social security and eco-
nomic controls.
Mr. Lilienthal welcomes all
measures and argues that they have
made Bigness safe, appearing to look
upon the process as finished. He decries
“negative” criticism and proposes a new
affirmative state of mind and attitude
toward Bigness. Apparently it does not
occur to him that without negative criti-
cism these very measures would never
have been adopted.
Big—he does not say Biggest—Busi-
ness has created, he-declares, many thou-
sands of opportunities for small busi-
clear in
these
ness. Look at the gas stations and hot-dog
stands along the highway made pos-
sible by the automobile. (It is not at all
clear why these small businesses would
not have come into being even if Gen-
eral Motors did not own Chevrolet,
Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and so on.)
Nowhere did I find any real attempt
by Mr. Lilienthal to justify the huge
conglomerate corporations. Why should
General Motors be in the washing-
machine business? Surely not to make
its production of automobiles more effi-
cient. Why should General Electric be
producing steel, or Chrysler, air-condi-
tioning apparatus? ‘The book does not
discuss the effective control exercised by
the giant corporations over their tens of
thousands of suppliers, dealers, and dis-
tributors.
Mr. Lilienthal’s objectives are admira-
ble: a changing enterprising society,
increasingly productive, efficient, and
diverse, big and small business, new
products, new competitors, new opportu-
nities for individual development; a sta-
bilized, rational economy; an ethical so-
ciety responsive to the public will. But
can the suffocating bureaucracy of mon-
ster-big corporations bring these results
any more than Too Big Government?
As for the development of the individ-
ual, is he not lost in giant priyate col-
lectivistic organizations? Is he not actu-
ally worse than lost? Discussing this
subject recently, Chester J. Barnard, re-
tired head of the Rockefeller Founda-
tion, said: :
There has been a greater and greater
acceleration of centralization in this coun-
try, not merely in government, and not
merely in the organization of great corpo-
rations but also on the part of labor
unions and other organizations. There has
been a-social disintegration going along
with this material development, and this
formulation of organized activities im-
plies payment of a price, the amount of
which we are not yet able to assess.
I find in this statement more wisdom
and-a truer judgment than in “Big
Business: A New Era.”
C. Wright Mills in “White Collar”
also presents a true picture.
Thegdecline of the free entrepreneur
and the rise of the dependent employee
on the American scene has paralleled the
decline of the independent individual... .
The white-collar man is the hero as vic-
tim, the small creature who is acted upon
but does not act, who works along in
somebody’s office or store, never talking
.
Lom ty
ches. Ls
”
be 2
ie Nee >
W i must be ett is the picture of
society as a great salesroom, an enormous
file, an incorporated brain, a new universe
of management and manipulation. .. .
Here are the new Machiavellians, practic-
ing their personal crafts for hire and for
the profits of others, according to rules
laid down by those above them.
“Freedom of choice in economic mat-
ters means freedom to choose between
competing ideas or services or goods,”
says Lilienthal. ‘It means the maximum
of freedom to choose one job or profes-
sion or one line of business against an-
other.”” But has not this alleged freedom
become in actual fact and practice too
like the victimization of the white-collar
man whom Mr. Wright describes? And
to what else must we charge this repres-
sion if not to imposing Bigness and our
collectivized and centralized economic
organizations ?
- Research by Big Business is presented
as the great hope of the future. Space
does not permit arguing the case here.
One illustration will make my point.
Because Mr. Lilienthal knows the elec-
tric-appliance industry, as I do, I remind
_ him that not one single distinctively new
electric home appliance has ever been
created by one of the giant concerns—
not the first washing machine, electric
range, dryer, iron or ironer, electric
lamp, refrigerator, radio, toaster, fan,
heating pad, razor, lawn mower, freezer,
air conditioner, vacuum cleaner, dish-
washer, or grill. All were the original
inventions of smaller concerns. The rec-
ord of the giants is one of moving in,
buying out, and absorbing after the
fact.
Dr. Clarence Cook Little of the Jack-
son Memorial Laboratory, former presi-
dent of the universities of Michigan
and Maine, expressed wise preference
for the small as distinguished from the
big laboratories:
Scientific research is an intensely pet-
sonal effort . . . like the artist, the creative
scientist sat be permitted to pursue his
own ideas unhampered by restrictions of
organized groups.
The large groups have made extremely
important contributions only when an
original discovery, made by a single in-
dividual, is already available for further
_ technical development. "
Mr. Lilienthal has spent his life in
~ huge public organizations. I wish he had
started ec near the bottom of
ta ki re s bac, “never taking a a
pee eae -
one of them so that he
mental picture of what they are like
viewed from the bottom up.
The implication throughout his book
that the benefits of mass production and
the machine can be made available only
by Big Business is misleading. If by Big
Business he means a ten-, twenty-, thirty-,
forty-, or even a fifty-million-dollar com-
pany—large enough, depending on the
product, to achieve efficient costs—then
he has a good case. But the facts do not
begin to justify our billion-dollar corpo-
might have a
Pp OER ee
rations, of which we now have fifty-
eight. They are the ones, along with
another fifty to a hundred runners-up,
which are changing the whole organiza- _
tion of our society and jeopardizing our
freedoms. It is not too facetious to sug-
gest that a person who is completely
enamored of Bigness might well pro-
pose one grand giant business organiza-
tion—the United States Combined All
Industry Corporation of America—and
that would be something. like what
Russia has now.
hee Books in Brief
Story of Fanny Brice
THE FABULOUS FANNY. The Story
of Fanny Brice. By Norman Katkov.
Knopf. $3.95. The “fabulous” of this
title is a very tired adjective, but Fanny
Brice really was more than a good low
comedian. With an almost terrifying
_persistence she saw everything in human
life, from the female body to the grand-
~est passions, in terms of the grotesque,
and given a ten-minute skit she could
reduce a socially significant dancer or a
working girl trying to preserve her virtue
to embarrassing absurdity. The present
so-called biography is hardly more than
a long “feature story’ based largely on
interviews with people who knew her,
but it does add up to a believable
portrait. .
Married first to a barber ‘‘because
he smelled so good,” second to Nicky
Arnstein “because he looked so good,”
and finally to Billy Rose “because he
talked so good,” Fanny had the broad
streak of unassimilated sentimentality
which so often goes with exuberant
tough-mindedness, and she lived the
Damon Runyon myth of Broadway—
from rags to riches, or burlesque to
the Ziegfeld Follies—in one leap and,
if you believe the legend, with a broken
heart in the end because her racketeer
husband let her down. A Wanamaker
brought the Prince of Wales to call, and
Waxy Gordon once surrendered five
thousand dollars because he was afraid
Fanny would call him a welsher. She
bought modern paintings, decorated her
friends’ homes for them, patronized the
most expensive dressmakers, and knew
as many of the international élite as she
did of “the mob.” “Fanny, you speak .
French, don’t you?”.“No, I don’t,
George. I believe in talking one lan-
guage good.”
Red Lewis Self-revealed
THE MAN FROM MAIN STREET.
A SINCLAIR LEWIS READER. Edited
by Harry E. Maule and Melville H.
Cane, Assisted by Philip Allan Fried-
man. Random House. $3.75. From the
year, 1904, of his first contributions to
the Yale Literary Magazine to the last
year of his life, 1950-51, Sinclair Lewis
was pouring out miscellaneous comment
on life, books, and notions; his editors
calculate that he wrote some million
“non-fictional” words, and have here
collected fifty or sixty pieces, coming up
through time to his seething indigna-
tion over the textile strike at Marion,
North Carolina, in 1929, his speech at
Stockholm in 1930, and the strident
blasts he sounded in the 1940's.
Lewis was not a critic in any formal
or even respectable sense; he was in-
capable of behaving like one. He could
not write about Thoreau without putting
in the center of his comment Doc
Lewis's skinny son dreaming over
“Walden” “between the wheatfields
and the sultry brook.’” When not speak-
ing through his characters, this man
could speak only through or about him-
self. For anyone interested in the per- —
sonality of Lewis, and in the problem
of the American artist, there is here
self-revelation in abundance.
By rescuing and collecting these.
pieces the editors have done a service
for letters and for social history. One can
_ only regret, therefore, that they saw fit
to group them helter-skelter under a
Diletta cen eo
Sapte aS
4B Pets agers ap
21y
Ay? ep
OES
A as
Cees
Catt iS Shun
series of fancy and meaningless rubrics
and so to destroy all logical or chrono-
logical coherence. Taken in order, they
give a strangely deepening impression
of the effect of events and ideas upon an
intransigent, fertile, perverse, and always
—though sometimes only by intention
—generous spirit.
Pragmatic Economics
ECONOMIC STABILITY IN A
CHANGING WORLD. By John H.
Williams. Oxford. $5. Although Pro-
fessor Williams of Harvard is usually
accounted a conservative economist, the
“confessions’’ that introduce this volume
reveal him rather as a skeptic who is no
less dubious about the doctrines of the
neo-classicists than about those of the
post-Keynesians. As one who is frequent-
ly called from the lecture room to advise
governments and bankers, he believes
that “economic theory is pointless unless
it is aimed at what to do.’’ But, he com-
plains, many of the great theorists from
Ricardo to Keynes, while searching for a
basis fOr*policy, merely achieyed “‘ra-
tionalization after the event.” Thus sys-
The
SOVIET IMPACT
on SOCIETY
by Dagobert D. Runes
Preface by Harry Elmer Barnes
In what manner has Kremlin-con-
trolled Sovietism raised or lowered
human standards? Is man in Soviet
society master of his own fate? May
he follow unhampered his self-
chosen vocation and avocation? Can
he express his ideas and feelings as
he wishes? Can he join his neigh-
bors in groups, unions and confed-
erations? Are his social or cultural
activities dictated by political po-
tentates?
To these and other basic ques-
tions the distinguished philosopher
offers an unbiased reply, out of his
direct observations and studies.
$3.75
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY
Publishers
15 E. 40 ST., Desk N, New York 16, N. Y.
2t2
tems intended to have permanent validity
again and again prove a reflection of
relatively short-run conditions.
Such questionings do not imply that
Professor Williams regards all theorizing
as waste motion. Nevertheless, he is so
keenly aware of the danger of pursuing
the internal consistency of -a theory to
“a point where contact with reality is
lost’’ that on most occasions he restricts
himself to a severely pragmatic approach. »
y prag P
This is illustrated by the six papers on
the Marshall Plan included in the pres-
ent volume, as well as by a 1945 essay,
Free Enterprise and Full Employment,
which, while dated in some respects, has
fully enough relevance to current prob-
lems to justify republication.
Lively Miniatures
THE SINGULAR PREFERENCE. By
Peter Quennell. Viking. $3.75. Twenty-
eight short pieces—mostly portraits of
writers—contributed over two decades
to the Times Literary Suplement, the
New Statesman and Nation, and other
British publications. Mr. Quennell sug-
gests Lytton Strachey by his fondness
for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
figures both French and English, as well
as by a method which emphasizes the
picturesque and eccentric aspects of his
subjects. There is, however, less obvious
straining after effect, and the result is a
collection of brightly colored miniatures
which are lively without being at all
overdone. The sitters range from Defoe
down to H. G. Wells; among them are
people as varied as Lord Hervey, Mrs.
Thrale, Coventry Patmore, George Bor-
row, and Swinburne. This is biography
—with a little criticism thrown in—at
its most diverting, and to those who ob-
ject that it is cultivated rather than
erudite or intelligent rather than intel-
lectual the reply might be that it is also
what one of Mr. Quennell’s two favor-
ite centuries would have called “rational
entertainment.’’ One sentence will illus-
“trate what he learned from Strachey:
“Of all the variously horrid forms in
which sentence of annihilation has been
passed on famous writers, none seems
more ‘unjust than that reserved for Mat-
thew Arnold, who, during the spring of
1888, fell dead in a Liverpool street
while running for a tramcar.”
Sense of Life
THE WAITERS. By William Fisher.
World Publishing Company. $3.75. A
sometimes awkward first novel by a
Negro author who has real power and a
mature sense of life. The hero, a waiter,
becomes Mr. Big in a City Island restau-
“rant. His motives are convincing, his
methods (stooging for the owner, run-
ning a numbers game) are natural for
him; his rewards are a big Cadillac, and
violent death. Mr. Fisher has described
the texture of ordinary Negro life very
well indeed. The love relationship in
the novel is excellent realism in which
the woman knows she has been out of
her mind “tryin’ to make something |
outa nothing.”
Theater
Harold Clurman
LTHOUGH Bernard Shaw’s ‘‘Mis-
alliance’’ (Barrymore Theater)
deals with the same middle-class Eng-
land which he later characterized as
Heartbreak House, the earlier play—
“Misalliance’” was written in 1909-10
—might be called the Good Old Days.
The young girl chafing at the inane
leisure furnished by her papa’s prosper-
ity, turning from her hysterical aristocrat
of a fiancé to a handsome brute of an
adventurer and asking her father to buy
him might be considered something to
grow melancholy over. But the facts of
“Misalliance” are viewed with confi-
dence, humor, and zest. For in 1910 the
English middle class was rich, assured,
untroubled about the future, and when
‘Shaw complained that it was burying its
head in silly illusions while it talked,
talked, talked, he was clearly glad to
join in the chorus as a brilliantly know-
ing interlocutor, because there were
still ease, freedom, and good fortune to
be enjoyed.
The Shavian optimism of 1910 has a
The NATION |
#
———
Bree a - we
- ton c effect on us tod
great fun to see ‘‘Misalliance’’ because
ane DA ies oe ? *
ay. It is not only
it bubbles with blarney and mental vigor,
does all sorts of verbal nip-ups that be-
speak health ‘and high spirits, and prac-
tically somersaults with vaudeville tricks
that are part of the eternal theater, but it
is also a comfort to our aching souls
because Shaw’s world is no longer ours,
and we are happy to be reminded that it
once existed.
It is not true that the play has no
action: every scene is based on a funda-
mentally entertaining, physically pro-
jected situation as old as the hills and
therefore satisfying. Neither is it true
that the play is not about anything—its
theme, I repeat, is that of “Heartbreak
House” conceived in a gay key—but
what carries it along so buoyantly for us
is our sense of release in the delightful
moral and social landscape reflected in
it. This is happily caught in the City
Center production with its “crazy” art
‘nouveau setting by John Boyt and the
very pleasant cast—Barry Jones is best
—which conveys the fun of the play
while cutting an hour from its text.
THE young girl in William Inge’s new
play, “Picnic” (Music Box Theater),
like Shaw’s “ingenue,” is waiting for
something to happen. But the environ-
ment of the American play—specifically
Kansas—is a place where nothing can
happen to anybody. The women are all
frustrated by fearful, jerky men; the
men are ignorant, without objective,
ideals, or ‘direction—except for their
spasmodic sexual impulses. There is no
broad horizon for anyone, and a sup-
pressed yammer of desire emanates from
every stick and stone of this dry cosmos,
in which the futile people burn to
cinders.
If you read my description and then
see the play you will be either vastly
relieved or shockingly disappointed. For
though what I have said may still be
implicit in the words, it is hardly present
on the stage. I happen to have read the
playscript before it was put into re-
hearsal, and I saw in it a laconic delinea-
tion of a milieu*seen with humor and an
intelligent sympathy that was not far
from compassion. What is on the stage
now is a rather coarse boy-and-girl story
with a leeringly sentimental emphasis on
naked limbs and “‘well-stacked” females.
It is as if a good Sherwood Anderson
March 7, 1953 .
novel were skilfully converted into a
prurient popular magazine story on its
way to screen adaptation.
In this vein the play is extremely
well done. It is certainly effective. Joshua
Logan, who is a crackerjack craftsman,
has done a meticulous, shrewd, thor-
oughly knowledgeable job of staging.
He has made sharply explicit everything
which the audience already understands
and is sure to enjoy in the “‘sexy’’ plot,
and has fobbed off everything less obvi-
ous to which the audience ought to be
made sensitive.
‘All pain has been removed from
the proceedings. The boy in the script
who was a rather pathetic, confused,
morbidly explosive and bitter character
is now a big goof of a he-man whom
the audience can laugh at or lust after.
The adolescent sister who was a kind of
embryo artist waiting to be born has be-
come a comic grotesque who talks as if
she suffered from a hare-lip; the drained
and repressed gother is presented as a
sweet hen almost indistinguishable from
her chicks; the tense school teacher
bursting with unused vitality is fore-
shortened as a -character and serves
chiefly as a utility figure to push the plot.
Even the setting, which—for the pur-
poses of the theme—might have sug-
gested the dreary sunniness of the Mid-
western flatlands, has been given a
romantically golden glow and made al-
most tropically inviting.
Having seen the play with this bi-
focal vision—script and production—I
cannot be sure exactly what the audience
gets from the ‘combination. Lyric
realism in the sound 1920 tradition
of the prairie novelists is being offered
here as the best Broadway corn. In the
attempt to make the authos’s particular
kind of sensibility thoroughly acceptable,
the play has been vulgarized.
The cast is good—Kim Stanley is
particularly talented, though I disliked
the characterization imposed on her—
and it follows the director with devoted
fidelity. There is a new leading lady,
Janice Rule, who besides having a lovely
voice is unquestionably the most beauti-
ful young woman on our stage today.
Here at any rate is a solid success. But
I am not sure whether the author should
get down on his knees to thank the
director for having made it one or punch -
him in the nose for having altered the
play's values. It is a question of taste.
HAN SUYIN
author of
“one of the great new love
stories based on fact. It will
break your heart and then lift
you very high.”
—WALTER WINCHELL
Don’t YOU miss
A Many-
Splendored
Thing
“Few women in love have writ-
ten with such frankness. A
lovely and moving ‘book...
of sudden, utter, doomed, ded-
icated love."
—LEWIS GANNETT
$3.75 at all bookstores
against the East, says
Herr Adenauer. Don’t
fall for the Bonn-Moscow
booby trap! warns T. H.
Tetens. Read the sensa-
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213
Records
B. H. Hagegin
HE superb pre-war Glyndebourne
Festival performance of Mozart's
“Cosi Fan Tutte’ has been reissued—
dubbed from the old 78s onto three
LPs of RCA Victor’s Treasury of Im-
mortal Performances. Souez’s voice is
altered and less agreeable than on the
78s; moreover if I step up the treble to
brighten the orchestra’ her voice has a
slight distortion that is eliminated by my
moving the treble back that step; and
there are times when the greater distor-
tion of the voices from deteriorated
masters requires further reduction of
treble. But these defects of the dubbed
sound—and the fact that two of the
breaks occur in the middle of the great
arias Come scoglio and Per pieta—would,
for me, be outweighed by the quality
of the performance. The Italian text and
an English translation—not always <ac-
curately correlated with the record sides
—are provided.
On two records we get a dubbing of
the 1933 recording of passages from
Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier’’ which
documents — though imperfectly — the
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e I enclose my remittance for the following Nation combinations as
listed below.
FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE cpu,
historic performances in Europe with
Lehmann, Olszewska, Schumann, and
Mayr. Imperfectly, because what I said
about the dubbed sound of ‘‘Cosi’’ is true
of the sound of ‘Der Rosenkavalier,”
with two of the passages most cherished
by lovers of this opera—the Marschal-
lin’s monologue in the first act and the
trio in the third act—badly distorted.
Luckily the one passage that I cherish—
the Presentation of the Rose duet—
comes off the record bright and clear.
I am aware that many people value the
opera more highly than I do; but in
this column I speak for myself, not for
them; and what I hear is occasional
sugary tunes that are expressively inade-
quate for the ideas of their texts, and
long musically arid stretches of mere
notes to carry the words. These stretches
will be very boring indeed to someone
who won't even be able to follow the
words—i.e. someone listening to these
records with only a summary of the
action, and particularly the summary pro-
vided by Victor, which is inadequate,
misleading, and inaccurately correlated
MONEY-SAVING MAGAZINE
COMBINATIONS
[.] 3 Years $17
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ZONE. STATES
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with the record sides. Why the words
should be provided for “Cosi” but not
for “Der Rosenkavalier’”’ is something
that takes a record-company mind to
figure out.
A record called “A Tribute to Lotte
Lehmann” offers dubbings of some of
the recordings of songs that she made
for Victor from about 1934 to about |
1940. They reproduce faithfully the
beauty of her voice—except for the
constricted, shrill high notes—at that
time; and they give us some superb
performances of fine songs, but not some
of her best performances of some of the
finest songs—e.g. Wolf's ‘Anakreon’s
Grab” and ‘“‘Heimweh,” Schubert’s “Im
Dorfe’’ and “Das Wirtshaus’—which
would have been better choices than
Schubert’s “Der Lindenbaum” and the
songs by Franz. And the texts of the
songs would be more useful than Vin-
cent Sheean’s tribute to Lehmann, which
contains nothing I can recognize.
A record called ‘Critic's Choice” has
a number of old vocal recordings which
Irving Kolodin thinks offer “unforget-
table performances,” and which do in
fact offer the second half of Ivogiin’s
fabulous performance of Zerbinetta’s
aria from Strauss’s “Ariadne” (unbe-
lievable rubbish), Thorborg’s superb
performance of Wolf’s “Kennst du das
Land,” and beautiful singing by Schipa,
Schumann, Maynor, Warren, Tibbett,
and others. But Mr. Kolodin’s choice
.from “among a tantalizing variety of
Onegin disks’ is a monstrosity in which
she sings a vocal obbligato with Chopin’s
Impromptu Opus 29; and his choice for
Cebotari is her excessively tremulous
singing of Dove sono from “Figaro,”
which he characterizes as ‘firmly vocal-
ized.” Again the texts would be more
valuable thar the comments. =
“Caruso in ‘Faust’’’ offers not only his
1906 Salut! demeure but the ensembles
that he recorded in 1910 with Farrar,
Gilibert, Journet, and Scotti, and Far-
rar’s 1913 Jewel Song—unfortunately
without her King of Thule ballad. Her
voice is extremely lovely in the 1910
performances, and curiously altered—
possibly by the dubbing—in the later
one.
As for instrumental performances, we
get on one record the Mozart Concerto
K.218 that Kreisler recorded in the mid-
twenties and the Mendelssohn Concerto
that he recorded about ten years later.
+n
The Nation” : |
ie - “every heart with its sweetness qaP purity
—with only an occasional slide or arch
inflection to betray the composer of
_ “Caprice Viennois,” and only an occa-
sional hint in the Mendelssehn of the
technical deterioration that had begun
by this time. Surprisingly the London
Philharmonic is clearer in the Mozart
performance; and when treble is stepped
up for more brightness in the Mendels-
sohn we get the noise of some of the
records from which it was dubbed.
On another record are examples of
Rachmaninov’s excitingly dramatic style
of piano, playing in two of the works
of his that provided occasions for its
exercise. Even the best of these works—
which include the Rhapsody on a Theme
of Paganini on this record—are trashy;
and even with Rachmaninov’s playing
the early Concerto No. 1 is dull. The
Rhapsody, recorded with the Phila-
delphia Orchestra under Stokowski in
1934, needs stepping up of treble, which
makes the end noisy.
Record Notes
Elgar: Introduction and Allegro for
Strings, Op. 47 and Serenade for
Strings, Op. 20; Collins and New Sym-
phony (London); good performances.
_ (With Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on
_a theme by Thomas Tallis and Fantasia
on “Greensleeves.’’)
Haydne Symphonies Nos. 88 and
100; Paul Walter and Weidlich with
the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra
(Remington); abominable perform-
ances and recording.
Mahler: Songs of Youth; Felbermayer
and Poell with Graef at the piano (Van-
guard); beautiful songs in superb per-
formances.
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4
(“Italian”); Dorati and Minneapolis
Symphony (Mercury); poor perform-
ance. (With. a poor performarice of
_ Mozart's Symphony in G minor.)
Mozart: Country (German) Dances
for Orchestra; Litschauer and Vienna
State Opera Orchestra (Vanguard),
Kloss and the Frankenland State Sym-
phony (Lyrichord); engaging ‘music
with wonderfully unexpected details of
orchestration; Litschauer much the bet-
ter in both performance and sar ee
- Rossini: Overtures: “William Tell,”
~
« “La Gazza Passa, Ea Scala di. Seta,"
nea aay ioe ey i
and ‘“Semiramide”’; Van Beinum and
. the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Am-
sterdam (London); good performances.
Schubert: Symphony No. 9; Krips
and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of
Amsterdam (London); a good, unexcit-
ing performance, with Toscanini’s quick
tempo in the slow movement.
Schumann: Symphony No. 2; Schu-
richt and the Paris Conservatory Con-
certo Orchestra (London); excellent
performance. S
Sibelius: Concerto for Violin and
Orchestra, Wicks with Ehrling and the
Symphony Orchestra of Radio Stock-
holm (Capitol); soloist forceful to the
point of vehemence, orchestra fair.
Strauss: “Josephslegende’; Eichhorn
and the Orchestra of the Munich State
Opera (Urania); some engaging mo-
ments and enough mammoth climaxes
for ten ballets; good performance; re-
cording shrill and gritty.
Tchaikovsky: “Romeo and Juliet”
and “Hamlet”; Fistoulari and the Phil-
harmonia Orchestra (MGM); fair per-
formance and recording; noisy surfaces.
Symphony No. 5; Dorati and the
Minneapolis Symphony +(Mercury);
poor performance.
Symphony No. 6 (‘‘Pathétique’’);
Kubelik and the Chicago Symphony
(Mercury), Ormandy and the Philadel-
phia Orchestra (Columbia); Kubelik’s
performance is much less stolid than Or-
mandy’s, but his orchestra is far infe-
rior. ROBERT E. GARIS
Gallery Notes
[Gallery Notes will appear as a guide
to current shows, supplementing S. Lane
Faison, Jr.'s regular art criticism. }
YEHOSHUA KOVARSKY, recently
arrived Israeli artist, is having his first
New York show. Strongly expressionist
and using clear colors, he is mainly con-
cerned with Biblical themes.—Passedoit
to March 21.
HILDE B. KAYN, dancer, pianist, and
painter, died in 1950. Her interest in
the dance was translated into a series of
paintings of folk dances and dance
groups.—Milch to March 28.
THREE LEADERS of contemporary
Italian painting—Afro, Birolli, and
Morlotti—all honored by special exhi-
bitions at the Venice Biennale, present
March 17.
distinctive approaches in this small but
representative show.—Viviano to March
14,
JACK YEATS, brother of the late poet,
William Butler Yeats, depicts deserted
Irish streets and wind-swept moors in
a group of thickly pigmented canvases.
—Saidenberg to March 10.
FRANCOIS KUPKA, Czech painter
now over eighty years of age, was one
of the pioneers of geometrical abstrac-
tion. Here he is concerned with repro-
ducing motion through dynamic circles
and curves.—Fried to March 14.
CHALLIS .H. DAWSON presents
water colors of American landscapes,
from Maine to Arizona, painted in a
decorative traditional style—Wellons
to March 14.
LANDMARKS IN AMERICAN ART
is a loan exhibition of more than sixty
great American paintings, ranging from
an anonymous 1670 canvas to a 1950
abstraction. Many museums and public.
collections contributed—Wa/denstein to
March 28.
FRENCH DRAWINGS and WATER
COLORS is a small but comprehen-
sive show that ranges from sixteenth-
century Bellange to present-day Modi-
gliani. These intimate sketches by such
French masters as Fragonard, Degas,
Chagall, and others capture the French
flair for expressive calligraphy.—Este to
IRVIN HAAS
FRENCH DRAWINGS
AND WATERCOLORS |
Through March 17th
ESTE GALLERY
Stefan Ehrenzweig
116 East 57 Street Eldorado 5-1768
KUPKA
ROSE FRIED GALLERY
6 East 65th Street, New York 21
1:30 — 5:30 P. M.
YUL BRYNNER
RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN'S
The King and I
A New Musical Play
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
ST. JAMES THEATRE, West 44 St.)
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
Wednesday & Saturday at2:25: $4.20to1.80. \
MONDAY EVES. ONLY: CURTAIN AT 7 SHARP
- -
Letters
A Vote for Morse
Dear Sirs: The Morse Code by Bruce
Catton in The Nation of February 14
hits the spot. He is all right, and so is
Senator Morse. Many thanks to you for
your choice of writers with spunk.
New York JAMES B. GUIMES
Ethics and Parity
Dear Sirs: That “sound, long-range pro-
grams in a free, democratic society must
pass the test of Christian ethical goals
as well as the test of realistic economic
principles’’ was the united conviction of
forty rural church leaders, economists,
sociologists, and farmers at the conclu-
sion of a seminar on Ethical: Issues in
Farm Price Policy held in Chicago on
January 21 under the auspices of the
Council for Social Action of the Con-
gregational Christian Churches.
While affirming the necessity of a
federal price-support program, the group
made clear its views that our present
program is less than satisfactory. A par-
ticular concern is the failure of price-
support programs to solve the problems
of low-income farmers, who constitute
nearly half our farm population and
have little to sell at any price... .
Among the major findings of the four
working groups which took part in the
seminars afternoon session were these:
price-support programs, soundly con-
ceived, will not restrict free enterprise
but will stabilize and strengthen it;
there is no evidence that price supports
have contributed more to faulty alloca-
tion of resources than have the wild
fluctuations of the former “free market’;
the present division between basic and
non-basic commodities is indefensible,
and livestock and livestock products
should be classified as basic; a variety
of techniques should be legally available
for support of farm prices in order to
meet varying situations; prfice-support
benefits should be limited to conform to
our American policy of support for the
family farm.
A secret opinion poll, taken at the
close of the session, gave unanimous
support to the continuation of some
form of price-support program. Most
favored was one designed to “level up
the hollows and level down the humps
of the farm-income cycle.’’ The produc-
tion goal most favored was “balanced
production of the farm commodities
216
Crossword Puzzle No. 506
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
P| ie
ACROSS
1, 20 and 9 This condition shouldn’t
be conducive to hard thinking! (9,
2, 3, 5)
6 Anna isn’t big enough for this, so
one pie would be even a smaller
portion. (5)
9 See 1 across.
10 Fractured French is
here. (9)
11 Copper band, important at points of
stress. (4, 59
12 and 7 down. A strike might make it
lighter near the end of play. (5, 5)
13 Living quarters which suggest infla-
tion might be a good thing! (5)
15 Ruins made responsible for charges.
(9)
18 and 28 Proving sex is related to one
of the first parts of speech. (6, 3, 9)
19 They don’t sound like places for
loose living! (5)
20 See 1 across.
22 Dad’s hunch might run more to
length than height. (9)
25 He gave three cheers for war in
general. (9)
26 Never yet found without reticula-
tion (5)
27 An only child wouldn’t have one of
of his own. (5)
28 See 18 across.
DOWN
1 Judgelike, as they say? (5)
2 Sort of 5 for a painter. (9)
a_ privilege
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
The Nation, 20 Vesey Street,
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
TTF PE me
Beans
A ae
Bans
J J
i a a
oT ee
BEEBE EEE
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|e eee
Beene
me et
eee es S|
ee
3 These birds are not quite big enough
for Mr. Hemingway. (5)
4 In short, it sounds drafty; obviously, -
it’s worse than cold. (9)
5 A novel sort of thole would be this
big. (5) :
6 Those who never lie shouldn’t be in
such a position. (9)
See 12 across.
Looks like Orpheus or ante with
light shields. (9)
13 An unloved doctor gives an expres-
sion of pain to human beings. (9)
14 Paul Gustave’s brother Stephen? He
might empty the vessel. (9)
16 Introduce a sort of cut. (9)
17 Made Ma a sundae—not intended to
affect her this way! (2, 7)
21 ae in a different sense than 23.
(5
22 Wild dog in action! (5)
23 King Lear’s Edgar said Child Row-
land did the blood of a British man.
oo-]
(5)
24 Act like a senior professional man.
(5) oe
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 505
ACROSS :—1 INSHOOTS; 5 AGLEAM; 9
PLATEAU; 10 PEDICEL; 12 UNAWARE;
13 SALT AND PEPPER; 15 COMMENDA-
TIONS; 21 AUCTION; 22 RATTLER;. 23
PIONEER; 24 IMAGERY; 25 DE SOTO; 26
AGITATOR.
DOWN :—1 IMPUTE; 2 SHAKERS; 3 OVER-
ALL; 4 TRUCK GARDENER; 6 and 11 GOD
SAVE THE MARK; 7 ENCLASP; 8 MUL-
BERRY; 10 POUND Ss TERLING; 14 SCRAP-
PED: 16 MACRONS; 17 EXIGENT; 18 OUT-
CAST; 19 SOL VENT; 20 PRAYER.
“ground rules.’’ Addre$s
New York 7, New York.
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“needed for domestic consumption and
for export.” Purchase and loan programs
were the most favored technique for
supporting non-perishables, but direct
payments outranked other proposals for
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More on Ruth Crawford
Dear Sirs: One of your correspondents
observed that it took courage for you
to print the “‘apologia” of Ruth E. Craw-
ford in The Nation of January 24. But
it ought, though I cannot be sure of any-
thing at present, to pay off in solidifying
the courage of others. Nowhere have I
seen such clear, honest conviction of
honor and truth; which should be the
very core of loyalty in all relations,~.as
Miss Crawford has revealed. If this be
subversive, we need a lot more of it.
MARJORIE F. WARNER
Walpole, N. H.
Dear Sirs: Congratulations on the most
timely and penetrating article I have
seen anywhere, I Have a Thing to Tell
You, by Ruth Elizabeth Crawford [The
Nation, January 24}. This is truly ‘“‘an
appeal to the American conscience,’ and
unless our conscience is sufficiently
aroused to stop war and witch hunts (a
necessary accessory to war), then we
shall surely become the fear-ridden gar-
rison state predicted by the late George
Orwell in “1984's
That there is a campaign to destroy
two of our most cherished institutions,
the public schools and the United Na-
tions, the general public seems not to
know or care. The “magic” weapon for
the destruction of both is anti-commu-
nism. No, it was not Miss Crawford, nor
was it the Communists, who are so small
in number and prestige as to constitute
no danger to the status quo; it was the
United Nations which was the real tar-
get. There is a nation-wide campaign to
“kick out’’ the United Nations... .
American Protestants should be aware
that it is and has ever been the Catholic
aim to discredit public schools and con-
vert all to the parochial schooF idea. . . .
MARY PHILLIPS
Lemont, Ill.
LL eS
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\ _ iy 5 ae Se
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eV; [ o —tingame, SO i
aU / O77
; |
March 14, 1953
20¢
EVERY
WEEK
_ SINCE
1865_
BOOKS ° THEATER °* ART ° RECORDS
WiD 9
MR 14!
7 BORLINGA Ee
( PUBLIC LIBRARY }
End of the
Stalin
Era
Alexander Werth |
Earl Bronder
J. Alvarez del Vayo
G.O.P’s Quiet Purge Bruce Catton —
The New Writers Maxynell Geismar
Rutgers: A Warning Broadus Mitchell ' i
Around
the
U.S.A.
Readin’, Ritin’, and
Retooling
Louisville, Kentucky
THE amount of illiteracy in a state or
community is .a good indication of
the amount of poverty. In Kentucky
neatly one-third of the young men who
come before selective-service boards are
being rejected for educational deficien-
cies. Distressed educators rank their state
forty-seventh in the Union in literacy—
although several other Southern states
could dispute this distinction. It is not
surprising, therefore, to learn’ that per
capita income ranges from $307 a year
in one Kentucky county to $1,700 in
another. In 34 of the state’s 120 coun-
ties the average income is less than
$500 a year. Welfare rolls show~a con-
tinuous climb upward.
One might hope that the present na-
tional prosperity would solve Ken-
‘tucky’s problem, that boom times would
boost the underprivileged and their
children to the threshold of education,
where they might learn enough to take
care of themselves. Unfortunately, there
is under-employment and unemploy-
ment even now in Kentucky's tradi-
tional industries.
More than half of the population is
rural, and as in other agricultural areas
Kentucky farms support fewer and
fewer people. In 1935 there were 451,-
137 farm workers in the state. Census
takers in 1950 found 298,140, includ-
ing both family workers and _ hired
hands. The coal-mining industry in east-
ern Kentucky is dying. It has been esti-
mated that five years from now not
more than ten mines will be operating
in Harlan County, and they will have
been mechanized so as to require the
= tooled”
minimum number of miners. The liquor
industry has got itself in a jam. At the
outbreak of the Korean war distillers
anticipated a ban on production and
went into night-and-day operation, de-
spite large inventories. But no ban was
applied, and on June 30* last 937,156,-
000 gallons of distilled spirits were
stored in government warehouses. Year-
ly withdrawals for bottling and sale do
not much exceed 75,000,000 gallons.
Hope for an improvement in the eco-
nomic situation must rest on new in-
dustries. A large number are in fact
moving in—an atomic-power plant at
Paducah, aluminum, chemical, and syn-
thetic-rubber plants, General Electric's
home-applance division, and others.
But if the native labor force is to bene-
fit by this expansion, it must be “re-
and taught mechanical skills
that presume a degree of literacy. Hence
in Kentucky education cannot be
counted among the fruits of abundance;
it is the vital seed.
© Only one in fourteen
children completes high school. Three-
fifth of the schools are one-room
buildings. One-fourth of the state’s
530,000 children attend schools with
hand-operated water supplies; 38, per
cent must use outdoor toilet facilities.
The state Department of Education’ is
working on a minimum program—a
“bill of rights’’ for Kentucky’s children.
Among the items being considered are
a guaranteed school term of nine
months, an adequate supply of text-
books, competent certified teachers pos-
sessing at least a baccalaureate degree,
and a minimum salary for teachers of
$2,400 a year.
These are all simple necessities, but
* action must await the result of a vote
next November on an amendment to
the state constitution. At present the
constitution provides that at least 75
per cent of the state money for schools
shall be distributed to the various school
districts on a census-pupil basis. Thus
the fewer listed pupils who attend in
a district, the greater is the state’s share
of the actual educational costs. Truancy
becomes a local financial boon. The
proposed amendment, which has the
support of Governor Lawrence Wether-
by and the state’s- educational associa-
A
ees 48 q
tions, went permit the lepislattee to.
decide the allotment of funds; that %
body, it is hoped, would set the matter —
right.
© But not all Kentucky's
school problems can be blamed on a
constitution drafted in 1890. To quote
Governor Wetherby: “The practice of
_assessing property at a fractional part
of its fair cash value is damaging the
financial structure of local government
and schools.” The Kentucky Educa-
tional Association estimates that the
minimum foundation program would
cost $100,000,000 a year, of which
the state would pay about half.
The question is, will the counties do
their share? Property assessment in
Kentucky, as everywhere else, is pretty
much a political football. Moreover,
certain influential employer groups have
a vested interest in illiteracy.
Another approach to the literacy
problem is sought through adult educa- —
tion. A generation ago, as a result of
the high illiteracy found by = draft
boards of World War I, many “‘moon-
light” schools were ‘started where per-
sons who could ‘read and write tatight
their neighbors informally. Efforts to re-
vive that spirit of self-help are being
made by a group of citizens ‘working
with Governor Wetherby. Their aim
is to instruct local volunteer com-
mittees in the quick and effective teach—
ing and learning techniques developed
by Dr. Laubech for the armed forces.
Governor Wetherby has called a confer-
ence of educators for March 18 to dis-
cuss this and other plans.
Kentucky's economic situation is typi-
cal of the transitional South. Its educa-
tional plight is no worse than that of
the region in general. If it will match
its efforts to attract new industry with
efforts to create a new kind of worker,
it will become an example to the whole —
South. ALFRED MAUND
[The author is a member of the staff
of the Louisville Courier-Journal. }
Next Week
Edward Crankshaw, Britain’s top
expert on the Soviet Union, reviews
a book of particular significance at
this time: William Appleton Wil-
liams’s “‘American-Russian Relenae,
1781-1947.”
F Volume 176, Number 1
New York, Saturday, March 14, 1953
The Shape of Things
Circus on the White House Lawn
President Eisenhower's continued unwillingness to
interfere with Senator McCarthy on the ground that
Congress has the right to conduct investigations as it sees
fit, indicates an amazing insensitivity both to constitu-
tional issues and to the requirements of sound adminis-
tration. The purpose of Congressional committee hear-
ings is the preparation of legislation. Under the Mc-
Carrans, McCarthys, and Veldes, this function has been /
perverted in two ways. On the one hand, the committees
are encroaching on the field of the judiciary by punishing
people without due process; on the other, they are in-
vading the domain of the Executive by undertaking a
general supervision of personnel.
By tolerating these perversions the President is under-
mining the whole doctrine of the separation of powers.
He is also acquiescing in the reduction of the civil
service to a demoralized, undisciplined shambles. Can
any organization work smoothly and efficiently when its
employees are brought before a television camera and
encouraged to tattle on each other, and not merely to
criticize but to question the motives and good faith of
their superiors? What authority is Mr. Dulles going to
exercise in his department now that his subordinates
have seen that personal security requires them to clear
with the Senator rather than the Secretary?
If the President asked himself such questions, he
could hardly remain complacent about McCarthyism. He
is not going to stop the rot by such reorganizations as
the new Voice of America chief is said to be planning,
inevitable as that now is. Unless the- McCarthy inquisi-
tion is stopped cold, no man of integrity will be willing
henceforth to serve this section of the State Department.
;
Eden’s Mission
The arrival here of the British mission headed by
Messrs. Eden and Butler coincided with an announce-
ment of a further substantial improvement in the sterling
area’s reserves. But although there is no immediate
emergency to be met, Britain’s economic position re-
mains basically unstable, as the Committee for Economic
Vation
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
Development recognizes in the striking report it has just
published. And the problem the British came to discuss
was how to reestablish economic relations between the
dollar and the sterling areas on a sound basis; how, in
short, to expand trade so that aid will become unneces-
sary.
Mr. Eden had been at pains to make clear that his
government was not looking for immediate action but
did hope to obtain from the new Administration a
promise that it will cooperate in reaching certain objec-
tives, such as the rebuilding of a multi-lateral trade
system to which this country is already deeply committed
in theory. It was, in fact, a triumph for American
policy when the recent Commonwealth Economic Con-
ference rejected proposals for a closed, self-sufficient
Commonwealth system and decided to seek means both
for freeing and for expanding world trade.
If this ideal, which is now a generally accepted Amer-
ican ideal, is to be achieved, the United States will have
to back it by more than lip service. As the most produc-
tive and economically powerful country in the world, we
shall have to assume the role played by Britain in its
days of dominance and open our doors to foreign goods
and our financial markets to foreign borrowers. The
preponderant weight of informed opinion, including
business opinion, now favors bold measures of this.
‘nature. As an outcome of the Eden-Butler visit, the Ad-
ministration has in effect promised that just such a bold
policy will be followed. But the Administration promise
will remain empty unless Congress, in the end, is willing
to perform.
A “Good” Filibuster
Offshore oil has the Administration all at sea. Secre-
tary of Interior McKay is prepared to give the coastal
states full title to underseas oil within their “historic -
boundaries’’—ten and a half miles in the case of Texas
and Florida—although even he gagged at the blatant
demand of Senator Daniel of Texas for a large cut of
the royalties earned from minerals beneath the conti-
nental shelf beyond any state limits. Attorney General
Brownell, on the other hand, warned the Senate Interior
Committee that a statute giving the states a quitclaim
to offshore territory might prove vulnerable to challenge -
“T. ar =
‘ Si aie Se ot
°
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 217
Caution Is the Keynote 219
ARTICLES
U. N. Watches the Kremlin
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 220
Is War Nearer?
An Ex- Communist’ s View
by Earl Browder 221
Man and ‘Symbol by Alexander Werth 222
Quiet Purge:
The G. O. P. Builds a New Machine
by Bruce Catton 223
Land for the Many: Guatemala Story
by Luis Cardoza y Aragon 224
Will Canada Go Right?
A Ballot Test Is Near
by Keith Hutchison 225
Rutgers: A Warning
Lessons of a Lost Fight
by Broadus Mitchell 228
The Mourning Dove: A Poem
by Samuel Yellen 229
BOOKS
The End of Something
A Review by Maxwell Geismar 230
New Books in Brief 231
THEATER by Harold Clurman 232
ART by S. Lane Faison, Jr. 233
MUSIC by B. H. Haggin 234
LETTERS 235
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 507
by Frank W. Lewis 236
AROUND THE U. S. A.
Readin’, Ritin’, and Retooling
by Alfred Maund opposite 217
Editorial Board ;
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
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Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
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Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
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218
in the courts, It would be better, he thought, for Cong 2
to dispose of this national heritage by simply authorizing =
the states to administer and develop offshore subsoil
resources,
The biggest monkey wrench was thrown into the
planning by the State Department, now alert to the
international implications of the Texas-Florida pre-
tensions. The United States, the deputy legal adviser of
the Department told the committee, has never claimed
more than a three-mile limit, and the claims of the states
“cannot exceed those. of the nation.” Legal recognition
ofa ten-and-a-half-mile limit, he argued, would make it
difficult for the government to resist extravagant la
by other nations. :
Despite the possibility of conflict with both constitu-
tional and international law, the mood of the majority
of the Senate committee is to go ahead and damn the
consequences, and the President has indicated that° he
will sign any legislation that reaches his desk. There is
a real chance, however, that a filibuster may delay Con-
gressional action. Considering that the proponents of
the offshore oil bill are equally fervent opponents of
the closure, this would indeed be poetic justice, If ever
a filibuster were justified, it would be in the case of this
bill, which not only sanctions an ugly grab of national
property but provides a dangerous precedent for further
assaults on federal lands and mineral rights.
Vincent Walks the Plank
While appearing to reject their views, John Foster
Dulles has again capitulated to Senators McCarran and
Metaahy by ruling that eae Carter Vincent cannot
“usefully continue to serve” the State Department. True,
he found that Mr. Vincent.is not and has never been
either a bad loyalty or a bad security risk, but this con-
clusion, worded in the most niggardly negative terms,
was coupled with another that for all practical purposes
concedes that McCarthy and McCarran were right—
namely, that Vincent’s reporting and advice failed to
meet the standard demanded of a foreign-service officer.
The ruling will be carefully noted by every ambitious
career officer in the foreign service, for it amply confirms _-
the late Joseph Schumpeter’s conclusion that American
foreign policy is domestic politics. ‘
As he viewed the political balance of power, Mr.
Dulles concluded that Vincent had to go. The problem
was simply to find a plausible excuse. Naturally the
witch-hunters are not altogether satisfied; by exonerating
Vincent on the toyalty and security issues Mr. Dulles
indicated his unwillingness to rely on the testimony of
‘Louis Budenz. What really matters is the cynical implica-
tion that the standard of the State Department is net _
honest reporting but the right political connections. The
power of the China Lobby and not the quality of his
reporting is what led to Mr. Vincent's dismissal. As, to
The Natio Ni 4
whether his reporting was accurate or not, Benjamin
Schwartz, assistant professor of Far Eastern history at
Harvard University, had this to say in a letter to the
New York Times of December 30, 1952:
Nothing has happened since 1945 to reverse the
judgment of a large assortment of persons [including
Mr. Vincent—Ed.} familiar with China that the Chiang
government was guilty of an almost criminal failure to
carry out certain vital reforms in China; that the
Kuomintang troops were thoroughly demoralized; that
the government did everything possible by default to
facilitate a Communist victory. No evidence has been
produced to reverse the judgment that further armed
support to Chiang would have been a sheer waste; that
anything less than an armed intervention by the United
States . . . would have {failed to} put a brake on the
Communist advance.
But of course Professor Schwartz is a historian, not a
politician, and who listens to historians these days?
Certainly not Washington.
Caution is the Keynote
THE death of Stalin and the accession of Malenkov
have loosed a torrent of wishful or fearful thoughts
throughout the world. For neither is there any reasonable
support. The fantasy that sent Czarist bonds up from 3%
to 5% was hardly more far-fetched than the hope that
inspired the Voice of America to warn the new Soviet
leaders of their coming liquidation. Walter Winchell,
hard put to outstrip the other guessers, professes to
know that the Red army is in full control, having bested
the Cofnmunist Party, and will lead Russia into new ag-
gtessions. (To show the proportions of the threat, he
revealed that Winchell’s status in the Naval Reserve has
been changed to R, meaning Ready..) But amid conflict- _
.ing prophecies of early adventures—either to secure the
new regime against internal unrest or as an expression
of the recklessness of the new rulers—and counter
prophecies of a prolonged period of uncertainty and
hesitation which should be seized upon to undermine
Soviet power, persons closest to the realities of Russian
politics have been silent or very"wary.
This, we believe, is the course of wisdom, All we
know now is that the new government in Moscow was
organized with impressive speed and every evidence of
pte-planning and careful articulation. Unity is its out-
ward appearance; and one would be foolish to count on
a palace revolt—an event which would spell death to the
losers and undermine Soviet power throughout the
world. As for the satellite regimes, restless or not, they
have invested their hope of survival in the connection
with the Kremlin: they can no longer “opt out” and
_ March 14, 1953
a 2s
.
avoid counter-revolution. Even China, on which the most
ardently wishful thoughts are now concentrated, is bound
to Russia by ties that transcend the brotherhood of world
revolution—and that, too, cannot safely be discounted,
One of the most inescapable is the Korean war.
For China to draw away from Moscow would mean
loss of the total Communist stake in Korea, defeat with-
out compensation, It would mean a consequent surrender
of power throughout Asia. We have yet to hear any of
our political-war experts proposing to recognize the Mao
government or to seat it in the United Nations or even
to accept the fact of the Chinese revolution. Indeed on
the very day the newspapers carried stories predicting
Mao’s probable alienation from a regime headed by
Malenkov, they reported Anthony Eden’s agreement to
an all-but-total embargo of trade with Peking. But mean-
while Vishinsky in his speech at the U. N. had accepted
responsibility for supplying arms to China and North
Korea for their struggle against the “American aggres-
sors.’’ This was an open admission of Moscow’s role in
Korea; it was also a solid guarantee of help to Mao Tse-
tung. In this total context is it sensible to expect the
Peking regime to issue a declaration of independence of
Moscow?
Until some unmistakable sign of a break appears in
the Soviet world we can only hope our government will
display the caution evident in other Western capitals.
And when a break occurs, if it does, we hope the “‘ad-
venturism” of the Republican wild men will be over-
ruled by the moderates of bdéth parties in Congress and
the Administration. For whatever the ‘“‘new era’ turns
out to be, it is not likely to take the shape imagined by
the Kerstens and Jenners, the China Lobby, and the anti-
Communist Crusaders. “Psychological warfare” based on
the notion that the Russian people hated Stalin and
would welcome the overthrow of their government, or
that China is finished with revolution and looks to
Chiang Kai-shek for rescue could lead to total disaster.
The only move the Administration could safely make
would be one based on the assumption that the new Mos-
cow regime is as strong and unified as its appearance. This
country could offer in good faith to negotiate differences, —
making a fresh start in Korea, in China and Formosa, in |
Germany and Austria; and to reopen the question of arms
limitation and control. It could demand a mutual mora-
torium on political warfare and propose a cooperative _
effort to extend technical and financial aid through the
U.N. to every underprivileged part of the world, with-
‘ out distinction as to political color or control. This it
could do without resorting to fantasies or counter-revo-
lutionary maneuvers. And to make such a move would
undoubtedly be the best piece of political or psychologi-
cal warfare that could be devised. But perhaps we are
indulging in fantasies ourselves. For America too has
recently entered a “‘new era.”
219
U.N. Watches the Kremlin
United Nations, March 6
THE news of Stalin’s death struck a
Political Committee that was already
deadlocked on the Korean issue. There
is no longer any latitude for wishful
thinking. Unless a quite new interna-
tional situation is created, a climate fora
general high-level discussion, the war
in Korea may last for years, just as in
Indo-China. The irritating prediction
that no isolated solution is now possible
for Korea has become incontrovertible.
In this atmosphere of stalemate the
news of Stalin’s death produced a pro-
found impression and a good deal of
confused speculation at the United Na-
tions. Those best acquainted with Rus-
sian affairs dismissed the idea of a
coming ruthless struggle for power
within the regime. They found little or
no parallel between the problem of
succession posed by Lenin’s death and
that following Stalin’s. Thirty years
have passed, and an entirely different
situation confronts the planners of
policy toward Russia. When Lenin died,
the country was just emerging from eco-
nomic chaos. I had been there two years
before with Nansen’s relief mission,
and I returned a couple of months after
his death as a correspondent. Russia was
not only experiencing famine caused in
part by a terrific drought. Production had
slid back a hundred and fifty years as
result of. World War I, revolution and
civil war, and the foreign interventions.
Railroads, telegraph systems, health
services, all were disrupted and broken.
In 1922 I did not meet a single chief of
a diplomatic mission in Moscow who
gave the Bolsheviks more than a few
years.
Today it is Russia’s strength, not its
disruption, that worries the West. On
the very day that Stalin’s death was an-
‘nounced the United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe issued at Ge-
neva its comprehensive report on post-
war economic development, in which it
stated: ‘There are indications that if the
present rates of expansion are main-
220
tained, by the end of this decade the
production and consumption of major
industrial raw materials in the Soviet
Union will be equal or superior to that
in the seven most industrialized coun-
tries in Western Europe.”” Commenting
on this and on Stalin’s death one dele-
gate said: ‘It would be strange if
Stalin’s heirs were to risk in a fight for
personal power their vast heritage. The
group in control have grown with him
in the conduct of political affairs; they
have been trained under a terrific disci-
pline, are fanatically devoted to the
party, and, above all, have emerged
from the great test of World War II
absolutely confident of their power and
that of their country. We are not wit-
nessing the disappearance of a Latin
American dictator.” .
But while the probability of a weak-
ening of Russia that would alter the
present balance of power was dis-
counted by the more experienced dele-
gates, there was evident a degree of
anxiety lest the hope of such a change
might provide new impetus to the “‘lib-
eration” crusade. Though official Wash-
ington comment had been restrained
and President Eisenhower had promptly
repeated in his press conference his
willingness to meet any Russian who
might succeed Mr. Stalin, there were
abundant indications that other forces
were watching for “any weakening of
communism to act politically, by propa-
ganda, or militarily,” in the words of a
CBS commentator speaking from the
capital. It was fear of pressure in that
direction, of the temptation to “‘seize
the~ opportunity in the more vulner-
able satellites,’ that was considered a
disturbing possibility.
Fear that the new Russian leaders
might eventually show a less wait-and-
see attitude was also heard. Stalin was
pictured asa master of caution when
he felt that what the adversary wanted
was to lead him out of the path of pol-
icy he had already decided upon. The
question was raised whether his succes-
sors would so calmly follow a program
of action predicated upon the theory
that in the end the capitalist world
would be forced into conflict and eco-
nomic difficulties as the result of its in-
ternal contradictions.
Some feared also that Stalin’s death
might be used as a new argument to
avoid negotiations. Too much stress on
the idea that we “may miss Stalin’ was
considered dangerous. As one delegate
put it, the same people who a week ago
were saying, “What is the use of talk-
ing to Stalin?” now act as if Stalin had
been the only one you could talk to in
Russia. This attitude might again lock
the door to negotiation.
The hopes of some dalee cee
turned to the European allies, above all,
Great Britain. The report that Foreign
Secretary Eden was urging Washington
to move very cautiously in Asia and to
observe the greatest prudence in dealing
with the new Russian leaders was wel-_
come news in the midst of the general
anxiety. For opportunities still exist. On
April 13 a new East-West trade confer-
ence opens in Geneva, the Russians
having this time accepted the invitation
of Gunnar Myrdal, chairman of the
E. C. E. The treaty on. the European
Army in its relation with Germany is
also mot yet .an accomplished fact;
chance for a new examination of the
German issue remains. But the first
condition for all this is a renunciation
of the policy of adventure and a return
to diplomacy.
é
Lf
IS WAR NEARER?
An Ex-Communist’s View . . by Earl Browder
in life Stalin was
IN DEATH $as
unique: there is no gauge by which he
can be assessed, no label under which
he can be pigeonholed. And just
as the power concentrated in Stalin’s
hands during his life grew to unparal-
Jeled proportions, so his passing will
have unprecedented repercussions.
There can be no successor to Stalin;
his shoes must forever remain empty.
This is true because his power had a
single historical function which has been
completed. It developed from his role
in lifting Russia out of medieval con-
ditions into those of a modern industrial
society, compressing into three decades
a process which in Western Europe and
America was spread over three hundred
years. This tenfold speeding up of
history, this forced march of the Russian
people out of the seventeenth century
into the twentieth, was led and organ-
ized by Stalin. He alone of all Russian
leaders held to this goal with ferocious
tenacity, overcoming all obstacles what-
ever the cost, driving the entire nation
along the marked path, imbuing it with
his will, mercilessly sacrificing the lag-
gards. The nation responded, and as it
gathered momentum on its course, it
built the personal power of its com-
mander to greater and greater heights.
With Russia’s victory in World War II
and with the reconstruction of its econ-
omy after the war, the purpose which
had energized this superhuman effort
was accomplished. For the first time in
its history Russia was invincible; it had a
modern economy second only to that of
America; it was a first-class power.
Most Americans fail to realize that
with Stalin’s historical task accom-
plished, the Russian leadership that will
follow him will necessarily be entirely
EARL BROWDER was secretary of
the American Communist Party from
1930 to i945 and representative of
Soviet publishers in the United States
in 1946-49, He is now a free-lance
writer and lecturer,
different. The new leadership will in-
herit an industrialized Russia; it will
have different tasks and therefore play
a different role. Thus Stalin can have
no successor in the ordinary sense of the
word.
THE STALIN ERA in Russia might be
compared with the period of the “Rob-
ber Barons’ in our industrial history.
But the American industrial barons were
limited in their scope to single regions
and industries, whereas their Stalinist
counterparts were organized into a
homogeneous national machine, a sort
of gigantic “‘trust’’ in which the tradi-
tional profit motive was replaced by
socialist slogans. The rule of the Robber
Barons in this country had to give way
to a regime of law and orderly progress
when the economy had been developed
to a high level, and an analogous change
will take place in the technique of
Russian leadership.
Unfortunately for world peace, how-
ever, neither Soviet nor American po-
litical thought recognizes the meaning
of the approaching change in Russia.
Soviet thinking is still dominated by the
concept of hostile encirclement, which
in the world of physical reality has been
breached beyond possible reconstruc-
tion. The heartland of the capitalist
world, America, has today fully as
sound reasons to consider itself the
victim of ‘“‘socialist encirclement,’
though in this case too the encirclement
is more psychological than physical.
The danger of war will be accentu-
ated by the passing of Stalin. For it was
characteristic of him that while his iron
nerves did not know the meaning of
fear, he always avoided adventurous
international policies and restrained his
more reckless colleagues. He consist-
ently opposed the post-war revolutionary
adventures in Greece, and continued to
support the project of a modus vivendi
in China right up to the eve of Chiang
Kai-shek’s collapse before the rising
armies under Mao Tse-tung.
Stalin valued America highly and
wanted friendly relations with America.
His latest published utterance, reported
by India’s Dr. Saiffudin Kitchlew in the
New York Times of February 25, re-
flects this long-standing attitude, which
was widely at variance with official Rus-
sian propaganda against America. The
second rank of leaders, perhaps from too
long reliance upon Stalin to do all the
original thinking, seem to be unable to
deal with America except in terms of
hysterical abuse. They who must form
the post-Stalin leadership of the Soviet
' Union seem much less well prepared
than Stalin was to define and solve the
historical problem of ‘‘coexistence.”
Thus it would be utopian to expect
that the new leadership in Russia, in its
first phase, will pursue a more enlight-
ened policy in either domestic or foreign
affairs, On the contrary, it may for a
time be even more intolerant and ag-
gressive in its attitude and mood.
IN 1926 I attended the Sixth and
Seventh Enlarged Plenum meetings of
the Comintern Executive and_ the
fifteenth Russian Communist Party Con-
ference at Moscow. At these gatherings
I saw Stalin rise to undisputed primacy,
in the leadership of Russian and inter-
national communism by winning a rig-
orous intellectual battle without prece-
dent in the records of politics. I studied
Stalin’s thought, and while I was never
close to him personally, it was my feel-
ing during fifteen years as the head of
the American Communist Party that it.
was Stalin’s influence that kept hostile
critics from demolishing my policies for
the American party, which were always
adjusted to America’s unique features”
and were often unorthodox. When from
1945 on I found myself in deep and
growing disagreement with the interna-
tional line of the Communist movement,
so much so that I no longer call myself
a Communist, I believed and still be-
lieve that the 1945 collapse of the
American Communist Party was one of
22h
eR eae es
a
the by-products of Stalin’s retirement
from active operational leadership.
With the end of the Stalin era Soviet
hegemony “over the world socialist
movement also comes to an-end. It is
now clear that the Soviet type of social-
ism, though attractive to the economi-
cally backward countries, is not accept-
able to the working classes of the
industrially advanced Western countries
with long experience in democratic self-
government. For a whole period to
come, different types of socialism will
develop in different regions.
Stalin had come to occupy so much
“political space’”” in his own personal
eer rete WoT aetna
. % wr I . a : *
: + a ei oe a x
Et “oe
4 ee . S ai. rs ws =. a
right, space which can -never again be a
Ae
occupied by anyone leader, that his in-
capacity or death creates a tremendous -
vacuum. How this vacuum will gradu-
ally be filled, and an equilibrium again
be reached in world politics, is perhaps
the most serious problem facing the
world.
MAN AND SYMBOL . ; by Alexander Werth
Paris
STALIN'S death has opened the flood-
gates for torrents of copy, some lauda-
tory, most petty and malicious, and
nearly all fantastically sensational.
The reaction of anyone who has ac-
tually been in the Soviet Union for any
length of time is bound to be different.
The only press story-which seemed to .
me to ring true was the United Press
dispatch telling of the people weeping
in the streets of Moscow and whisper-
ing in the street cars as if they were
actually in the death chamber. In my
seven-year stay in the Soviet Union, I
found that the attitude of the Russian
people toward Stalin had no parallel
anywhere. It was nothing like what the
Germans felt for Hitler, though in some
respects it resembled the British atti-
tude toward the royal family. The Ger-
man’s feeling for Hitler was intensely
personal; the Russian’s for Stalin was
personal in only a limited sense. Stalin
was the Ahoziain, the ‘boss,’ who led
the country through good days and bad
and generally succeeded in what he set
out to do.
Until 1928 Russia was still Zoshchen-
ko’s humorous Russia, still much like
Mayakovsky’s romantic revolutionary
Russia. In 1928 Stalin definitely took
over. The early thirties were a terribly
hard time, marked by stupendous exer-
tion, injustice, and ruthlessness. During
the second half of the decade the in-
justices and ruthlessness continued, but
even the doubters saw that “things were
working.” It was only during this short
period that Stalin made an effort to
popularize himself in a direct personal”
ALEXANDER WERTH, The Nation’s
Paris correspondent, spent seven years
in Moscow as a journalist.
222
Way, appearing at school children’s
rallies and the like. Then came the war,
which made Stalin what he still is to
the Russian people. Yet -even the pre-
war Stalin had become reasonably popu-
lar. He had checked the over-zealous
collectivization program, for which in
fact he himself had been responsible,
and had acquired a reputation for mod-
eration. There is no doubt that Stalin,
even while he created public opinion,
also kept his finger on the pulse of the
country, and his incomparably better
understanding of the Russian people
facilitated his victory over Trotsky, the
un-Russian intellectual.
For most Russians Stalin is the man
‘who on October 16, 1941, with the
Germans at Moscow’s gates, never lost
his nerve and unostentatiously stayed in
the Kremlin planning the counter-blow
with his generals. He seldom appeared
in public or spoke on the radio, but
everybody was aware of his presence,
and throughout the war his prestige
grew, fed by his enormous self-confi-
dence, his strength of character, his-
capacity to choose the right people for
_ Malenkov
running the war and dealing with
Russia’s allies, and above all his judg-
ment.
It is not true that Stalin became a*
demigod to his people. But since apart
from Stalin the man there was also Stalin
the symbol of the Soviet state, it was
felt inevitable that he should receive the
highest adulation and nearly exclusive
credit for the state’s achievements. No
one believed in his infallibility; Stalin
himself confessed at the end of the
war, “We made numerous mistakes.’’
But there was always the conviction that
Stalin was smarter than most people.
Despite the element of toadying in the
talk of his genius, in the hyperbolic
poetry addressed to him, especially by
Oriental bards—at which Stalin himself
tended to laugh—the adulation was
directed more to the symbol than to the
man. *
In Freudian terminology Stalin was
the father who created a feeling of
security and’ self-confidence among his —
people. Emotionally, therefore, Stalin’s
disappearance is a grave blow to every
Russian, even the malcontents, especially
in the present international situation.
There ‘has been an irrational belief in _
Russia that so long as Stalin lived the
worst could be averted. ;
Stalin the man is irreplaceable, at
least for a long time. The problem is -
whether Stalin the “‘boss’’ and Stalin the
“symbol” ‘can be replaced. Malenkov
represents the Soviet-bred younger gen-
‘eration’ and cannot fill the role of
“father.”
In the coming months a conflict be-
tween two generations is not inconceiv-
able, but ‘the memory of Stalin and his
“‘presence’’ will tend to have a settling
and unifying effect on the new leaders
of the Russian people. :
>The Nan
al
‘
QUIET PURGE
G.OP. Builds a New Machine .
Mr. Cole voted consistently for the
5,000-unit rate, declaring that the low-
rent housing program “‘tends to destroy
private homes and private business”
Washington
WHAT you are supposed to look at
is the big purge which will separate
sO many incompetent, taxes-consuming
government employees from the federal
pay roll. Then you will not see that be-
hind this spectacle the machinery of
government is being quietly but effec-
tively recast to make it more responsive
to the wishes of a big-business Admin-
istration. It is not a difficult operation.
It requires only a few new men in top
places and a little reorientation in key
spots. This is already beginning to be
visible.
The government activities which
most directly affect the average citizen
are largely carried on outside the regu-
lar government departments, by various
independent agencies. A new head can
easily cause a rightabout-face. The
government's public-housing program,
for instance, is handled by the Housing
and Home Finance Agency. The new
administrator is Albert H. Cole, ex-
Representative from Kansas, known as
one of the most effective foes of public
housing in the entire Congress.
The law under which the agency
operates authorized the construction of
135,000 low-rent housing units a year.
Since 1949 that rate has never been ap-
~ proached. Because of the Korean emer-
gency President Truman suggested
that it be reduced to 75,000 a year.
Through a rider on the appropriation
act, elements in Congress sought to cut
it to 5,000—which would have been to
kill the public-housing program. The
effort was defeated, and construction of
50,000 units was authorized for the fis-
cal year 1952. A similar move to bring
the number down to 5,000 units was
made the next year, and after some
negotiation between the two houses the
tate was set at 35,000 units, the limit
now in effect.
BRUCE CATTON is contributing a
Series of articles on the new ee
ton Administration.
ch 14, 1953
one
and also ‘‘to destroy our government.”
If the government did not pull itself up
short, he said, it would eventually find
itself compelled to provide subsidized
housing for one-fifth of all of the fam-
ilies in the country.
For years thé low-rent housing pro-
gram has been vigorously opposed by
the real-estate lobby. The trade likes to
build for the top third of the market; it
cannot make a profit from low-rent con-
struction, although the rental of once
costly housing which has deteriorated is
profitable. Now one of the trade’s best
friends is in charge of the agency which
is supposed to push the low-rent build-
ing program.
ANOTHER interesting story concerns
the Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
tion. This agency was set up under
Herbert Hoover, its primary function in
the depression days being to bail out
banks, insurance companies, railroads,
and other large interests. Currently
nearly 90 per cent of its loans go to
small business firms. These loans are
vital, for in many areas the rate of in-
dustrial expansion has so far exceeded
the rate of bank growth that small busi-
ness men cannot get the financing they
need through regular commercial chan-
nels. The most recent report of the
House Small Business Committee calls
the R. F. C.’s operations in this field
absolutely essential, both in boom times,
as recently, and in a recession, when
banks naturally curtail their loans. The
R. F. C. loans, it should be noted, are
quite different from the loans made
from a special fund of $100,000,000 on
the recommendation of the Small De-
fense Plants Corporation.
What is happening now is nothing
less than a move to abolish the R. F. C.
A bill to that effect has been introduced
in Congress by Senator Byrd in conjunc-
by Bruce Catton
tion with such Republican stalwarts as
Senators Bricker of Ohio and Wil-
liams of Delaware. If it is passed, the
R. F, C.’s remaining functions will be
performed by the Treasury Department
—which means of course that all loans
to small business will be made by
straight bankers’ standards and with
bankers’ caution. It may not even be
necessary to pass this legislation. The
law under which the R. F. C. lends
money expires on June 30. Unless it is
extended, the R. F. C. is out of the
lending business and the small Basia
man is out of financing,
The principal guardian of small busi-
ness in the capital is the Federal Trade
Commission. Of its five members—
James M. Mead, Stephen Spingarn,
John Carson, Lowell Mason, and Albert
Carretta—the first three were rated as
liberals. But last week Carson was re-
placed by Edward Frank Howrey, Vir-
ginia Republician and lawyer, whose
principal qualification for the post ap-
pears to be the fact that he has been
representing big corporation interests
before the commission for the last sev-
eral years.:
Traditionally the F. T. C. has been a
leading advocate of anti-trust-law en-
forcement. If it soft-pedals that func-
tion, as is anticipated, it may again be-
come what it was in the early 1920's
—an agency concerned largely with “po-
licing’’ advertising and holding confer-
ences on trade practices with ‘edustrial
groups.
ONE OF THE MOST important inde-
pendent agencies is the Federal Power
Commission. It alone protects the con-
sumer against possible exploitation by
the public utilities. It guards his stake in
low-cost electric power and has much to
say about what he must ultimately pay
for natural gas. Its decisions can mean a
difference of hundreds of millions of
dollars to consumers’ budgets.
“Among the problems before it at
present is that of electric power from
223
— CES saetiateinmeaseeinenpteetene sane
>
the St. Lawrence River. Should the
- New York State Power Authority be
given a license to build and operate the
vast power plant which will one day
arise on the United States side of the
International Rapids? If so, can a pref-
erence clause be put in the license?
In 1950 the commission denied an
-application for a separate power project
and referred the matter to Congress,
contemplating unified development of
the whole St. Lawrence project—power
production and seaway—in accordance
with Section 7-B of the Federal Power
Act. (Section 7-B gives the commission
no authority to grant a license if it feels
that development should be undertaken
by the United States.) Since then Con-
gress has declined to authorize the sea-
way. So the New York State Power
Authority’s application is again before
the commission.
The basic question is whether the
consumers of electric power in New
York state should be saddled with the ~
extra $50,000,000 in capital costs which
must be borne by the power project if
it is constructed separately. There is
also the danger that all the power gen-
erated in the project will be turned over
to the utilities at the bus bar if Con-
gressional jurisdiction over the market-
ing of power is eliminated—as it will
be if the license is granted and Canada
undertakes the seaway alone.
The commission has five members.
Legally at least three of these may be of
the majority party. Commissioner Bu-
chanan’s term expired recently, and be-
‘fore leaving office President Truman
new, ;
Pg ae Gia ons en
‘ a: a nee en i
sent in his renomination. This has not
yet been acted on and may conceivably —
meet the fate of Commissioner Carson's
renomination to the Federal Trade
Commission. Another Democrat is
Harry Wimberley, whose term expires
in June. A third is Dale Doty, former
Assistant Secretary of the Interior under
Oscar Chapman, whose term runs until
1954. Other members are Nelson Lee
Smith, a highly conservative independ-
ent, and Claude Draper, who is be-
lieved to be the only authentic Hoover _
appointee still in office.
The probable outcome of -this situa-
tion is fairly clear: two new appoint-
ments will be made which will leave
Commissioner Doty as the lone liberal.
Without any sensational turnover the
commission will be completely recast.
>
LAND FOR THE MANY
Guatemala Story .. by Luss Ge y Aragon
ue Guatemala City
GUATEMALA has had a democratic
government since October, 1944. The
present President, Colonel Jacobo
Arbenz, elected for the period 1951-57,
succeeded the first freely elected Presi-
dent, Dr. Juan José Arevalo (1945-51).
Though all kinds of slanderous accusa-
tions about the government are circu-
lated by the news agencies, Guatemala
is undoubtedly one of the few free
countries of Latin America today. And
for the first time in its history it is
enjoying the benefits of social security,
labor legislation, planned education
drives, and, since June 17, 1952, agra-
rian reform.
If enactment of the labor and social-
security legislation met with many
obstacles, the opposition to an agrarian-
reform law that strikes effectively at
feudal ownership and capitalist exploita-
tion of land can be imagined. The big
landowners, the clerical and conserva-
tive elements in the country, and
the business interests—especially the
LUIS CARDOZA Y ARAGON is the
editor of the Revista de Guatemala.
224
oS.
President Arbenz
United Fruit Company—are doing
everything in their power to block im-
plementation of the law and to over-
throw the regime that sponsored it.
Ignoring the situation described in an .
official U. N. publication on the urgent
need of land reform in Guatemala,
they object even to Article 2, which
says: “All forms of slavery and serf-
dom are herewith abolished. Unpaid
personal services of peasants, squatters,
and agricultural workers, as well as the
payment of land rent by labor services
and the assignnient of Indians to landed
property sold or rented, are therefore
prohibited in any form whatsoever.”
Of the 1,092,794 farm laborers in
Guatemala, 894,872 earned in 1949
from 14 to 40 centavos a day (the
Guatemalan centavo is worth approxi-
mately one cent); 126,335 earned from
40 to 60 centavos; 21,056, from 60 to
80 centavos; and 10,527, largely those .
who worked in unhealthy regions, over
80 centavos. In 1944, in the days of the
dictator Ubico, the daily wage in large
parts of the country was but 5 centavos. =
These are official figures, published in
1950.
Farm laborers form about a third of
the total population of 3,000,000. More
than 20 per cent of them ate children
under fourteen; more than 22 per cent
are women. The great majority are illit-
erate and are exploited as ruthlessly as
is the land they work. Dr. Antonio
Goubaud, a graduate in social sciences
of the University of Chicago, made a
study of the weekly consumption of
food by farm workers in twelve villages
and found that it amounted to some-
; _ The Nation’
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oa
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ee,
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_ wrt , : ,
‘thing over one pound of beans per
person, one-fifth of a liter of milk, and
half an egg. Not surprisingly, members
of the powerful landowners’ association
advocate the preservation of rural illiter-
acy on the “patriotic” ground that edu-
cation would cause a mass exodus from
the land. These features of the feudal
social system which has persisted in
Guatemala since colonial days are now
finally being changed by legal and con-
stitutional methods.
Large properties which have Jain un-
cultivated for many years are being
distributed to the peasants. The former
owners are being compensated in agra-
rian bonds, fully guaranteed by the
state, paying 3 per cent interest, and
redeemable over a maximum period of
twenty-five years through the Bank of
Guatemala. To provide credit for the
new owners, an Agricultural Credit
Bank is being set up, based on the ex-
perience of other countries in such
matters.
THE LAND QUESTION is at the
root of Guaiemala’s perennial misery.
According to the agricultural census of
1950, the smal] owners—those owning
PP agers | eee y ae
4 *
*
less than five manzanas (a manzana is
about 1.1 acres)—form 76 per cent of
the total number of landholders but
own only 10 per cent of the arable land.
The big owners—those owning more
than one caballeria (sixty-four man-
zanas)—form 2.2 per cent of the total
number and own 70 per cent of the
arable land. The medium owners, 22
per cent of the total, share the remain-
ing 20 per cent of the land. To cite the
two extremes, 22 big landholders, with
more than 200 caballerias apiece, own
714,000 manzanas, or 13.6 per cent of
all the arable land, while 259,169 small
holders own a total of 468,138 man-
zanas, less than 2 apiece. Nor is this
all; the latter rent 107,391 manzanas of
their miserable share to other peasants
who are even poorer than they.
In some parts of the country the
landlords have refused to hand over
their properties in accordance with the
law of January, 1952, and small groups
of peasants, driven by hunger for land
and food, have taken matters into their
own hands. But on the whole the reform
has been carried out peacefully, as Presi-
dent Arbenz guaranteed in his campaign
speeches. The peasants are sowing their
new fields with corn and beans—the
two traditional foods—and are waiting
for the rainy season.
Nothing in the agrarian law, or in
the other reform laws passed by Guate-
mala’s last two governments, could by
the widest stretch of tHe imagination be
called communistic. The news agencies,
however, have spread the charge and
have distorted the facts to suit their
purpose. During the minor land riots
of February, 1952, they asserted that
rivers of blood were flowing and that a
government censorship prevented them
from reporting the full truth. Actually
one person was killed, and there was
no censorship. The opposition to the
reform is organized as a Committee for
the Defense of the Constitution, but it
is much less concerned with defending
the constitution than with guarding the
wealth of the landed proprietors. In
addition to the landlords it includes
clericals and the beneficiaries of the
fascism sponsored by Ubico’s dictator-
ship.
Order reigns in Guatemala, and the
democratic forces are making progress
in their struggle against feudal con-
ditions.
WILL CANADA GO RIGHT?
A Ballot Test Is Near. . by Keith Hutchison
THE full term of a Canadian Parlia-
ment extends to five years, but the Prime
Minister may seek a dissolution at any
time within that period if his govern-
ment loses the confidence of the House
of Commons or if he decides that it is
good political strategy to ask for a new
mandate. Thus although the present
Liberal administration of Louis St.
Laurent, which has a safe majority,
could constitutionally stay in office until
the middle of 1954, it is generally ex-
- pected to “go to the country’ in the
present year. eS
This expectation was immensely
KEITH HUTCHISON, a contributing
editor of The Nation, has recently spent
some months in Canada.
sf &
March 14, 1953 _
heightened on February 19 when Finance
Minister Abbott presented a budget
with “something for everybody.’ In a
report on the financiai and economic
condition of the country that sounded
like the opening gun of a political cam-
paign the Minister cited figures showing
that in 1952 Canada had once again
reached new heights of production, em-
ployment, and trade. Moreover, his faith
that the present year would see still
greater prosperity was backed by an an-
nouncement of widespread tax cuts.
Jubilant Liberal back-benchers, whose
spirits in recent month:s have been de-
pressed by a series of Detense Depart-
ment scandals undermining the govern-
ment’s prestige, cheered Abbott to the
echo. It was, they said, “a sweetheart of
a budget.’” Members of the Progressive
Conservative opposition were glum.
Their spokesman, J. H. Macdonnell, ac-
cused the government of cutting taxes
“too little and too late,” but he evidently
feared the effect of the budget on the
voters. Representatives of all parties
agreed that there was now little doubt
about an early election. It might come
as soon as May, but political com-
mentators in the Canadian press think.
that August is more likely.
Canadians, who follow United States
politics with far closer attention than
Americans give to Canadian affairs, are
wondering whether the election, when-
ever it comes, will be featured by as pow-
erful a swing to the right as appeared
here last October. For the Canadian Lib-
225
3%
eral Party, while anything but “left,” has
- gome similarity to the Democratic Party.
It too contains many diverse elements,
ranging from the stoutly conservative to
the mildly radical, held together by
Prime Minister St. Laurent
astute political management. And while
far more tender of business feelings
than either Roosevelt or Truman, the
Liberal administrations that have ruled
at Ottawa continuously since 1935 have
successfully checked the growth of the
socialist Cooperative Commonwealth
Federation (C. C. F.) by borrowing
freely —though without acknowledg-
ments—from its program of. social re-
form.
In following this middle-of-the-road
course the Canadian Liberals have man-
aged to preserve a more united front
than the Democrats south of the border.
In many ways their position still seems
extremely strong. At the last general
election, in June, 1949, their party won
a sweeping victory, carrying no fewer
than 185 of the 262 seats in the House
of Commons, and despite some subse-
quent losses at by-elections it still has
a majority of about 100 over its com-
bined opponents. A mere swing of the
pendulum will hardly shatter so large
a margin. That will require practically
a political earthquake.
Like the Democrats here, the Cana-
dian Liberals are in a position to use
the slogan “You never had it so good,”
though they would probably express the
idea in less blatant and more grammat-
ical language. For Canada is enjoying
a boom based not so much on defense
expenditure as on the rapid development
of the country’s immense raw-material
resources. Barring a sudden recession in
226
the United States that would lessen the
demand for Canadian products, there is
no reason to anticipate any decline in
prosperity in the near future. Very little
unemployment exists, and thanks to the
governments effective anti-inflationary
measures, mostly of an indirect kind,
living costs have been stabilized.
It may be that, as in this country,
“‘prosperity’’ is losing its electoral po-
tency partly because am increasing prd-
portion of the voters are too young to
have experienced real depression. That
is the hope of the largest of the Cana-
dian opposition parties, the Progressive
Conservatives, which, borrowing from
the Republican armory, is plugging the
theme “‘time for a change.’’ It is doybt-
ful, however, whether Canadians will
consider the replacement of a Liberal
Cabinet by a Conservative one enough
of a change to get excited about. For the
Conservatives have no glamorous father-
figure to offer the nation: their leader,
George Drew, is no Eisenhower, nor
even a Taft. Nor have they a dynamic
program. Their most distinctive. policy
—upward revision of tariffs to promote
more rapid industrialization—will hard-
ly attract much support as long as
Canada remains prosperous.
A more hopeful issue, for the Con-
servatives, is the negative one of govern-
ment extravagance. This can be linked
to recent scandals, involving pay-roll
padding and thefts from military camps,
in handling which the government has
shown a very poor sense of_public re-
lations. The graft involved appears to
have been of a fairly petty nature, but
its existence has intensified public. re-
sentment at high taxes.
How far the new budget will soften
this resentment remains to be seen. Mr.
Abbott seems to have distributed his
bounty shrewdly. If the 11 per cent re-
duction in the income tax has little im-
portance for a large number of wage-
earners, the 4 cent cut in the cigarette
tax means worth-while savings to mil-
lions. The middle classes have been
catered to through more generous pro-
vision for deductions from taxable in-
come and abolition of a number of
nuisance taxes, such as the three-cent
stamp on checks. Lower corporation
taxes gladden the hearts of business, and
the press would have been made happy
by repeal of the excise tax on newsprint,
if the paper companies had not annexed
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the benefit by He equivalent pric
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— ame
Finally, this easing of fiscal burdens —
ve st
se- in--
has been made possible, not by unpopu- —
lar cuts in social benefits or by unbalanc-
ing the budget, but by an expansion in
national income sufficient to provide a
greater yield from lower tax rates. Here,
Mr. Abbott can say, is proof both of the
Liberal administration’s prudent man-
agement and the fruitful energy of the
population.
SO FAR I have emphasized the strong
points of the Liberal Party’s position. It
is now time to review its less favorable
aspects and particularly the rather bleak
picture revealed by the elections for lo-
cal legislatures held in five of Canada’s
ten provinces last year. Only one of
these contests, that in Quebec, offered
much comfort to the Liberals. There
they increased their percentage of the
popular vote from 36 to 40, and gained
fifteen seats, giving them twenty-three
representatives out of a total of ninety-
two. This disparity between votes polled
and members returned is due to the fact
that Liberal strength is in the cities and
towns, while Premier Duplessis’ reac-
tionary Union Nationale, which has long
dominated -local politics in Quebec, re-
tains its grip on the grossly overrepre-
sented rural districts. . ‘
The interesting thing about this Que-
bec election was that the provincial
Liberal Party, under a new leader, |
George Lapalme, adopted a program of
economic and social reforms and made
a successful bid for the votes of organ-
ized labor. The response of the workers
reflected their growing class conscious-
ness in the face of Duplessis’ implacable
hostility to trade unionism. Several
- leaders of Catholic unions ran as Liberal
candidates, and the Canadian Confed-
eration of Catholic Workers, although
officially neutral, actually used its influ-
ence to rally support to the Liberals.
This was a significant development in
view of the rapid industrial growth
of Quebec, and since the province has
- always been staunchly Liberal in federal
elections, it provided the Ottawa ad-
ministration with one hopeful augury.
Now contrast what happened in Que-
bec in July with events in New Bruns-
wick two months later. In that province
the Liberals, after ruling fot seventeen
years, were swept out of office by an
{> ”
eo ION
ne
from forty. seven to sixteen cat
, 4 ‘raised those of the victorious Progressive
prs “Conservatives from five to thirty-six. The
- major issue of the election, according
to the former Liberal Premier, John B.
McNair—and this~illustrates the odd
diversities of Canadian liberalism—was
whether an international union should
be recognized as bargaining agent for
employees of the public-power commis-
sion. No doubt McNair calculated that
his anti-labor stand would be popular
among the innately conservative farmers,
fishermen, and lumbermen of New
Brunswick. But the opposition raised a
still more popular issue—government
extravagance and high taxes, indudiig a
4 per cent sales tax imposed in 1950—
and the voters decided that, locally at
any rate, it was time for a change.
Back in June an even more dramatic
overturn occurred three thousand miles
to the west, in British Columbia, There
too the Liberals had long been domi-
nant. In 1949 they had won twenty-six
of the forty-eight places in the Legisla-
tive Assembly but had consented to share
power with the Progressive Conserva-
tives the better to fight the Cooperative
Commonwealth Federation, which had
obtained 36 per cent of the popular vote
but. only 16 per cent of the seats. In
_ pursuit of this aim the coalition enacted
a new electoral system, a weird com-
pound of proportional -representation
and the multiple-alternative vote. It
would, ‘they reckoned, enable Liberals
and Conservatives to give each other
their second votes and so keep the so-
cialist C. C. F. permanently in the cold.
Things did not work out that way on
~*~ -June 12. First, the Liberal and Con-
servative partners had a falling out be-
fore the campaign Started. Then two
Conservatives members—W. A. C. Ben-
nett, who had scuglit unsuccessfully the
leadership of his party, and Mrs. Tilly
- Rolston—-went over to the fledgling
Social Credit Party, which, inspired by
_ the successes of its parent group in
Alberta and aided with Alberta funds
and speakers, decided to nominate a full
roster of candidates. The arrogance and
inefficiency of the old government had
created widespread discontent in the
province, and many independent voters
_-who feared the C. C. F. as “too left”
oom their disgust with Liberals and
ervatives s_ by voting Social Credit.
erprise policies and
the record of the Alberta government,
the new group also. became the second
choice of many Conservatives. At the
same time, because its theory is given
a radical flavor by its criticism of ortho-
dox banking and its “funny money”
ideas, Social Credit earned second ‘choice
votes from some C. C. F. members.
Finally, the Social Creditors, whose slo-
gan is “Christian government” and who
open meetings with hymns and prayers,
made a strong appeal to the evangelical
sects that abound in British Columbia.
When the votes were counted, the
Social Credit Party, which had no mem-
bers in the previous assembly, emerged
with nineteen, and the C. C..F., although
it polled a larger popular vote, had one
less. Both traditional parties were shat-
tered, with the Liberals reduced from
twenty-six to six and the Progressive
Conservatives from thirteen to four. All
they could do was to give tentative sup-
port to the Social Credit government
formed under the leadership of Mr.
Bennett, whose switch of allegiance
proved so opportune. For while the
Liberals and Conservatives sneer at the
“Socred” parvenus they do not fear them
as they do the radical C. C. F.
THE LOSS of British Columbia left the
Liberals in control in only one of the
four Western provinces—Manitoba. In
Alberta last summer the Social Creditors
renewed the lease of power that they
have held continuously since 1935 by
returning fifty-two of the sixty-one mem-
bers of the legislature. Putting their
peculiar monetary theories into cold
storage, they have provided the province
with honest and efficient if orthodox
government. Most Albertans, busy en-
joying their oil boom, are satisfied.
In Saskatchewan the C. C. F., under
the leadership of the able and popular
Tom Douglas, appears to be almost as
strongly intrenched as the Social Credit
Party is in Alberta. Since 1944, when it
first secured a majority, it has cleaned
up the administration of the province,
strengthened its finances, and introduced
important social reforms, including a
model hospitalization plan. It thas also
rapidly expanded publicly owned utili-
ties, promoted resource development,
and organized a government insurance
office that provides the cheapest coverage
against automobile accidents to be found
5 ON "4 od Read
in North America. In the 1948 elections
the C. C. F. lost a little ground, but last
June it came back stronger than ever,
winning forty-two of the fifty-three seats
in the legislative assembly, while the
Liberals sank from nineteen to eleven.
The “Socreds,’’ who have made repeated
attempts to gain a toe hold in Saskatche-
wan, also ran: not one of their twenty-
four candidates was successful, and their
total vote was less than half what it was
in 1948.
The only consolation for the Liberal
Party, as it reflects on recent political
events in the West, is that Canadians
do not necessarily vote nationally for
the parties they support locally. Thus in
1949 the C. C. F. sent only five men to
Ottawa from Saskatchewan compared to
the Liberals’ fourteen. In Alberta the
Liberals won four seats out of a total
of fifteen, and in British Columbia, ten
out of sixteen. It is doubtful that they
will do nearly as well in the coming
general election.
In his recently published life of Mac-
Kenzie King, who led the Canadian
Liberals for so many years, Bruce
Hutchison, the well-known Canadian
journalist, declares that his hero ‘‘made
Canada almost a one-party nation with
three splinters of opposition.’’ But in a
democratic state one party cannot per-
petuate its rule, and eventually the
Canadian voters will turn and rend the
Liberals. Then the country may well find
itself with four splinter parties, none
strong enough to form a government.
That may not happen in 1953, but Pro-
gressive Conservative gains in Ontario
and the Maritime Provinces and C. C, F.
and Social Credit victories in the West
will bring that dangerous situation per-
ceptibly closer unless the Liberal Party
shakes off the complacency engendered
by prolonged power and finds means to
revitalize itself.
\
227
——
.
RUTGERS: A WARNING
by Broadus Mitchell
Lessons of a Lost Fight
THE battle for academic freedom in
Rutgers University, as a majority of
the faculty fought it, has been bost to
the trustees. Two professors were dis-
missed last December for refusal to
answer the questions of a Senate sub-
committee concerning their possible
connection with the Communist Party.
This was done although both had been
exculpated by a regularly appointed
faculty committee of
Later the majority of the faculty voted
to uphold the faculty committee's find-
ings and urged the trustees to recon-
sider. Their petition was supported by a
brief submitted by an emergency faculty
committee, condemning the dismissals
on both procedural and substantive
grounds. A deputation of professors
from this group appeared before the
trustees with oral argument. The trustees
reaffirmed the dismissals.
The scene of the Rutgers engage-
ment, where two were killed and many
were wounded, will be tidied up. The
trustees voted dismissal pay; the presi-
dent issued a long statement justifying
the action taken. A month or so hence
the trustees will clarify their brief order
with verbal changes. To outward look
the field will. again be tilled by teachers
and students. The cleavage in the uni-
versity community will not be closed
for a considerable period.
The Rutgers conflict yields lessons
that may well be applied as the war
against the colleges moves to more
campuses. No institution will be im-
mune in the spreading purge. The Uni-
versity of Washington, the University
of California, and the New York mu-
nicipal colleges, which suffered previ-
ously, are public institutions. Rutgers,
though designated as the state university
of New Jersey, in law and in fact retains
investigation.
BROADUS MITCHELL is professor
of economics at Rutgers University and
a member of the Academic Freedom
Committee of the American Civil Liber-
ties Union.
228
much of its ancient—colonial—private
character. New York University, whol-
ly private and also old, has a similar
trial pending, and other schools large
and small are marked for attack.
THE FIRST recommendation stemming
from the Rutgers defeat is to keep the
issue clear. Variations will occur, but
what is proscribed is the right of dis-
sent, or independence of thought. Toler-
ance of Communists or of those charged
with communism in some degree has
become the test of attachment to educa-
tional integrity. To a growing number
of persons in the general public as well
as in official bodies it is paradoxical that
lovers of liberty should defend men
who are so generally taken to be ene-
mies of intellectual honesty. Commu-
nists, they say, if in power in this coun-
try, would make civil libertarians their
first target—literally. The Communist
Party is not a political persuasion but a
criminal conspiracy, and it belongs with
the “lesser breeds without the law.”
The party and its penumbra contain
mere plotters, etc., etc. Suppose this to
be true; we must still reflect that it is
only pernicious minorities which require
protection. Objectors become more in-
credulous when they are admonished
that Communists and their kind must be
allowed for our safety.
Nothing is plainer in the present as-
sault on the colleges and schools than
the necessity of preserving the rights of
everybody. If a teacher or scholar is
demonstrably incompetent, biased to
the point where his students cannot
learn from him, is. proved guilty of
criminal acts, or offends against common
decency and morals, these are grounds
for discharge. But beliefs and associa-
tions, however stigmatized, must be
given asylum. Once Communists are ex-
cluded, academic freedom is progres-
sively destroyed. After the first tear the
rending of the fabric becomes easier
and easier. .
At Rutgers University neither of the
men dismissed was charged with being
guilty of any professional lapse. On the
contrary, trustees, administrators, and
faculty bore witness to their excellent
academic" service. That has generally—
one may say universally—been true in
these cases, and it should be driven
home to the profound discomfort of
their attackers. The president of Rut-
gets began by raising the cry of ‘‘Coni-
munist.’’ This was his view halloo
when the coverts were drawn by the
Senate subcommittee. This suspicion
evidently bulked large in his interroga-
tion of the first of the accused to be
brought to notice, for at that interview
the man signed.a statement that he had
never been a Communist or under Com-
munist aegis.
THE FACULTY committee, with doubt-
ful wisdom, asked this professor whether
“information obtained by the university
administration” substantiated his Com-
munist connections. The trustee chosen
to explain the board’s action to the fac-
ulty showed that he was similarly intlu-
enced. But the taking of that position,
in the absence of charges of campus
misconduct, laid president and trustees
open to the accusation that they assailed
freedom of belief and association. They
promptly shifted to a new stance. Doubt
was cast on the fitness of the men to
remain on the faculty by their refusal to
respond to questions of an authorized
investigating body. Of course what the
Senate subcommitice asked was, “Have
you ever been a Conimunist?” Also it
was awkward for their university prose-
cutors that in invoking the Fifth
Amendment the professors had been
upheld by the subcommittee, which, its
counsel said, had made no provision for
hearing the men again.
But that did not balk their accusers.
There is room for argument, they de-
clared, about the implications of resort
to the Fifth Amendment. Is the amend-
ment for the protection of the innocent,
in thought or deed, or is it an unworthy
The Nation
may a its use is a constitutional
2¢ by the faculty committee. The re-
port of this committee, unanimously
the utility of trustees passing on the fit-
ness of faculty members where there is
> privilege. But that did not long dis- recommending that no action be taken no charge of professional incompetesice
quiet the accused professors’ enemies: by the trustees, was completed more or of lawbreaking.
_ If a faculty member refuses to tell than a week before the board refused to Thirdly, it should be explained to the
_ @ proper investigatory body whether be guided by it, but the report was not, institution’s constituency, as far as
: or not he, has ever been a Communist in this interval, released to the faculty. means permit, that it is important to
and pleads possible self-incrimination,
he “impairs confidence in his fitness to
teach.” He offends “the standards re-
quired of him as a member of his pro-
fession,’” and has given “cause for .
immediate dismissal.”
Here is an area for infinite dispute on
legalisms, extra-mural behavior of
teachers, and institutional public rela-
tions. Plenty of cover is afforded fog
trustees who «use swift and arbitrary
authority. Once they have retreated to
this swampland they can scarcely be
brought back to the firm terrain where
freedom of thought may be tested.
THE SECOND recommendation is to
begin now to educate administrative
officers and trustees. At Rutgers the
principal administrators were either hos-
tile to the view held by the majority of
the faculty or remained silent. The
trustees were unanimously against the
faculty committee’s report. Their deci-
sion to dismiss the professors was so_
curt, in contrast to the reasoned conclu-
sion of the faculty investigators, that
later, in response to criticism of the in-
articulate board, the president wrote on
the trustees’ behalf a long paper which
may or may not improve their reputa--
tion with the faculty. It is rare to find
a president or dean who will side with
the faculty against trustees on an issue
of academic freedom. Was it superior
wisdom that brought these officers to
their posts, or a splendid forbearance,
or did the trustees satisfy themselves of
Perhaps the educative value of in-
formed campus debate, before the
trustees decided, would have compen-
sated for any demerit in mobilizing
sentiment.
If the tenets of academic freedom
could not be sufficiently conveyed to the
authorities, an acceptable procedure of
investigation, perfectly well known and
long since agreed to, could have been
adopted. Instead, no specific charges
were preferred; and there was no true
hearing where the men could face their
accusers. This loose, vague mode was in
sharp contrast to the severe ruling of the
trustees that followed. The whole pain-
ful spectacle provoked the question of
preserve freedom to learn, teach, find
new knowledge, speak, and publish. No
community, small or large, can long
have cause for pride in a monitored and
therefore frightened faculty. The best
agents for informing the public are the
president and trustees. They are the
designated representatives of the uni- °
versity or college, and by definition ‘are
responsible figures. If these authorities
of Rutgers had taught the university's
public instead of falling in with popu-
lar apprehensions, the lesson might
have carried far in America.
Though harm has been done it is not
too late for another great university to
perform this distinguished service.
The Mourning Dove
In a low branch I saw a mourning dove
Sitting motionless upon a flimsy nest
Of twigs and leaf stems loose-woven, uncemented:
The bird had turned to alabaster subtly tinted,
But could not still the ticking in its breast.
And then one day two tagged ruffled fledglings
Peeped from underneath that polished elegance.
The bird mother perched there, the small reptilian head
Fixed, immovable, each eye a topaz bead
That watched and did not waver from my glance.
In the night a wind arose. The next morning found
The nest blown down, a mere unraveled litter,
Twig and leaf stem scattered across the ground.
a coincidence of views on critical ques- Something had been at it: the jewel glitter i
tions before making their selections? In Of excrement was there, but the fledglings were gone.
~ the instance of Rutgers it was hard for
this writer to escape the conviction that The bird mother roosted where the nest had been,
& prlininisteators and trustees were too With only those heartbeats to tick the time: }
little acquainted with the issues atthe Whether it was Instinct, or some Master Plan,
~ history of their appearance and treat- Or simply a body itch yet unsatisfied, f
‘ment elsewhere. The president labored, The bird had frozen in mournful pantomime. .
later, to show that the trustees i not
F acted in haste or hysteria. I gazed at that rare shape and each painted spot;
, The president at first agreed to reall: a While, dupe of instinct, victim of itch, or emblem of grief,
ei meeting of the whole faculty to discuss The dove gazed back, an object carved.
- the: cases, then withdrew his assent be- We gazed and gazed, till I forgot
cause age ought not to be applied Which was observer, and which observed.
en ae the accused were being investi- SAMUEL YELLEN
#
ne “ b £ : i
A 1: , 1953 229°. i
BOOKS
The End of Something
A Review by Maxnell Geismar
AMERICA AND THE: INTELLEC-
TUALS. PR Series, No. 4. Partisan
Review. $1. DISCOVERY NO. 1.
Edited by John W. Aldridge and
Vance Bourjaily. Pocket Books. 35
cents. NEW WORLD WRITING.
Second Mentor Selection. New Amer-
ican Library. 50 cents. NEW DIREC-
TIONS IN PROSE AND POETRY.
XIV. New Directions. $5. THE
LITTLE REVIEW ANTHOLOGY.
Edited by Margaret Anderson. Her-
mitage House. $3.95. —
HE big news is that the Partisan
Review has discovered America. In
the symposium above, twenty-five intel-
lectuals have discussed such propositions
as (1) Does the American artist no
longer feel disinherited from his so-
ciety? (2) Is European culture finished,
and has the United States become “the
protector of Western civilization, at -
least in a military and economic sense’?
(3) How can we maintain a tradition
of “critical non-conformism’ against
the standards and values of the masses?
I have summarized the general sense
of the discussion, to be sure, and not the
specific questions which were asked. To
their credit, the best essays in the sym-
posium have either rejected or qualified
what seems to be, on the part gf the
Partisan Review editors, a false view of
both American art and American cul-
ture. Newton Arvin, for instance, clari-
fies some of these issues in terms of our
literary past. Louise Bogan suggests
that our art and thought must become
“awkward” once more—a fine idea—
and that virtuosity is particularly useless ~
at present. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
points out that it is fashionable today
MAXWELL GEISMAR is the author
of “Writers in Crisis” and “The Last of
the Provincials.’” The third volume in
this series of literary studies, ‘Rebels
and Ancestors,” will be published in
the fall of 1953.
230
2
among ex-liberal intellectuals “to forget
the extraordinary revival of confidence
and recovery of nerve which the New
Deal produced in this country.” Other
writers in the group, such as Irving
Howe, have the courage to describe the
dangers of a ‘‘frozen anti-Stalinism’”—
which is almost the underground motif
of the symposium—and to stress the
obvious fact that the Communist threat
is fo and not /m the United States.
But the old voices are still here, in-
cluding the outrageous James Burnham,
who while he has nothing but contempt
for most phases of our society, has ap-
parently assumed sole responsibility for
its survival. The real issues of American
life today, and of American art, are far
away indeed from the abstractions over
which the typical Partisan Review intel-
lectual torments his spirit—or at least
his pen. It is another world when we
turn from what the intellectuals say
about American writing to what the
writers are saying about themselves.
“Discovery,” the first of the antholo-
gies of new writing to be considered
here, is also the most conservative in
approach. There are no new writ-
ers of consequence in the collection, but
the level of the material is pleasantly
high. Nor are there any of the trade-
marks of the arty anthology, except per-
haps in Kenneth Fearing’s “happy’’ so-
lution for the machine-age personality
—to wit, a series of chromium limbs
and organs, tooled with the perfection
of costume jewelry, to replace those of
defective biology. This is a rather grue-
some comedy of sophistication, or muti-
lation. Norman Mailer has a good war
story. Hortense Calisher has a subtle
and sensitive tragi-comedy, beautifully
handled, of the wives and husbands who
in the midst of life endure the slow an-
nihilation of psychoanalytic therapy.
What brings this anthology into focus,
and makes it well worth reading, is
William Styron’s- novella, “The Long
March.” This author’s first work since
his novel, ‘““Lie Down in Darkness,” it
is the desperate narrative of a group of
marine reserves, heroes of another war,
who are called back to active duty. What
makes Styron so good? All I can say is
that he is an original—a natural—a
writer who makes us enjoy the art of
writing again. The second Mentor selec-
tion of “New World Writing” has noth-
ing in it so fine as this story. But one
~must also pay respect to this anthology ~
as the originator of the whole idea that
the little magazine could be revived for
just that “mass culture” which Ortega y
Gasset viewed only in terms of shakes
and horrors.
I am still old-fashioned enough to be-
lieve that the Mass Man—who is after
all another abstraction to replace the
Economic Man of late nineteenth-
century thought—is less reprehensible
than those who mislead or corrupt him
for their own advantage; that he is still
capable, in his normal guise, of progress,
maturity, flights of glory. In the present
case, at least, he is to be found reading
such authors as James Jones, Pablo
Picasso, John Lehman, W. H. Auden,
Jean Genet, in the hundreds of thou-
sands of copies. As this list of authors
suggests, “New World Writing” is
“larger in scope than “Discovery,” bal-
anced equally between European and
American writing, and more experimen-
tal or “‘advanced”’ in tone.
Among the native talents I should
mention Osborn Duke, the band player,
whose work has something unusual.
There is a great sense of exuberance and
hilarity in his tale of two jazz musicians
and a colored singer trapped in the
depths of the South. This is real, the
way*things are, and one can compare it
with Dylan Thomas’s literary version of
the same emotions in another story_in
this collection. On the far left of the lit-
erary spectrum, too, the fourteenth edi-
tion of the New Directions Annuals,
by now an established landmark in the
contemporary scene, leans even more
heavily on Europeam writing. The best
things seem to date back to the experi-
‘mental period of the early 1900's.
The tone is sometimes positively an-
tigue. André Gide’s “Voyage d’Urien,”
published in English for the first time,
was written in 1893 as a document of
the Symbolist movement. The study of
Hermann Hesse by Oskar Seidlin deals _
with a literary figure who, like Thomas *—
E
P
;
|
i
OR non Oe ae
nn, reflects the ‘cultural flowering of
the late nineteenth century. The psycho-
analytical interpretation of Heinrich
Hoffmann’s -‘Struwwelpeter” by Ru-
dolph Friedmann—an essay which I
thought was some kind of mad satire but
which turned out to be deadly serious—
deals with the mass castration of Vic-
torian children. But all these articles are
of value in the literary record, even if
they cannot serve as new directions for
the middle of the twentieth century.
There is a curious parallel between
Mr. Laughlin’s Annuals and the Little
Review, which also began in 1914 as an
instrument to aid native talent, and
which ended in 1929 as an official
organ of the European masters. In
Margaret Anderson’s survey of the mag-
azine’s career, as well as in the con-
tributions that she has brought together
‘in her present volume, “The Little
great period of literary achievement. It
throws a final and ironic illumination on
the other anthologies of contemporary
writing I have mentioned here.
For there is no doubt that the efflores-
cence of the 1920’s was a climax of the
literary revival that, both in Eufope and
America, opened in the decade of the
1890's. Reading over the Partisan Re-
view symposium in this light, one almost
feels that its contributors have,
step, moved from the salons of Henry
James to the extermination camps of
Hitler and Stalin. Our younger writers
too are working in the shadow of a cul-
tural tradition that has closed, and a
revolutionary epoch whose shape trem-
bles and changes from day to day.
Somewhere at the -center of this
chaos, I think, lies the matrix of a new
literature. If theré is one.
in one
New Books in Brief
Violence and Wietues:
A GOOD MAN. By Jefferson Young.
The Bobbs- Merrill Company. $3. An
- interesting first novel by a new writer of
talent. The story deals with the life of
a Mississippi Negro who is everything
that the white folks want—sober, hard-
working, faithful, loyal. Because he as-
Pires to ewn a respectable white house,
however, which no Negro farmer in the
town has ever had, the white community
is aroused. Threat of violence surrounds
the tale of simple virtue. The delicate,
often beautiful prose rhythms catch the
dialect of Southern whites and blacks
__ alike, while the story is simplified to the
level of fable, and the emotions are
~ nicely muted. The central portrait of “a
~,
- good man” is a difficult feat technically,
- whatever the color of virtue’s skin. At
_, the end Mr. Young, like many another
ae
_ aspiring moralist, is forced to lean upon
artifice and sentiment in order to make
human sweetness credible. But the sur-
7 - prising thing is that he almost does.
Sorrows of the Different
_ A DOG'S HEAD. By Jean Dutourd.
Translated by Robin Chancellor. Simon
aa $3. An extravagant but at
illian somos on the ee
of being different ia this most con-
formist of all possible worlds. The hero,
Edmund Du Chaillu, has the singular
curse of having been born with a dog’s
head. As he observes more than once,
had it at least been a bulldog’s, it might
have advanced him in politics, but intel-
ligence and gentleness mark his spaniel’s
countenance; it is the face of a meek
dog. Every cruelty meted out to the
distinctly different in religion, color,
or sex is compounded in the case of
Edmond. Jean Dutourd manages never
to make his hero credible, yet to make
the litany of his sufferings naggingly
real, the perfect tour de force for his
satire of the middle-class world and its
ambitions. A short, pungent, and irritat-
ing book which embodies the first
jabbingly apposite social comment since
“Animal Farm.”
Biography of Michelangelo
MICHELANGELO: HIS LIFE AND
HIS ERA, By Giovanni Papini. Trans-
lated from the Italian by Loretta Mur-
_ mane. Dutton. $10. Of this flowery and
ambitious biography by the author of the
once popular ‘Life of Christ’’ it must
be said that its length is greater than
its merit, and its pretensions greater
than its length.
Review Anthology” "has the flavor of a
At the Poet’s Shoulder
ROBERT BROWNING. A_ POR-
TRAIT. By Betty Miller. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $5. The man who
emerges from this biography of Brown-
ing seems to be an unpleasant intruder
between the poet and his readers. With
the aid of many personal documents
and some important unpublished letters
Miss Miller discreetly elaborates the in-
sinuation that Browning was the psycho-
logical victim of. a strong-minded
mother, and suggests that his pursuit of
Elizabeth Barrett was an unsuccessful
attempt to have himself takenin charge
by a dominant, guiding personality. If
this were true, it would be necessary
to explain how this dependent and
uxorious creature could be the author
of poems displaying a virile and confi-
dent craftsmanship. But Miss Miller is
far less concerned with Browning's
poetry than with the intimate details of
his life, and her account often gives the
reader the experience of standing at the
poet's shoulder in many moments of his
youth, courtship, and marriage and
breathing the air of Wimpole Street and
Casa Guidi.
This vivid novelistic real-
A practical, hard-hitting
analysis of.the West’s
past, present and future
role in East Asia
NATIONALISM
& COMMUNISM
IN EAST ASIA
by W. Macmahon Ball
Here are facts about —
JAPAN, THAILAND, CHINA,
BurMA, Korea, Mataya,
INDo-Cuina, INDONESIA,
THE PHILIPPINES, INDIA.
The author is an Australian who
has been an on-the-scene observ-
er since 1940. His book is a re-
flection of his observation and
study —one that will stimulate
thought about this area of change
and turmoil.
At your booksellers — $4.50
published by
Melbourne University Press
handled in U. S, A, by
Cambridge University Press
ism is supported by a number of hand-
some photographs and a thorough
knowledge, almost photographic itself,
of the scenes and times in which
Browning moved.
Lincoln’s Wife
MARY LINCOLN, BIOGRAPHY OF
A MARRIAGE. By Ruth Painter Ran-
dall. Little, Brown. $5.75. It is obvious
that this truly tragic figure in American
history has the author's deep sympathy.
Some may say that she attributes too
many of Mrs. Lincoln’s faults and frail-
ties to her irrationality. If so, here is
where the basic integrity of the work
shines brightest. Faithfully the author
sets all the facts down—many of them
discovered by her and hitherto unpub-
lished. Thus the reader is able to form
his own judgment as to whether, in a
particular circumstance, Mary was men-
tally deranged or a vain, selfish, un-
scrupulous woman or, maybe, both.
Hereafter, nobody can claim know]l-
edge about these matters without having
read Mrs. Randall's fascinating book. In
fact, it supplies much that is new about
Lincoln himself during the last twenty-
five years of his life. It is impossible to
read it without reaching the conclusion
that the easygoing Lincoln’s political
success, perhaps even his elevation to the
Presidency, was largely due to the driv-
ing ambition and loyalty of his wife.
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTES
IN HUMAN RELATIONS
The Lisle Fellowship offers summer units in:
California—June 18 to July 29
Colorado—July 26 to September 4
Denmark—July 4 to August 10
Composed of persons from varying nationalities
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miniature world community ; alternating periods
of deputations to various types of communities
and periods of evaluation at the home- center.
Apply: THE LISLE FELLOWSHIP, Inc.
204 8. State, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Teachers on Trial
CONFORMISTS, INFORMERS
OR FREE TEACHERS
A new 48-page pamphlet
Excerpts from the testimony and summation in the
trials of 7 New York City teachers dismissed by
the Board of Education January 8, 1953
Price 10¢ Order from
TEACHERS UNION
206 West 15 Street, New York 11
NO LUCK pustisner?
We are established book publishers whose
basic policy igs to encourage new or unknown
writers. If you are looking for a publisher of
your novel, play, scholarly or religious work,
poetry, etc., perhaps we can help you.’ Write
today to Natalie Miller for Free Booklet 103.
VANTAGE PRESS, 120 W. 31 St., New York 1
In Calif.: 6356 Hollywood Bivd., Hollywood 28
232
i.
Theater
Harold Clurman
HOUGH most musical comedies are
médiocre, there can be little doubt
that the form is America’s truly in-
digenous contribution to the world
theater of today. In musical comedy the
American expresses two sides of his
nature—his innocence and his ingenuity.
The spirit is irrepressibly fun-loving; the
technique is amazingly facile. No single
musical of recent record can be confi-
dently listed as a perfect piece, but
taken as a body of work, “Oklahoma,”
“South Pacific,’ “Guys and Dolls,” and
now “Wonderful Town” (Winter
Garden) can be set down as a generic
masterpiece.
The main distinction of ‘Wonderful
Town” is its lack of slickness. Its
pace is remarkably fleet; yet it does not
sweat and strain to be fast. It is extraor-
dinarily light without being empty.
It is a triumph of good nature.
The credit for this achievement—
apart from the total conception, which
may or may not be credited to George
Abbott, who directed it—must go to the
authors of the original “My Sister
Eileen,” Joseph Fields and Jerome
Chodorov, who are responsible for the
present “‘book’’; to Betty Comden and
Adolph Green, who wrote the lyrics;
and to Rosalind Russell, whose per-
formance is an altogether captivating
summation of the show’s merits.
From a technical standpoint what is
most original in “Wonderful Town” is
that it has no special effects which stand
apart from one’s sense of the whole
show. The piece has a unified texture:
it is a complete thing. The songs define
the situations, tell the story—as do the
dances. One has no feeling that at a
certain point the plot line is dropped to
fit in an extraneous bit of ballet or a
specialty mumber. Each sequence,
whether it be spoken dialogue or a
“turn” of some sort, amplifies and
carries on what has preceded it. When,
for example, the leading lady tells us
One Hundred Ways of Losing a Man,
it is not a comedy patter that stops the
show but a necessary part of the play’s
characterization. When a trio of young
men explain What a Waste the efforts
»
of the young artists from the provinces
who try, to strike it rich in New York
are, it is an essential part of the theme.
The show’s lack of slickness—and in
‘this respect Raoul Pené de Bois’s sets
are remarkably apt—is not simply a for-
tunate accident but, to a large extent,
part of the show’s meaning. What is
created in “Wonderful Town” is a
kind of fervent bohemianism which was
typical of the young intellectuals’ strug-
gles in the shabby and glorious days of
New York in the mid-thirties. How
much charm and excitement there was
amid the debris of the depression! What
lyric candor we enjoyed before we be-
came burdened by our present harsh
prosperity! Now we are proper wastrels
disguising our fears and our kind hearts
in insipid propriety. Then we were
wrong-headed and raffish with ecstatic
hope.
Something of that good time is
evoked by “Wonderful Town.” Betty
Comden and Adolph Green, who .are
successful products of that era—do you
remember them at the old, Village
Vanguard ?—are among those who have
not lost the ungainly, improvisatory,
hard-hitting enthusiasm of those days.
They are still inspired amateurs-thank
God! Beneath their correct evening at-
tire they carry the mark of an unregen-
erate youthfully urban romanticism; they
are not afraid of a redeeming stain or
wrinkle, badges of freedom from the
restraints of their new respectability.
What is fascinating about Rosalind
Russell is her combination of expert
poise and breeding with a wholly spon-
taneous spirit of abandoned fun. She is
not only technically deft, she is emo-
tionally devoted to her task. She is a
star by virtue of talent, training, expe-
rience, but she plays with the selflessness
of a true ensemble actor. She shines
out from the proceedings not like a
gorgeous figurine in framed display but
like the most concentrated light bodying
forth the soul and spirit of the whole
event. Her manner is crisply witty, her
handsome face and figure are smartly
lean, her eyes sparkle with shrewd
feminine sophistication, and her entire
i 2a
that is the sign of the deepest kind of
_ professionalism in the theater. —
. I have not mentioned Leonard Bern-
P stein’s score not because I mean to
except it from my praise. While it does
not strike me at first hearing as so mem-
Ee =
7
: HE large Rouault retrospective,
| which completes a seven weeks’ stay
at the’ Cleveland Museum of Art on
March 15, will be on view at the Mu-
; seum of Modern Art in New York from
_ April 1 through May 31. More than 60
of the 160 works are paintings, and
they range from the year 1891, just
before Rouault began to study with
_ Gustave Moreau, to a group of eight
which were executed or completed dur-
; ing 1952. Nine others were completed
since 1945, when the Museum of
Modern Art last exhibited Rouault com-
prehensively.
I find it rather difficult to say any--
thing new about an old master who has
conscientiously and admirably resisted
all appeal of mere novelty. The very
recent works are sunnier than before,
more bleached than richly blond, and
their occasional dissonances, together
with a texture more like tapestry than
‘oil painting, produce a disconcerting
effect rather like painting on velvet.
Rouault’s tragic grandeur links him
naturally with Daumier and thereby
with Balzac, though he seldom indulges
in Balzac’s precision of detail. Prosti-
tutes, judges, clowns, ancient kings,
heads of Christ, landscapes-—from them
all a sense of the great passions is force-
fully projected. Scale is felt in monu-
mental terms, and for Rouault large size
seems to help release this feeling,
whereas some of Daumier’s smallest
oo ee i a hl
works are among his most monumental _
and Corot was generally unable to
achieve grandeur of effect except in
_ works of very modest proportions. The
Old Clown, 1917 (collection of Ed-
_ward-G. Robinson), dominates the
_ present exhibition because it combines
very large size with sustained impact,
fs
ee m . ie
rably tuneful or freshly ebullient as
some of the same composer's earlier
work, it is definitely in tune with what
I have described; it offers a kind of |
gently wry, modestly melancholy, and
moderately satiric atmosphere in which
everything floats in unfettered friend-
liness.
Art
S. Lane Faison, Jr.
nowhere depending on mechanical en-
largement to attain its real size.
Perhaps I am the victim of my own
theory, but the prints, of which some
eighty-five examples are on view, im-
pressed me on the whole more than
the paintings themselves. For his
graphic work Rouault often chooses
unusually large formats and exploits
their mural possibilities to the utmost.
While the range of intensities is neces-
-sarily reduced in his color prints, it is
nevertheless surprisingly great. A rea-
son why it seems sufficient to me~is that
in his oils, particularly the recent ones,
less restraint in color has the effect of
weakening the drama of his blacks and
whites. Thus the muted color of the Old
Clown, previously cited, seems to me to
‘outstrip even the stained-glass reso-
nance of the Old King (Carnegie Insti-
tute); and the famous early water colors
do not lack power for being surprisingly
tame in intensity. In texture Rouault’s
“etching and aquatint” process is far
more complicated than such a descrip-
tion might indicate, for he feels -at
liberty to scarify, file, and burnish the
plate until the desired effect is achieved.
Bui the final process of printing creates
its own restrictions and thereby _ its
special unity. All of which is merely
a -roundabout way of saying that
Rouault’s oils, particularly in the last
fifteen years, often seem overworked
and lacking in directness. I should warn
the reader that Jacques Maritain, who
has written an eloquent preface to the
catalogue, considers these recent works
“the most invaluable jewel of the pres-
ent exhibition.”
NEW PAINTINGS by Anton Refre-
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233
ap aie
support the view that the government
was well served when he was selected
several years ago to execute the murals
for the Rincon Annex of the San Fran-
cisco. Post Office. Histery having
marched on and thrown some of the
war-time iconography of those murals
out of gear, certain local groups have
been demanding their destruction, but
to date the murals have been spared.
The present exhibition, which features
recent work for a synagogue, offers
strong evidence that Refregier is an
artist of integrity, that Me is the master
and not the slave of his subject matter.
While such arguments cannot be ex-
pected to charm the iconoclasts, they
provide the major line of defense for
those interested in preserving selected
examples of art sponsored by the United
States government. Much of it has been
very bad, and though Refregier is no
Orozco, he is certainly preferable to
Rivera. The present exhibition ought to
be taken as retroactive insurance that one
day San Francisco will not regret its
Rincon Annex murals.
THREE MODERN Italian painters
(Catherine Viviano Gallery) remind
us that the rich and bold murals
of the later Renaissance offer possible
sources of inspiration for the modern
painter. I find Birolli’s marine themes
a little too chopped up and Morlotti’s
designs too close to Picasso—though
CHAPELLIER GALLERY
48 East 57 Street, New York City
AIDITCH
OIL PAINTINGS
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(50¢ minimum) 48-HOUR SHIPMENT
YUL BRYNNER
RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN’S
The King and]
A New Musical Play
| with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
| ST. JAMES THEATRE, West 44 St.
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
Wednesday & Saturday at2:25: $4.20 to 1.80.
| MONDAY EVES. ONLY: CURTAIN AT 7 SHARP
disguised under a kind of phosphores-
cent oil slick—to rival Afro. Three big
canvases by Afro, painted in July
(greens), August (purples), and No-
vember (russets), ate extremely varied,
but they have in common a swinging
and joyous kind of confidence ex-
pressed in the bold scale, the curvi-
linear kind of interlace, and the con-
v& 4-
a ee ees
centrated massing of forms to allow
plenty of air at diagonally opposite ex-
tremities. After inspecting a number of
tight little metaphysical designs (with
a linoleum look) by artists I prefer not
to mention, I found in Afro the same
release from constricting tensions that
E. M. Forster portrayed, long ago, in
“Where Angels Fear to Tread.”
Music
B. H. Hagegin
VEN in the first years of John
Crosby’s radio column there were
occasions to note how the seemingly all-
encompassing intelligence stopped oper-
ating the moment he began to talk about -
a musical subject: the Telephone Hour,
the quiz and round-table discussion of
the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts,
Deems Taylor—and later Benny Good-
man—as long-haired disk jockey. As
time went on one noted in the column
the effects of routine, of the difficulty of
continuing to find good material, of the
fact that Crosby now wrote with con-
sciousness of the qualities of mind, per-
sonality, and style that had brought him
success, and exploited them as a per-
former. And an article In Defense of
Sponsored Radio in the Manchester
Guardian was a special perverse per-
formance for British readers, in which
he seemed to be trying to see whether
the Crosby razzle-dazzle could get them
to accept black as white.
The commercial plugs of American
radio were offensive; but we Americans,
said Crosby, had acquired a selective deaf-
ness for them. The money from advertis-
ing went into programs that were mon-
strosities of vulgarity; but, said Crosby,
it also paid for the variety of programs
required by “‘a very large country with
far greater divergence in temperament,
racial origin, and local custom among
its people than in Great Britain,” and
our commercial radio was therefore “‘the
best type . . . for a country as big, as
populous and diverse as ours.” But the
variety he described as available to a
New Yorker—‘‘concert music, popular
music, soap opera, hints to the house-
wives, lectures, discussion programs,
comedy’’—has nothing to do with di-
vergent racial origins and local customs;
in fact, the same concert music, popular
Music, soap operas, hints to housewives,
discussions, and comedy are carried by
the sponsored network programs to
everyone everywhere in the country,
whatever his racial origin or local cus-
toms; and commercial radio, in provid-
ing these programs, does not thereby
show itself to be best suited ‘‘for:a
country as big, as populous and diverse
as ours.” Actually, too, the British get
from their non-commercial radio not
only concert and popular music, discus-
sion, and comedy (though not soap
opera) but programs adapted to local
languages and interests. ,
Without the money from advertisers,
said Crosby, the NBC ‘Symphony
wouldn’t have existed and Toscanini
mightn’t have been lured back to Amer-
ica; without their income from broad-
casting—i.e., directly or indirectly from
advertisers—the New York Philhar-
monic, the Boston Symphony, and the
Metropolitan Opera would find it even
harder to keep going than they did. He
said this to people who knew that their
. British Broadcasting Corporation had
(at least ten years. before NBC, let me
point out) used money from the license
fees on radio sets to establish its own
symphony orchestra, to engage for it the
world’s foremost conductors including ~
Toscanini, to broadcast the performances
of, other British orchestras and opera
from Covent Garden. But these British
readers could not know what Crosby had
written a few months earlier in the
Herald Tribune about the way the NBC
Symphony and the Philharmonic had
been kicked around, and the Boston
Symphony kicked off the air altogether.
- a
The NATION
ee
t
.
r
7
|
Pea of aie re programs
(CBS the Philadelphia Orchestra, Invi-
tation to Music, and the CBS Symphony
~ summer series; ABC the summer series
of its ABC Symphony) that Crosby
hadn’t mentioned even in his Herald
Tribune column; and at the time he
was telling British readers what the
American system had done for music,
the American system had reduced music
on the networks to the NBC Symphony,
the New York Philharmonic, the Met-
ropolitan Opera, and the Biggs organ
recital; whereas the BBC was continuing
its program undiminished.
This program, moreover, was one that
American radio music even at its high-
est point had never approximated. The
American networks, exploiting names
that had prestige for the mass public,
had presented the great orchestras and
the Metropolitan, and had come to see
music almost entirely as the standard
orchestral and operatic repertory; where-
as the BBC had systematically explored
the entire musical literature—the litera-
ture not only of opera and the orchestra
but of solo instruments, the voice, and
chamber groups, the unfamiliar music
of the past, the new music of today.
Crosby’s concluding opinion was that
“it is more practicable to eliminate the
faults of the American system than to
eliminate the system itself.’ I agree that
there is no possibility of eliminating the
system; but I can’t see that system doing
anything else than presenting big-name
rchestras and conductors rather than
chamber music, and dropping even a
big-name orchestra when income from
advertising is down.
The Boston public is Sch broad-
casts of the Boston Symphony again,
of chamber-music concerts from the
Library of Congress and other concerts
in Boston, not from one of the networks
but as part of the comprehensive cul-
tural program presented by the Lowell
* Institute Cooperative Broadcasting
_Council—comprising Boston’s colleges
and universities, its Museum of Fine
Arts, the Boston Symphony, the New
England Conservatory of Music, and
the Lowell Institute itself—largely
_ through its own FM station WGBH.
This is merely the most spectacular
illustration of the fact that the i improve-
ments in the situation are occurring
— outside of commercial network radio.
Letters
-
In Defense of Social Scientists
Dear Sirs: The writer of the article
Freud.and the Hucksters which appeared
in the February 14 issue may well have
a valid general point, but it is presented
amid distortions, half-truths, and veiled
implications. . . . The implication that
psychologists en masse are an un-
principled lot of mercenary opportunists
engaged in a fiendish collaboration with
industry to undermine the morals, health, ©
finances, and mental health of America’s
citizenry is fantastic, to use a mild word.
There is no accurate count of the num-
ber of psychologists who are employed
by industry and advertising, but the
membership of the American Psycho-
logical Association’s Division of Indus-
trial and Business. Psychologists offers a
possible reference point. Less than 4
per cent of the A. P. A.’s total member-
ship of 8,600 were in this division as of
1951. The Division of Clinical and Ab-
normal Psychology, most of whose mem-
bers are working in the fields of mental
illness, psychotherapeutics, and mental
testing, has almost 15 per cent... . It is
apparent that industry is not the major
focus of American psychology at the
present time.
Mr. Goodman is alarmed by the fact
that industry is subsidizing psychological
research. He does not seem impressed by
psychologists’ theoretical interest in why
people drink, smoke, chew gum, and do
lots of other things. If industry is willing
to stand the costs of this type of investi-
gation, the psychologist would be foolish
indeed to pass up the opportunity. As
Mr. Goodman points out, most psychol-
ogists who do this research entertain no
idealistic delusions about the eventual
commercial application of the results.
But even if the work were done under
the auspices of a non-profit organization,
nothing would prevent the manufacturer
or advertising agency from utilizing the
findings for their own benefit. . . . The
industrialist. would only ae further
from this arrangement. .
The uncritical reader of Mr. Good-
man’s article might easily be led to con-
clude that well-known psychologists like
Drs. Thorndike and Marquis are dis-
honestly claiming that chewing gum is
an antidote for frustration, in order to
get a slice of the $1,500,000 income of
the Psychological Corporation. I cannot
conscientiously contradict this imputa-
tion, since I do not know any of the
individuals named personally, although
I strongly doubt that they are dishonest.
However, I think it is only fair to point
out that the Psychological Corporation
retains a number of authorities in areas
other than industrial research—from
which half its income is derived accord-
ing to Mr. Goodman. To the best of
my knowledge none of the four psy-
chologists named in the article are ex-
perts in the field of industrial research
or public-opinion polling. It is entirely
probable that these men are in no way
connected with the type of investigation
described by Mr. Goodman, and it is
either deliberately cunning or grossly
naive of him to support his claims with
such an association. .. .
Irrational ambition reflected in “‘con-
spicuous consumption” is an unhealthy
state, but it is not created by advertising.
What the advertiser does is to exploit
existing conditions. The manufacturer
who tries to make you buy his product
by claiming that “more people use . . .”
adopted this slogan because experience
showed that it worked. I do not believe
that McCann-Erickson needs a psychol-
CLEMENCY
DINNER
Wednesday, March 18, 7 P.M.
Auspices:
THE ROSENBERG
CLEMENCY COMMITTEE
Guest Speaker:
HON. SIDNEY SILVERMAN
(Member of Parliament,
London, England)
Chairman:
PROF. STEPHEN S. LOVE
(Chicago, Illinois)
HOTEL CAPITOL
8th AVE. & 51st STREET
New York, N. Y.
Tickets available at the
Rosenberg Clemency Committee
1050 6th Ave., New York 18, N. Y.
BRyant 9-9407
$25 per person
Lenten and dietary laws observed
ogist to tell them what years of adver-
tising have already proved.
I do not quite grasp how the business
about emotional appeal fits in with the
rest of the thesis. I suppose Mr. Good-
man included these paragraphs to illus-
trate how the psychologist, the expert on
emotions, belongs in the advertiser’s
scheme. The public’s emotions are also
crucial to the movies and literature, but
neither Hollywood nor Harper is a
prominent seducer of psychologists.
The psychological sciences are current-
ly overlaid with a poisonous spawn of
public misconception. I am surprised and
disappointed to find The Nation, to me
a symbol of independent integrity, join-
ing with the many mass-communication
media which are sturdily doing their
share to perpetrate and spread these
misbeliefs. EUGENE E. LEVITT
lowa City, lowa
Mr. Goodman Replies
Dear Sirs: To read into my article a con-
demnation of social scientists as a group
is, I think, unwarranted. On the con-
trary, my dwelling on the commercial
uses to which social psychology is being
put was intended as a reaffirmation’ of
the basic principles of the social sciences.
Mr. Levitt says that I “may well have
a valid general point,’ but any point I
had rand certainly be nullified by his
unqualified acceptance of industry-
sponsored research. For my point was
precisely that business is mot willing to
stand the costs of objective investigations
by scientists. Advertisers support psy-
chological studies for one reason only—
to increase their manipulation of con-
sumers. This purpose conditions the re-
search itself, determining the subject
matter, the way in which it is explored,
and ultimately the conclusions which
must be adapted for use by advertisers.
Mr. Levitt argues that since the in-
dustrialist can always appropriate scien-
tific findings, there is nothing wrong
with the scientist going to work for the
manufacturer. This is like saying that
because a chemist realizes his work may
one day be used to develop a poison
gas, it is all right for him to make some
money by showing a company exactly
how to make a good poison gas.
What, after all, is the function of the
social scientist? What is his starting
point? Why is he a social scientist in
the first place? These are the questions
I wished to raise.
I saw no need to do any nose count-
ing. If most social scientists are still
true to the high ideals of their profes-
236
Crossword Puzzle No. 507
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
-~weeR a
ACROSS
1 There’s a sort of sign about a bed,
in writing, too. (10)
6 Easy-flowing, it comes back almost
under part of the boat. (4)
10 S-cuts, about the neck, perhaps. (7)
11 Searched for or got-md of unde-
sirable material. (7)
12 Conspicuously. (14)
14 Dodges the sort of noises one finds
around the little Dominion state. (8)
15 Imagine losing a sort of constella-
tion! (6) b
16 Perhaps this authoress takes a pet
with her. (6)
18 Nowadays it’s more than hard tack
and salt pork along the coast. (8)
22 A colorful fever certainly isn’t as-
sociated with misfortune. (4-4, 6)
24 Where a man’s man returns with a
Roman quartet? (38, 4)
25 Tie a tin on the Thin Man’s dog?
What a game! (7)
26 16% foot-guns? (4)
27 Tenngson said these are more than
coronets. (4, 6)
DOWN
1 The act of pressing. (10)
2 Mark with a mathematical symbol a
Tosca villain created. (7)
8 Take a united charity collection to
the bank by means of this road?
(9, 5)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
The Nation, 20 Vesey Street,
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
De | | ets a)
Pai | flee SMe cleric
a BiH
Pe) | ee} | at fei |e es ee
P| Gee ee
. ERNES; 4 INFLUENZA;
Poh SA ch haa
4 He supposedly wins everything but
the girl. (4, 3)
5 Does it take prying about to find
that the choral concert is off? (6)
7 Did the givl in “Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes” make a wreck out of her
boy-friend? (7)
8 Said something other than good, by
the sound of it. (4)
9 Does the rest of the adding machine
offset something? (14)
13 Roll up the top before the bottom
goes to pieces if you want protec-
tion. (10)
17 Sung with a moving line? (7)
19 Made inconspicuous, (7)
20 If it’s time to put a mask on, he'll
- help you. (7)
21 Irvine is definitely in the race! (6)
23 One should excel in part, anyway.
(4)
eH e
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 506
ACROSS :—1, 20 and 9 SOFTENING OF THE
BRAIN; 6 RUPEE; 10 FRANCHISE; 11
RIOT SQUAD; 12 and 7 down MATCH
POINT; 138 FLATS: 15 NURSEMAID; 18 and
28 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN; 19 TENTS;
22 DACHSHUND. 2 MUSSOLINI; 26
EVERY; 27 NIECE.
DOWN:—1_SOBER; 2 FRAGONARD; 3
5 GRAND; 6 RB-
CUMBENT: 8 EYESHADES; 13 FELLOW-
MEN; 14 STEVEDORE; 16 REDUCTION;
AD NAUSBAM; 21 TASTE; 22 DOING; 38
SMELL; 24 DOYEN.
“ground rules."' Address
New York 7, New York.
The NATION
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a ae per
&, fh ay hy ‘Was ei ; .
~ ‘hat does not excuse the increasing
er who are not. The reason I
wef certain psychologists is that
are directors of the Psychological
. oration and should therefore be
he. responsible for al/ work done by it.
New York RALPH GOODMAN
More on Hucksters
Dear Sirs: In the article Freud and the
Hucksters, Mr. Goodman quotes from
Burleigh Gardner's letter to Tide
that Gardner believed “the strong
Eisenhower majority could have been
predicted using projection techniques.”
Exactly this was done by another
huckster outfit, Imberman and DeForest,
public-relations counselors in Chicago.
In the June 5, 1952, issue of the
Freeman, under the heading No Soap,
the editors make a big point of having
access to the survey made by Imberman
and DeForest. The survey, using pro-
jection techniques—this was before the
convention—came up with the finding
that Eisenhower would beat Taft all to
pieces any day.
The Taft supporters, who presumably
paid for this hucksterism, killed the
report, but the Freeman, a right-wing
Taft organ, got wind of it and used it
to flay Eisenhower for not giving ‘‘de-
tailed answers’ to our problems.
At any rate, projection techniques are
now being applied by a few of the
overeducated market-research and pub-
lic-relations counselors, all of whom
have one foot in our major universities.
Whether they lend their talents to the
right wing—as in Germany during the
middle 1930’s—to swing the masses is
well worth watching. Hucksters sell out
to the highest bidder.
Chicago ARTHUR MOORE
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The New
Soviet Man
by Mark Gayn
Voice ot
America?
A Fantasy
Chaplin’s Censors
Unreflective Warrior FEdyard Crankshaw
A Review of “American-Russian Relations”
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Around
the
US
Forty Years in the
Black Belt
Canton, Mississippi
I MIGRATED from the North forty
years ago and settled in the blackest .
part of the cotton belt on a cotton
plantation operated almost exactly as it
was in the ante bellum days. For twenty-
five. years we operated this plantation
with Negro labor. Racial relations were
then ugly beyond anything I had ever
seen in the North. Almost any day you
could read in the paper that some poor
Negro had been hunted down with
hounds, or shot by a posse of men, or
burned at the stake amid the cheers of
a mob of supposedly decent people.
Negroes were whipped by white men
even more frequently.
Last year there was only one case of
whipping in these parts. A young white
man full of liquor whipped and raped
a Negro woman. He was given a heavy
prison sentence. There have been no
lynchings in our county for a good
many years. How do I account for this
change? In the first place the old-time
“nigger hater’ has* gone the way of all
flesh and the younger men are far more
tolerant. It was hatred that caused the
many vile outrages against the Negro,
most of which were committed by red-
necks, or poor white trash.
Red-necks are simple-minded people,
wretchedly poor for the most part,
almost always illiterate, and they used
to be soaked and saturated with hate
for the Negro. But forty years have
changed them greatly. The sons and’
daughters of these poor benighted hill
farmers are scattered all over the nation,
working in all sorts of jobs. Those left
at home have cars and are able to go to
town and see. how the world lives. Many
have found jobs in industries here in
the South and have got their minds off
the Negro, who was a resented com-
petitor when they tried to make a living
in the cotton field.
e Forty years ago it was
almost universally believed that a Ne-
gro’s mission on this earth was to serve -
the white men. Most white men thought
it right and just for the Negro to live in
a filthy hovel that afforded little protec-
tion against rain and cold and was
almost always hopelessly overcrowded.
It was perfectly all right for him to get
his drinking water from a ditch and for
his children to grow up unable to read.
On Election Day the Negro stayed as
far away from the voting booth as
possible. He knew that if he attempted
to exercise his constitutional right, he
would be beaten up. If he accepted all
this degradation humbly and without
complaint and worked hard on the plan-
tation of the landlord and in the fall
accepted as settlement whatever the
landlord thought proper, he was re-
warded by being called a “good nigger”
by his white neighbors.
Wherever I go in the South I find this
conception of the Negro’s place-in the
economic life of the community dying
out. Of course it has to die out; nothing
that is a heritage of the old slavery days
can persist. This is the greatest change
I have witnessed. All over the South the
old plantations are being cut up into
forty- or eighty-acre farms that are
owned and operated by Negroes. And in
thousands of industrial plants Negroes
and whites are working on equal terms.
Some of the old plantations are being
sold to white men from the cities who
come with tractors, bulldozers, power
cultivators and gang plows, and above
all with new ideas acquired at experi-
mental farms and agricultural colleges.
They bring hogs, sheep, cattle, and
poultry and start’an entirely new way
of farming, or at least it is new to the
South. More important still, the new city
farmers with their machinery are not
dependent on Negro labor. You are just
as likely to see a young white man work-
ing on these farms as a Negro. At
the same time the Negro on his little
farm or with a factory job is independ-
ent of the white man, Beyond a doubt
this mutual independence makes for
better racial relations.
The Negroes in the deep South are
acquiring not only farms but many other
businesses. They own and operate stores,
restaurants, saw mills, funeral homes,
banks, movie theaters, private schools,
dental and medical clinics, and insurance
companies. They are contractors, preach-
ers, engineers, postal clerks, policemen,
teachers, carpenters, automobile mechan-
ics, realtors, bricklayers, and lawyers.
We have a number of colored pro-
fessional men in our little county seat.
Our Negro county agent, an energetic,
intelligent young man, is respected by
colored and white alike.
e If the white man has
changed, so has the Negro. Many of the
Negro landowners in this community
have spent from three or four to eight
or ten years working in factories in the
South or North. They have saved a little
money, come back and bought a piece
of land, and settled down on it. They
are altogether different from the typical
ignorant share-cropper of forty years
ago. They are building decent new
houses on their little farms, growing a _
variety of crops, and keeping Itvestock. c
If a child gets sick they take him to a
doctor instead of hanging charm beads
around his neck.
I cannot see the color line wiped out
suddenly by law. I see it disappearing
gradually as the Negroes of the South
make themselves worthy of the respect
of men of any race and as the white
people free their minds of hatred, in-
tolerance, and ante bellum notions of -
the Negro’s “place.” The old South is
dead; the new South is being bera. —- ~
HOWARD SNYDER
[The author operates a farm at Can-
ton and has written several books,
among them a novel about the Negroes
on his old plantation—Earth Born.’’}
Ina Coming Issue
MERLO J. PUSEY of the Washing-
ton Post, winner of a Pulitzer prize —
for his biography of Charles Evans
Hughes, will analyze the controver-
sial Bricker amendment, which would
limit the treaty-making powers of the
President.
re Volume 176, Menino: 12
New York, Saturday, March 21, 1953
The Shape of Things
Yes-Men Wanted
In the know-nothing atmosphere of the “‘new’’ Wash-
ington both exercise and independence of mind are at
a discount. As a result the State Department may lose
the services of its two best-informed students of Soviet
Russia at a time when relations with Moscow are more
delicate and important than ever.
Our present titular ambassador to Moscow, George F,
Kennan, left his post last October when the Soviet gov-
ernment pronounced him persona non grata and is now
awaiting reassignment. But although he is only forty-
eight, the indications are that he will shortly be retired.
He has, it seems, become persona non grata with Mr.
Dulles also, having voiced doubts in a public lecture
- about the “liberation” strategy which is the Secretary of
State’s personal contribution to the cold war.
Mr. Kennan’s designated successor is Charles Bohlen,
another career man who speaks Russian fluently and is a
life-long student of the Soviet system. However, the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee has postponed a
vote on his confirmation owing to the oppositidn of sev-
eral Senators, including Bridges, Knowland, McCarthy,
and McCarran, who hope to persuade the President to
withdraw his name. Mr. Bohlen made himself persona
non grata to this potent quartet at a committee hear-
ing on March 2 when he had the courage to challenge
Republican miythology by defending American actions
at the Yalta conference, where he served as interpreter.
It seems likely, therefore, that Mr. Dulles will shortly
have to send the newspapers an advertisement reading:
“Russian experts wanted. Knowledge of language not
essential; only yes-men need apply.”
a Keon Bid
Premier Malenkov’s second bid for negotiations with
_ the West is not being brushed off anywhere except in
Washington, and even there a few hardy individuals are
urging that the Administration respond with cautious
interest rather than the usual brusque incredulity. In
~ Europe both press and public treat the new overture as an
event of first importance, offering at least the possibility
ealistic negotiations. Even the bitter anger aroused
Valion
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
by the recent attacks on planes by Soviet and Czecho-
slovak jets has been somewhat diluted with hope. What-
evet Malenkov’s motives in reiterating Moscow’s “peace
aims”—whether to induce a slowdown in Western re-
armament or actually to resolve conflicts between East and
West—the shooting down of Allied planes could hardly
advance Soviet purposes. So the tendency now is to as-
sume that the incidents were not ordered by the Kremlin
but by local military authorities acting in the hostile pat-
tern of similar episodes in the past.
~Those who least credit the sincerity of any Soviet move
toward conciliation are naturally demanding that belief
wait upon deeds. This view is wholly. understandable,
but it does not justify the flatly negative reaction of some
Administration leaders. Obviously the Kremlin will not
forthwith “pull out of Austria and Eastern Germany,”
as Senator Wiley has suggested. Any pulling out would
have to be the result of bargaining; it will not be a free
- gift. But some check on Moscow’s intentions may be
discerned in the day-to-day behavior of its representa-
tives. A reasonably conciliatory reply to the three-power
note on the plane attacks, a willingness to compromise in
the matter of a new Secretary General for the U. N., a
formal proposal of talks on outstanding differences—
such signs would provide a reasonable basis for a favor-
able response to Malenkov’s striking statement. One
thing is sure: the Administration cannot reject the Soviet
overture in terms of its rollback policy and hope for any
vestige of agreement from its chief European allies.
Thank You, Mr. Velde!
Representative Harold H. Velde deserves a vote of
thanks if not of confidence for his suggestion that the
House Committee on Un-American Activities might
have to investigate clergymen who dare to criticize its -
methods. Any number of fine editorials and eloquent
sermons failed to produce the reaction that this arrogant ~
suggestion provoked. The National Council of Churches
of Christ in the U. S. A. lost little time in adopting—
sixty-nine to two—a resolution, strengthened by an
amendment proposed by Charles P. Taft, sharply criticiz-
ing “certain methods” of Congressional committees.
Representative Franklin D. Roosevelt just as promptly
introduced a resolution calling for Velde’s removal as
chairman of the committee; Velde’s colleagues repudi-
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 237
Disengagement into Disenchantment 239
ARTICLES
A New Secretary General?
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 241
The New Soviet Man:
Inheritor of the Kremlin
by Mark Gayn 242
Voice of America? . .. a Fantasy 244
Too Much Corn:
Or Too Much Benson?
by Bruce Coie 246
“Limelight”: Chaplin and His Censors
by William Murray 247
BOOKS
Fabulous Dialogue
A Review by Thomas Reed Powell 249
The Unreflecting Warrior
A Review by Edward Crankshaw 250
New Books in Brief 252
THEATER by Harold Clurman 253
RECORDS by B. H. Haggin 254
ART NOTES 255
LETTERS 256
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 508
by Frank W. Lewis 256
AROUND THE U. S. A.
Forty Years in the Black Belt
by Howard Snyder opposite 237
TS
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Associates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
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Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
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Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
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238
ated his suggestion; and Velde, bruised, atte,
bewildered, was forced to announce that he did not in-
tend to go forward with the investigation “‘at this time.”
In Washington the local Presbytery tabled for a month
a scorching resolution rebuking Velde, after an unsuc-
cessful effort by the Reverend Dr. Edward L. R. Elson,
whose church President Eisenhower attends, to modify
the original motion in order to win its immediate accept-
ance, And in a sermon inspired by the inept Velde, the
Reverend C, Stanley Lowell, a Methodist minister in the
District, called for an investigation of the investigators.
“How do we know McCarthy is loyal?” he asked—and
got only the echo to his question as an answer.
A study of the barometer readings for the week en-
courages us to believe that we were right in pointing out
in an earlier issue (Revolt Against McCarthy? March 7)
that the witch hunt is meeting with a sturdier resistance
than at any time since 1947.
Fighting Against Franco
The anti-Communist International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions, with headquarters in Amsterdam,
last week adopted a resolution strongly condemning the
Franco government for a “new wave of repressions”—
this time directed against workers affiliated with the anti-
Communist Spanish General Workers’ Union. The state-
ment charges that Thomas Centeno, a member of the
union, had died “as a result of maltreatment in the cells
of the security police of Madrid.” The I. C, F. T. U.
reiterated its determination to fight to the last against
the admission of the Franco regime to the United
Nations.
In the meantime spokesmen of various anti-Franco
groups in Spain have in person notified the United States
embassy at Madrid that these groups will not consider
themselves bound by any obligation that the dictator may
assume toward the United States government, One such
delegation to the embassy included General Aranda,
formerly an outstanding commander in Franco's army,
now in the opposition. Many Americans traveling in
Spain have been impressed by the mounting anti-United
States feeling which has developed as a result of the
efforts of our government to trade the future of the
Spanish people for military bases.
That Urge to Merge
Business Week of March 7 seports that the post-war
“urge to merge” is still strong. Mergers and absorptions
of business enterprises have averaged sixty per month
since 1945, and last year produced a bumper crop. A top
management consultant is ‘quoted as saying that the
“urge is shared equally by the company that will be
absorbed and the company that will do the absorbing.”
- But the absorbers seem to be more active and systematic;
The NATION —
ears s Sa
some companies, for example, now “maintain vice-presi-
dents or even whole departments for the prime purpose
of seeking out absorbable companies.”
Two trends are conspicuous. One is toward the elimi-
nation of the medium-sized, prosperous business which
is owned by an individual, a family, or a small group of
stockholders. The owners sell their stock for a good
price, pay the capital-gains tax, and invest the proceeds
in tax-free municipal bonds. In some. instances they have
been able to ‘‘triple their take-home pay” in this manner.
Had they stayed in business, their company would have
_had to multiply its profits twenty times for them to have
made a comparable net return.
Again a company with high ee may acquire con-
trol of another company with a sizable tax-loss carry-over
or may absorb another for the sole purpose of liquidat-
ing it and realizing a low-tax-rate profit. “In recent
years,” J. B. Wallach reports in the New York World-
Telegram (March 10), “‘virtually every type of businéss
from department store to textile mill” has been involved
in liquidations of this type. “Capital gains,” he writes,
“seem to be inspiring more liquidations than adverse
_ business conditions.’. . . Unless business conditions take
a turn for the worse”—perverse thought!—“additional
firms will be sold down the river. Unfortunately commu-
nities as well as countless individuals are hurt when
liquidation involves a shutdown and a lost pay roll. To
some it may seem a high price ‘to pay for a dollar profit.”
It is indeed ironic that now, at the “top of the market,”
the urge to merge is stronger than ever.
Handling the Russians
In contrast with the partisan role played by Secre-
tary General Trygve Lie, discussed on page 241, it 1s
interesting to note how another high official of the
United Nations manages to resist pressure both from
the United States and from the Russians. On the day
the Security Council in New York was trying vainly to
elect a new Secretary General, in Geneva the head of the
U. N. Economic Commission for Europe, Mr. Gunnar
Myrdal, was stoutly rejecting a Soviet demand that he
sever relations between his agency and the European Coal
and Steel Community, the Organization for European .
Economic Cooperation, and various Marshall Plan
groups.
The debate was heated. At one point Mr. Arutiunian,
a Soviet delegate, went so far as to suggest that if rela-
tions were maintained Russia would have to reconsider
its participation in the work of the commission. Mr.
Myrdal stood fast, adding that he would be glad to have
similar relations with intergovernmental agencies for
economic planning in Eastern Europe. Confronted by
this firm but impartial attitude, the Russians did not
force the issue to a showdown, and the incident was
* closed. 2.
Disengagement into
Disenchantment
THE “new look” of the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign
policy is so far largely an illusion. The Administration
has deliberately created the impression that it has set
forth on a different, bolder course, promising big results,
particularly in East Asia. It has led us to believe it has
discovered a magic formula for winning the Korean
war, weakening China, perhaps disrupting the Sino-Soviet
alliance, and unscrambling the Yalta egg. It has sug-
gested we are on the road to extricating American troops
from Korea and the French from Indo-China, letting
Asians fight Asians while America creates a strong
central military reserve comparable with the reserve of
armed forces in the Soviet Union.
In part this is an attempt by the Republican Adminis-
tration to fulfil rash campaign talk. Mr, Eisenhower
appears to be hypnotized by some of his more ill-advised
statements preceding the election. But it is also in part
an ill-advised attempt to build a Realpolitik out of
unreality.
The entire development signals danger. Within a year
ot so the American people are likely to start asking
questions: What happened to that Chinese Nationalist
invasion of the mainland? Whatever came of that
celebrated resolution against Yalta, “secret agreements,”
enslavement, or whichever version happened to be cur-
rent at breakfast time today? With all our embargoing
of strategic materials to Communist China, why haven't
those Reds been shaken? Finally an impatient public may
demand to know how many of our 250,000 American
soldiers in Korea have been brought home as the result
of Secretary Dulles’s inspiring plan of disengagement.
In an editorial entitled Eisenhowerism, the Manchester
Guardian the other day wrote of the anxiety America’s
policy in Asia is causing. “Public opinion may rise,” the
British liberal journal said. “The instinct of America,
when it is thwarted, is often to take a bold line of attack,
which in many circumstances is commendable but in the
present ones might cause catastrophe.”
Dulles’s latest style of fancy public relations was dis-
played in the official communiqué issued after his four
days’ discussion with Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in
Washington. The passage of the communiqué that dom-
inated all others in the American mind described two
new British measures against shipment of war material
to Communist China. One was the reintroduction of a
licensing system for ships registered in the United King-
dom and colonies. The other was a decision to prevent
bunkering at British ports by ships bearing strategic
cargoes for China. “These steps,” remarked a Washing-
ton dispatch to the London Times, “have been accorded
an importance here out of all proportion to any possible
239
results.” And the Manchester Guardian drily com-
“mented, “Possibly {this new decision] will have a greater
.effect on American public opinion than on China’s sup-
plies.” American press reports suggested, “Britain has
helped impose an economic blockade.” It was implied
that the repentant British had at last renounced a thriv-
ing armaments traffic with Red China.
Nobody could learn the truth from the communiqué
or from its interpretation in our newspapers. One or two
British ships have indeed docked at the Polish port of
Gdynia and carried a few strategic items to China.
United States officials admit that our intelligence about
non-Communist countries’ vessels going to China is based
mainly on sightings which give no clue to cargoes. Amer-
ican authorities also confirm that many of the “free
world’s” ships are sailing to China empty—in ballast—
to pick up soya beans, vegetable oils, grain, iron ore,
manganese, pig bristles, or cow bones. Of those carrying
cargoes to China by far the majority are taking civilian
goods—wool-tops, dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals, sugar-re-
fining and textile machinery,
NOR COULD one gather from the Dulles-Eden com-
muniqué that, next to the United States and Canada,
Britain has long been enforcing the strictest embargo
on delivery of anything like war material to China. Our
vocal Congressmen, a few raucous radio commentators
of the Fulton Lewis school, and many of our newspapers
have been drawing the picture of a Britain growing fat
and rich by shipping contraband goods to the Chinese
Communists. How many Americans are aware that of
Britain’s total exports one one-thousandth goes to Red
China and that of British imports one-five- hundredth
comes from China?
In its first two months the Eisenhower Administration
has run up this score in foreign affairs:
Formosa. The President's de-neutralization of that
island, which was not neutral anyway, led millions of
Americans to expect the impossible. They imagined
Chiang Kai-shek’s army would cross the Formosan Straits
and establish a beachhead on China’s mainland, a vision
which has meanwhile evaporated. There was talk of
Chinese Nationalist bombing raids against mainland
communications; now Americans are learning that the
handful of bombers on Formosa are outmoded and that
the real problem is how to defend Formosa against air
attacks if the Chinese Communists should decide to
' make them. It is beginning to dawn on American tax-
payers that they will have to foot a big bill for arming
his troops before Chiang will risk them in combat.
Blockade. In January high officials of the Eisenhower
Administration were predicting an early naval blockade
against Communist China, Dulles said such a plan was
being considered. Then the British strongly objected.
India’s Nehru denounced the idea, Our alarmed friends
240
F allies in n Europe and ‘ig recolked ‘from the hare-_
brained notion. Now we hear that at least 75 per. cent
of China’s trade is overland and that a costly and legally
questionable blockade would have negligible effect. -
Yalta, The wettest squib of all is the celebrated joint
resolution by the President and Congress. Last July in
Chicago, Dulles boldly wrote into the Republican plat-
form: “The government of the United States under
Republican leadership will repudiate all commitments
contained in secret understandings such as those of
Yalta which aid Communist enslavements.” After much
wrangling Mr. Eisenhower's weaker formula was further
dehydrated in a compromise version which Dulles had
his State Department concoct in the hope of winning
unanimous Congressional support. In its latest form the
resolution mentioned enslavement but said nothing about
Yalta, repudiation, or secret understandings. This made
the Democrats happy but not Taft, and in the end the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whose talents are
equal to recognizing a dead duck, postponed indefinitely
consideration of this specimen of Dullesian diplomacy.
East-West Trade. We have already described the
fraudulence of the China section of the Dulles-Eden
announcement, Earlier this month Mutual Security
Director Harold Stassen called a news conference and
disclosed a seven-point program by which the Eisen-
hower Administration proposes further to restrict trade
with the Communist bloc. It was a hodgepodge of rem-
nants of the Truman policy, mixed with promises to
“study,” “devise,” “consult,” and “coordinate” more of
the same. It was worth exactly what it got—a‘ minor
headline near the obituary columns in next day’s news-
papers.
Disengagement. This great concept, which Dulles has
singled out as his fairhaired brain child, has created
illusions of another sort. The idea is familiar; it recurred
in numerous Eisenhower campaign speeches. South
Korean and Vietnamese divisions are to be multiplied
in the next eighteen months or so to such an extent that
American and French troops can be withdrawn.
TO MOST people this indicates that our G. I.’s will be
brought home and be replaced entirely by Koreans.
Nothing like that is contemplated. How will Americans
react when they discover that even if this strategy were
carried out, most of our seven divisions in Korea would
simply be moved to Pusan and Japan and kept there?
What will happen when disengagement turns into dis-
enchantment?
As this series of phonies starts making an impact on
_ the American mind in the months ahead, public opinion
at home may indeed get excited. That is when we shall
face the risk that the Eisenhower Administration, to
placate a disillusioned, impatient people, may edge
“toward adventurism.
; The Na rIC N
=
_—— ~~
.
J. Alvarez del Vayo
A New Secretary General ?
United Nations
GIVEN an international situation full
of perils both foreseeable and unforesee-
able—the shooting down of American
and British planes over Germany was a
good example of the latter—it is only
natural that responsible elements in the
United Nations should try to rescue it
from its present impotence. The prob-
lem of appointing a new Secretary Gen-
eral has therefore acquired an impor-
tance it would not have had in a less
strained atmosphere. This problem is
closely linked to that of the U.N. staff.
Mr. Lie’s failure to resist the constant
* pressure to transform the United Na-
tions into a subsidiary agency of a
great power, subject like any other gov-
ernment department to investigation by
Senators and police, lent the issue of
the U. N. staff its world-wide interest.
As will be remembered, it was in the
midst of the uproar created by the dis-
missal of several staff members, none of
them charged with any act of subver-
sion, that Mr. Lie resigned. Some peo-
ple suspected at the time that his an-
nouncement concealed an intention to
maneuver’ later to keep his post. Last
week this suspicion was strengthened.
But a clever French-British counter
move intercepted him. His plan was to
provoke a debate in the Assembly on
_ his handling of: the staff issue. From
* this he hoped to emerge vindicated,
thanks to the active support of the
_ United States delegation and the benev-
‘ olent silence of the others. Criticism
* from the Soviet camp did not bother
him—it could only increase his popu-
.Jarity in the quarters that backed him.
After obtaining his certificate of inno-
cence, Mr. Lie intended to ask the Se-
curity Council to elect his successor and,
in the rather probable case of a dead-
_ lock, to announce he was ready to sacri-
fice himself once more in the interest of
peace by staying at his post.
_ Opposing his retention for various
reasons, the French and British called
for an immediate meeting of the Se-
curity Council to elect his successor.
tes,
>
That left him not enough time to ob-
tain the Assémbly’s absolution. Taken
by surprise, he engaged in a series of
secret consultations, and through prom-
ises, suggestions, and overtures tried
to convey to the several delegations that
he was still available. All this had to be
done in a few hours, and was without
result. He then had to hurry to’the As-
sembly to read his self-justifying report.
But it was too late; the French and
British had made up their minds.
MR. LIE’S ADDRESS was not of a
kind to increase the number of his sup-
porters. On the contrary, many dele-
gates, listening to him, wondered how
he had ever been given the direction of
the United Nations. It is true that his
presentation of his case had a kind of
cleverness that might have seemed cred-
itable on a lower political level. He por-
trayed himself simply as a victim of the
cold war: the Russians behaved abomi-
nably toward him, and McCarthy did
not make his task easier. By thus dis-
tributing the blame Mr. Lie was obvi-
ously attempting at this zero hour to
play the part of the incorruptible Secre-
tary General treating Russia and Amer-
ica with strict impartiality. Had he really
played this role, the affaire Lie might
never have plagued us.
He declared, first, that the Russians
had withdrawn their recognition of him
“because of the stand [he} took.in sup-
port of United Nations action against
armed aggression in Korea.” This may
have been true, but the Russians had
recognized Mr. Lie long after he took
his ‘stand’ and had broken relations
with him only after his reappointment
as Secretary General, in their view in
violation of the Charter. The Russians’
reaction was.in line with their general
insistence that the provisions of the
Charter must be observed at any cost,
especially in matters requiring the una-
nimity of the Big Five. Unanimity is
for them the last redoubt, which they
must defend if they are not to accept
the position of a rebellious and obstruc-
4
tive group. Since they are commonly
beaten by majorities as great as fifty-five
to five, they feel secure only when the
unanimity rule is strictly applied. Main-
taining that the extension of Mr. Lie’s
mandate was an evasion of this rule,
they ignored it.
In the second place, the Secretary
General presented himself as a victim
of the hysteria prevailing in the United
States. He said that since to be a Com-
munist or to refuse to reply to the
questions of Congressional committees
is an offense in the “host country,” it
must also be an offense in the United
Nations. There is no feed to expose
this fallacy again to Nation readers.
THE FRENCH AND BRITISH came
to the meeting on March 11 with a
good candidate, Lester B. Pearson,
Canada’s Secretary for External Affairs,
who has been presiding over the pres-
ent Assembly with great distinction. Un-
fortunately the United States has a can-
didate of its own, General Romulo of
the Philippines, a temperamental orator
but not a person to restore the balance
and re-create the confidence destroyed
by Mr. Lie. The Russians’ nomination
of the Foreign Minister of Poland was
pure formula. Owing mainly to the divi-
sion in the Western camp the meeting
ended as it began. Forty-eight hours
later the Council met again. This time
Romulo was easily beaten; Pearson ob-
tained nine of the eleven votes and
would have been elected but for the
Soviet veto. Mr. Zorin tried to get a
postponement of the vote until a subse-
quent meeting. It was evident that the
Russians wanted to negotiate, but this
indication was ignored, a vote taken,
and a new Soviet veto registered. The
hope now is that before Thursday, when
the Council meets for the third time,
informal talks with the Soviet delegates
may lead to an agreement on Mr. Pear-
son or on some other candidate and thus
prevent the return of Mr, Lie and put
an end to the present unhealthy situa-
tion in the United Nations.
241
THE NEW SOVIET MAN ~
Inheritor of the Kremlin . . by Mark Gayn
Paris
THE death of Joseph Stalin ended an
era. Whatever one may think of his
philosophy or methods, there is no
doubt that in the twenty-seven years he
held power Stalin influenced the course
of history more than any other of the
great figures in whom this terrible
period was singularly rich.
What may seem even more significant
to future generations is the fact that the
end of this era brought to power what
the Soviet press calls “the new Soviet
man.” The group that has now taken
over the Soviét state and party—Ma-
lenkov and Beria, Bulganin and Khrus-
chev, Saburov and Pervukhin, Suslov
and Mikhailov—is a new political
breed whose thinking is largely incom-
ptehensible to the West and whose ca-
pacity for compromise or evil is as yet
unknown. What are the philosophy and
mores of the “new Soviet man’’? Is
there any ground on which the West
can reach an understanding with him?
What will be his influence on the vast
and turbulent forces awakened or led
by Stalinism throughout the world, and
especially in Asia?
Stalin was an “original” Bolshevik—
one of that band who fought in the
ezarist underground, knew imprison-
ment and exile, preached, at least in the
beginning, Marxian internationalism,
and worked side by side with Lenin.
Stalin’s heirs are a whole generation
away from all this; most of them did not
join the party until after the revolution.
Georgi Malenkov, for instance, was
fifteen when Lenin took over power
and did not join the Red Army unfil
two years later.
Malenkov and his coworkers acquired
their political faith, methods, loyalties,
and even their knowledge of revolution-
the Stalin-controlled
not generally
ary history in
party. Though it is
MARK GAYN, author and foreign cor-
respondent, has traveled extensively in
Eastern Europe.
242
realized, these ‘“‘new Soviet men” have,
in fact, been running the state and the
party for more than a decade, even if
they did not yet make high policy. In
1939, when the party held its Eighteenth
Congress, more than 90 per cent of all
the important party posts, local and
national, were held by men who had
been sixteen years of age or under
at the time of the revolution, Between
the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth
Congress, held last October, party
membership soared from 1,590,000 to
just over 6,000,000, with a correspond-
ing increase in “young blood.” Perhaps
the most significant feature of the
Nineteenth Congress was that it marked
the party's formal recognition of the
“new Soviet man.” The party, in effect,
was turned over to Malenkov there and
then: he made the keynote address,
customarily delivered by Stalin; the
word ‘Bolshevik’ twas dropped from
the party’s name, and its theoretical
monthly, Bolshevik, was renamed Com-
munist. With the West largely unaware
of what was happening, the old party
had actually changed its identity, top
leadership, and a great deal of its orig-
inal philosophy. Stalin’s death merely
removed the last strong sentimental link
between Bolshevik tradition and the new
party.
WHAT MAKES Russia’s future so puz-
zling now is that it will be guided not by
familiar revolutionaries but by these
youthful party bureaucrats, not by Marx-
ian internationalists but by fervent Rus-
sian nationalists. The milieu which
produced Lenin and Stalin was strongly
influenced by Western cultural and po-
litical tradition. Lenin and Trotsky, in
fact, belonged to the samé’ revolutionary
strain as, say, Togliatti or Nenni. Stalin’s
bonds with Western thought were also
close, even if he chose to denounce
them later. But when Malenkov denies
that he has any such bonds, he is pretty
nearly right. He belongs to the majority .
of the new Soviet leaders who have
never been outside the Russian orbit
and consider most things outside it
either evil or inferior.
Malenkov did not originate the new
Russian nationalism; it was apparently
brought into being by one of Stalin’s
decrees back in 1934. But no one
in Moscow, not even the late Andrei
Zhdanov, has been more active than
Malenkov in nourishing it. It was Ma-
lenkov who led the hunt for “rootless
cosmopolitans,”’ especially in the fields
of thought and creative writing. It was
he. who sought out “nationalist devia-
tions” in the smaller republics of the
Soviet Union and proclaimed, directly
or indirectly, the superiority of the Rus-
sian man, political system, inventive
genius, military might, and, yes, lapta —
—that obvious granddaddy of “beiz-
bol.”
In the thirty years between the era of
Lenin and the era of Malenkov the party
has undergone a total metamorphosis.
Its development from a revolutionary
conspiracy into a gigantic bureaucracy
made much of the change inevitable. But
whatever the causes, the party has long
been putting a lesser premium on faith
than on obedience and conformity. _
This pervading loyalty to the party—
rather than to an ideal—produces
some of the Soviet phenomena least
comprehensible to the Western mind.
Malenkov, for instance, sees nothing
odd in his demand that “literature and
art be guided in their creative work by
that which is the basis of life in the
Soviet land—the party policy’; or in
his statement to the Nineteenth Con-
gress that it is “the mission” of Soviet ~
science ‘‘to occupy first place in world
. science.” The reaction is quick. Within
a fortnight the president of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences, in a half-page
article in Pravda suitably entitled Oc-
cupy the First Place in World Science,
assures the party that Malenkov’s “mag-
nificent, inspiring’’ assignment will be
carried out promptly. And when Malen-
kov denounces Soviet writers because
‘none of them is a Gogol, and in the
same breath proceeds to tell them what
to write and how, neither he nor the
new party sees anything incongruous in
it. Everyone is deadly serious in these
exchanges, for everyone knows that the
party is the beginning and the end, the
source of all power, and the bearer of
all truths.
NATIONALISM and devotion to the
omniscient, all-powerful party are the
two main characteristics of the “new
Soviet man.” Mixed, they produce a
heady brew. For the party which, in its
wisdom, demands Gogols and “the
world’s best science” does not halt there,
as indeed it could not. Following the
same pattern of thought and _ political
behavior, it launches a. strenuous cam-
paign to create and.propagate the con-
cepts of ‘the most advanced state in the
world,” insists on Russian’ primacy to
the point of reviling and punishing na-
tionalism in the satellite countries, re-
writes history to keep up with the
changes within the party, and in a com-
pletely matter-of-fact way eliminates en-
tire social and national groups. The
important thing today is not only that
Malenkov has taken over the *party but
that he is its child. He belzeves in these
things.
Withal, Malenkov’s mind is coldly
rational and disciplined. He knows cau-
tion and patience, and it is interesting to
note that he now echoes Stalin’s boast
of ‘“‘strong nerves’—the implication
being that he cannot be frightened into
hasty action or concessions. A pudgy
man in a drab tunic, Malenkov is not an
inspiring leader, nor a _ profound
thinker, nor yet a myth. Versatile like
most other top Communists, he is an
economist, and a fairly competent one.
But primarily he is a bureaucrat and an
administrator, with a keen understand-
ing of the bases of power in the Soviet
state and of the potentialities of propa-
ganda. He may lack Stalin’s judgment
and magnetic name, but there is no rea-
son why—with time—he will not do a
good job of consolidating his hold on
the party, running the state, and ex-
panding industrial production.
WHAT ARE Malenkov’s thoughts on
the West and the cold war? A study of
his two major pronouncements on the
subject+one at the inauguration of the
- Cominform in 1947 and the other at the
party congress last October—is fruitful.
It shows that there has been little change
in Malenkov’s evaluation of the world
scene. It also reveals an intimate con-
nection between his own and Stalin’s
ideas on foreign affairs, as expounded
last fall. Evidently the problem had
been bandied about for years in the
Politburo, with a fair degree of agree-
ment. ;
Briefly, this is Malenkov’s thesis. Tak-
ing advantage of the defeat of Japan
and Germany and the weakening of
France and Britain, the United States
has been trying to establish hegemony
over the world ever since the war.
Under the banner of “Defense Against
Communism,”. it has been converting
former great powers into satellites, tak-
ing over their markets, and moving into
their colonies. Naturally, the victimized
nations resent this encroachment and
may some day come to blows with the
United States.
Moreover, as a result of the division
of the world into two hostile camps, a
depression stands on capitalist door-
steps. Economic collapse in the United
States has been averted only by the con-
version of industry to war ,purposes.
And as the United States militarizes it-
self, it compels its satellites to follow
suit. Thus anti-American resentment in-
creases and pro-peace forces in Western
Europe are strengthened.
On the other side is the ‘“‘peace
camp,” led by the Soviet Union. It is
strong enough to “drub” any aggressor,
but it stands for peace, world trade, and
the coexistence of capitalism and social-
ism “for a long time.” Trade is the
basis on which the “cold war’ might be
brought to a halt.
I think this is a fair condensation of
Malenkov’s views. Apparently he, like
Stalin and Mao Tse-tung, feels that if
Russia can stay out of war there will be
sooner or later a crippling depression
in the capitalist countries or perhaps
even an armed conflict between the
United States and its present allies. It
looks, therefore, as if Moscow’s foreign
policy under Malenkov would remain
largely unchanged. It seems clear, too,
that the current policy pronouncements
in Moscow—and especially Malenkov’s
address—treflect decisions made last
. summer, probably after General Eisen-
hower’s nomination in July and before
the party congress in October. It is still
too early to guess what these decisions
were, but ome may surmise, again on the
basis of Soviet publications, that they
_were influenced by the war weariness
assumed to prevail in the United States,
If that is so, we are about to see an in-
tensification of a Soviet peace offensive.
MAJOR CHANGES in the party’s pol-
icy are far more likely to be noted in the
internal than in the external sphere. Al-
most certainly we shall see a tightening
of discipline, purges that may reach
into higher party echelons in every
Communist country, an intensified cam-
paign against deviations of every kind,
including “Jewish bourgeois national-
ism,” and an unparalleled stress on in-
creased production. The new Soviet man
is sure to demand more sweat and
sacrifice.
The change of dynasty in the Krem-
lin might eventually open up vast pos-
sibilities to the West. One is that Ma-
lenkov might be unable to match the
unifying influence that the magic of
Stalin’s name has had on the Commu-
nist world. Another is that Mao Tse-
tung, the surviving giant of commu-
nism, might now insist on more
complete Chinese dominance in Asia.
Militating against these possibilities is
the incontestable fact that the Red world
has been held together by more than the
magic of Stalin’s name. The tight party,
police, and army web remains intact,
and so do the benefits which, for in-
stance, bind China to Russia. It is also
Alvin Katz
true that Malenkov is far better pre-
pared to take over Stalin’s mantle than -
Stalin was to take over Lenin’s. The
West would do well to watch for op-
portunity, but jit must be prudent in
identifying it correctly. In the next few
months we shall hear many rash coun-
sels. If followed, they might prove more
costly than anything done by the “new
Soviet man.”
VOICE OF AMERICA? .. a Fantasy
[The other night the editors of The
Nation dreamed they were somewhere
in Western Europe listening to a French
radio commentator broadcasting from
Paris on a subject of great interest to
Americans. Here is what they heard.}
FOR some years now the Voice of Amer-
ica has been transmitting to us here
in Western Europe the image of Amer-
ica. For countless hours the Voice has
echoed over London, Paris, and Rome,
over Sheffield, Stuttgart, Oslo, and Mi-
lan, giving us dramas, essays, tone
poems, and folk songs. We have heen
favored with brilliant passages from
Melville and with charming descriptions
of the Rocky Mountains. And of course
we have heard praises of NATO and
ferocious attacks on communism. These
. were, if you will forgive us, a little
heavy-handed for our taste. Neverthe-
less, we dozed patiently through them,
waking up in time for the excellent jazz
recordings.
Ah, this America! This formidable
eater of breakfast cereals and enriched
breads. This confident figure with his
broad shoulders and well-filled teeth.
This manly guy with his dogged con-
victions. We heard him _ portrayed—
lover of baseball, whistler of Gershwin,
reader of Whitman and Thoreau, in
politics a Lincoln Republican or a Jeffer-
son Democrat. A homely, winning fel-
low who loved nothing better than a
peaceful week-end in the garage, tinker-
ing with his incomparable automobile. .
Naturally, we did not swallow this
image whole. Notwithstanding a lam-
entable lack of Buicks and garbage-
disposal mechanisms, we Europeans
have managed to develop a few useful
products, among them the critical eye
and the worldly smile. And we could not
resist making certain slight revisions in
the official portrait.
We have had many opportunities to
observe both G. I.’s and tourists. We
see the movies of Hollywood. And so
you will understand that to the image
of the confident, well-fed face, we could
not help adding a faint nervous twitch.
To the literature of Whitman and
Thoreau we added the comic book. The
gay tune whistled by the American was,
we imagined, less likely to be Gershwin
than be-bop or the marines’ anthem.
And the object tinkered with in the
garage, we suspected, might be an
atomic bomb. We retouched the Voice’s
image with our fine Voltairean hand,
and what emerged was a figure some-
what like ourselves. A little fearful, a
little brave; a little debased, a little
noble; influenced by great traditions and
petty jealousies. In short, a man.
And then there opened Senator’s Mc-
Carthy’s investigation of the Voice. It
was well covered by our press, and the
reports offered a most intriguing pros-
pect. We were to have a chance to learn
who owned those anonymous voices we’
had been hearing. .
We met first a Dr. John Cocutz
who testified he had been told that
the head of the Voice’s religious desk
was an atheist. Dr. Cocutz was not sure
of the man’s name. But Senator Mc-
Carthy quickly ferreted it out. It was
Roger Lyons.
Next appeared a Mrs. Patricia Shep-
herd. She had dated Mr. Lyons in the
middle forties. “Roger was one of the
first men I had met in New York. He
was quite a brain and I wasn’t. I was
fascinated.” Ah, this was more like it.
Touchingly romantic, these Americans.
Alas, the image was shattered by Mrs.
Shepherd’s next words. “He had no
belief in God. He was going to a
psychoanalyst and was very confused.”
It was, we confess, a little mortifying’
to learn we had been Hanging on the
words of a Rumanian tattle-tale and
an embittered lady of little brain. Hope-
fully we waited for the real, manly
American to appear.
At last Mr. Lyons took the stand—to
insist shakily that he did believe in God.
In a desperate attempt at proof he said
that he had been in church, well, a
month ago. And he had given $10 to
the Lutherans of New Jersey.
Next a Miss Nancy Lenkeith was
presented to us. Miss Lenkeith testified
that one Troup Matthews, interview-
ing her for a job with the Voice’s
invited her ‘“‘to
French section, had
join a collectivist group and start bear-
ing children, although I was unmar-
ried.” Miss Lenkeith was “‘sort of
stunned by the offer.’’ But not so
stunned, as our cafe wits noted, that she
could not rally and accept the job.
* Now the accusation: of being in favor
of seduction is hardly considered a
shattering charge against a man, here
in Europe. But we expec cted an American
to come forward and defend himself.
When Mr. Matthews finally appeared,
however, the broad shoulders were
bowed. “‘That collectivist idea,” he said
frantically; “I don’t know where she
got it! I'm a firm believer in monogamy.
I've got a wife and four kids to Bye
it!” :
It was during Miss Lenkeith’s testi-
mony, incidentally, that we in Europe
got a fleeting glimpse of the American’s
famed sense of humor. Senator Mc-
Carthy interrupted the witness to urge
that she postpone her shocking: tale
until a later secret session, in order to
protect tle innocence of children who
might be watching the proceedings on
television.
There followed one John C. Cald-
well, pointing a damaging finger at the
Voice’s chief of policy, W. Bradley
Connors. But Mr. Connors, as it turned
out, was quite guiltless. Mr. Caldwell
was forced to. admit that Connors was
not a disloyal American; he was simply
“a ruthless opportunist.”
And so it went. We were meeting at
last the people behind the Voice of
America, and we discovered they were
a sad crew—disgruntled, malicious, and
- frightened. Listeners in Sicily were
interested to learn that among those who
spoke to them over the Voice were some
self-styled vigilantes known to their co-
workers as the “Mafia.”
Then the shabby comedy turned bi-
zarre. Under attack for allowing quota-
tions from the works of Howard Fast
to be broadcast, the State Department
issued am order forbidding use of the
words “‘of any known controversial per-
son, Communist, fellow-traveler, etc.”
When asked just whom this blanket
description included, Mr. Humphrey,
who had issued the order, admitted,
“We really don’t know.”
But we in Western Europe knew. We
are not unacquainted with American
history. It would include Franklin D.
Roosevelt, for years a storm center of
controversy. It would include Abraham
Lincoln, who corresponded with Karl
Marx. And certainly it would include
Walt Whitman, who was fired from
the editorship of the Brooklyn Eagle
for radical sentiments, Thoreau, who
wrote a tract advocating civil disobedi-
ence, and Thomas Jefferson, who wrote:
“It behooves every man who values
liberty of conscience for himself to re-
sist invasions of it in the case of others;
or their case may, by exchange of cir-
cumstances, become his own. It behooves
him, too, in his own case, to give no
example of concession, betraying the
common right of independent opinion,
by answering questions of faith, which
the laws have left between God and
himself.”
Among the Europeans who would be
there would assuredly be
banned
Stendhal, whom the police chief of
Milan accused of holding “the most
pernicious political ideas,” and Zola,
who leaped into the Dreyfus contro-
versy, and gentle Proust, who circulated
petitions in Zola’s defense, not to men-
tion Dante and Heinrich Heine, politi-
cal exiles both.
Thinking thus, we read the news re-
ports. We read them closely. And we
saw, finally, the bizarre turn tragic,
a Voice of
committed suicide,
“Once the dogs
are on you, everything you have done
since the beginning of time becomes
suspect.” As a last irony, we read the
announcement that Senator McCarthy
when Raymond Kaplan,
America engineer,
writing in his last note:
had investigated Kaplan’s loyalty and
issued a posthumous clearance.
The Voice of America still echoes
here in Europe. We trust you will under-
stand when we confess that we no longer
listen. There are undoubtedly coura-
geous and attractive Americans, but we
did not read of them appearing on Mc-
Carthy’s witness stand. We read of
slander, and back-stabbing, and nervous
denials, and continual retreats by Sec-
retary Dulles. We can hardly be blamed
for the conclusion that the Voice we
hear from now on will be the brass
whoop of Senator McCarthy.
And so, in Rome, and Copenhagen,
and Paris, when it comes’ time for the
broadcast from America, you will excuse
us for turning off the radio with a
sardonic grin, and quietly going out for
a caffé espresso, a glass of akquavit, a
shot of cognac to help us enjoy our
mood of meditative melancholy.
BRAVO TOVARICH eR /
“hing
EET ae ain wre, Os
ook o Peek ee socom re
Soe i po” oo Pe °°
ect ‘cn
| ae fie ile a
te 8
TOO MUCH CORN
~Or Too Much Benson? . . by Bruce Catton -
Washington
T IS all beginning to look and sound
very much like the great days of the
Eightieth Congress, which bravely set
out to bring back William McKinley
and succeeded only in presenting Harry
-§. Truman with another four years in
the White House. Where it looks and
sounds that way most, just at present,
is probably in Ezra Benson’s Depart-
Secretary Benson
ment of Agriculture. Take for instance
the Corn Industry Conference which
Secretary Benson called for March 4,
(that it opened exactly twenty years
to the day after Henry Wallace had
brought a new idea about farm programs
into the department was of course only
an outlandish coincidence).
The reason for the meeting was the
fact that the Department of Agriculture,
through its Commodity Credit Corpora-
tion, currently holds some 280,000,000
bushels of corn, worth approximately
$450,000,000. That is a great deal of
corn, of course, but whether it is good
or bad to have it depends on your point
of view. If you are enthusiastic about
the ever-normal-granary idea and want
insurance against a possible poor crop
year, it is good. From other points of
-BRUCE CATTON is contributing a
series of articles about the new Wash-
ington Administration.
246
view it is bad, and those points of view
were well represented at the conference.
About half of those who attended
the meeting were farmers and their
spokesmen, including high officials of
the Farm Bureau and the Grange but
oddly enough not of the Farmers’
Union, and half were big grain dealers
and processors, including such men as
Sylvester Myers, president of the
Chicago Board of Trade, and J. William
Brady, vice-president of the Corn
Products Refining Company of New
York. The industry people did the most
significant talking. Brady set the key
by complaining that the government's
grain holdings scare people and depress
the market; he demanded an end to
the government’s operations in this
field. In the end the industry repre-
sentatives were calling for a new set-up
under which all the government's func-
tions in respect to price supports—with
the sole exception of the function of
occasionally losing money—would be
taken over by.the private grain trade.
The tone of their remarks was so
reactionary that even the Farm Bureau
officials got worried, and when it was
moved that a subcommittee be ap-
pointed to make formal recommenda-
tions along this line about half of the
delegates did not vote.
The conference adjourned without
quite making explicit the desire of the
industry members for a corn price-sup-
port program handled entirely by them-
selves. It came very near it, however,
and high officials in the Department of
Agriculture feel much the same.
Secretary Benson’s choice for presi-
dent of the Commodity Credit Corpora-
tion is John H. Davis, who is on leave
from his job as executive vice-president
of the National Wool Marketing Cor-
poration and who previously was with
the National Council of Farmer Co-
operatives. Mr. Davis has said that much
of the heavy government buying could
be handled more. efficiently through
commercial market channels.
~ Farmer
When the National Council of
Cooperatives met in New
Orleans last January, its president, D.
W. Brooks—now a member of Benson's
top Agricultural Advisory Committee—
came out flatly in favor of letting private
enterprise handle the price-support
program. Support loans would be made
by bankers, and the grain on which
loans were made would be stored by
regular commercial operators; the sole
important function of the Commodity
Credit Corporation would be to under-
write the program and to stand the loss
if there was one. With industry press-
ing in that direction and with so many
of the Department of Agriculture
people leaning that way without even
being pushed, it is not hard to believe
that some such program will ultimately
be made official.
TO UNDERSTAND industry's enthu-
siasm for it one need only take a brief
glance at the way the corn price-support
program works. The Commodity Credit
Corporation will make loans to a farmer
up to 90 per cent of the parity-price
value of his crop, taking title to his.
corn as security. If the market price
goes up, the farmer simply sells his
corn in the usual way and pays off the
loan. If the market price drops, he in
effect invites the government to fore- —
close on its loan, and the Commodity
Credit Corporation takes physical pos-
session of the corn. Ultimately, of
course, the corporation has to dispose
of it with the least possible disturbance
to the market and the least possible loss
to the government.
In this operation money is loaned and
grain is stored; and for a long time the
trade has been asking why all that lend-
ing and storing should not be done by
the commercial operators. Let the
farmer, it is argued, put his grain under
loan with a private trader. He will get
his money, just as he does now, and if
the price drops, the trader will be reim-
bursed by the Commodity Credit Cor-
The N. ATION. :
the trade do all the money-making and
the government all the money-losing
_ would be hard to imagine.
The proposal also has its political
’ appeal. It would make possible an ap-
parent reduction in government spend-
ing. The reduction would be no more
than apparent, but it would show up on
the budget, or could be made to show
up there. Like this:
The action arm, so to speak, of the
Commodity Credit Corporation is the
Production Marketing Administration.
This has a large field staff for making
loans, handling papers, operating the
grain-storage facilities, and so on. If
the loan-and-storage operation is turned
. over to private industry, all these people
could be fired, and the saving could be
pointed to with vast pride. To be sure,
bankers and traders would be paid for
making the loans, and grain dealers
would be paid for receiving, storing,
~
A este eee Tee Way and psteeds g the grain; so in the end
the cost to the government would be
just as great as it is now, if not a little
more. But the ‘‘saving’’ could be made
to look good in the newspapers.
THE EXTENT to which the whole
price-support system has lost favor in the
Department of Agriculture has to be
seen to be appreciated: The Secretary's
economic adviser—the job held under
Secretary Brannan by Louis Bean—is
Don Paarlberg, formerly of the faculty
of Purdue University. A little more than
a year ago, when Dr. Paarlberg was
presenting the “Case Against Price
Supports” to the semi-annual meeting
of the National Egg Products Associa-
tion in Chicago, he remarked that “price
supports for farm products are based on
the assumption that a dollar is worth
more in the pocket of a farmer than in
the pocket of anyone else.”
As a matter of simple fact, on farm
— ."
policy this Administration is simply
following the trail blazed by the Eight-
ieth Congress. The Eightieth Congress
passed a law forbidding the Commodity
Credit Corporation to lease or acquire
any real property for grain-storage pur-
poses. The wording was such that the
corporation could not even rent vacant
lots to put up certain storage bins which
it already owned. In its effect on the
farmer this law operated just as the
new price-support system now being
proposed would operate—it left the
farmer entirely at the mercy of the
grain-storage monopolists. “
As it turned out, the grain-storage
people did not always have much mercy.
They could compel the farmer to sell
at their own price, and a great many
times they did exactly that, And the
farmer, in case anyone has forgotten, got
so mad about it that in the fall of 1948
the Republicans lost an election which
looked absolutely fool-proof.
“LIMELIGHT”
Chaplin and His Censors .
“WHEN any group: of Americans,
whether they were in the army or not,
starts setting up its own little list of
who is acceptable and who is not, and
acting as though their judgment ought
to be binding on all other Americans,
then certain basic principles are being
violated.” The Very Reverend Francis
B. Sayre, Jr., dean of the Episcopal
Cathedral in Washington, who can by
no stretch of innuendo be linked to
communism, was protesting against the
“servile brand of patriotism’ recently
demonstrated by the American Legion
in its attempt to prevent showings of
the Chaplin ilm “Limelight.”
The Legion’s first move was the adop-
tion of a resolution by the national exec-
utive committee on October 12,+1952,
urging motion-picture exhibitors to
withhold presentation of “Limelight”
until the Department of Justice could
WILLIAM MURRAY is a frequent
contributor to The Nation. |
take action on Chaplin’s reentry permit
into the United States. On October 20,
according to James F. O'Neil, director
of publications for the Legion, Robert
Benjamin and Arthur Krim of United
Artists visited his office and told him
that they were “stuck” with “Lime-
light’” and had to go ahead with dis-
tribution plans. O'Neil replied that the
Legion would not only take action
against “Limelight” but also “consider
the fact that United Artists is the dis-
tributor of the film,” a thinly veiled
threat of future boycott. He noted, he
added, that United Artists also dis-
tributed “High Noon,” implying that
the Legion did not approve of Eat
picture either.
As the Legion prepared to act upon
its resolution, it acquired a powerful ally
in Howard Hughes, board chairman of
R.K.O. Radio Pictures Corporation and
a principal stockholder in the R.K.O.
Theaters Corporation, the theater chain
which would exhibit “Limelight.”
by William Murray
Hughes wrote the Legion’s Hollywood
Post 43 that although he had no legal
control over the theater corporation, he
was doing his best to persuade the man-
agement to “take the necessary legal
measures to cancel all bookings of
‘Limelight’.”
Soon, wherever the picture was to be
shown, organized opposition developed.
The pattern of action was simple. As the
day for the scheduled showing ap-
proached, the local Legion post began
_ to agitate, threatening picketing and a
boycott, holding widely publicized press
conferences, calling “‘citizens’ rallies,”
and trying in other ways to intimidate ~
the theater manager. Its campaign was
frequently supported by other organiza-
tions—the Veterans of Foreign Wars,
the Amvets, the Catholic War Veterans,
the Jewish War Veterans, the Disabled
American Veterans, and all sorts of
Americanism committees.
The theater manager found himself —
caught between the ruthless opposition
247
of the pressure groups and the indiffer-
ence of his parent organizations. R.K.O.
Theaters Corporation turned its back on
its own exhibitors, apparently in accord
with the policies of Hughes. Theater
Owners of America and the Allied
States Association, the two leading ex-
hibitor organizations, adopted a hands-
off policy ‘regarding Legion picket lines
and refused to protect local theaters.
Brandel
Since the two associations comprise the
majority of theaters in the country, a
strong stand on their part would have
done much to offset local pressure. In-
stead, they released a pious statement
pointing out that the local managers
and owners would have “‘to live with
the people to whom they show their
films.”
A QUICK SURVEY of a few sample
cities gives an idea of the effectiveness
of the campaign, although it is hard to
gauge accurately what the drawing
power of “Limelight” would have been
under normal conditions. In the New
York area ‘Limelight’ opened simul-
.taneously in sixty-seven theaters for a
scheduled week’s run. There was almost
no picketing, but the film was with-
drawn in all but a few theaters after the
first three days. In Columbus the same
thing occurred, and the box office was ~
weak. In Hollywood, after Legion Post
43 sent letters to 200 theater operators
and threatened picketing, the scheduled
showings were canceled. In Newburgh,
New York, a large delegation from the
Yocal Legion post called at the theater
before the opening, and the film was not
presented. In Washington the two local
theaters which advertised it were pick-
eted, but a strong editorial campaign by
the Washington Post did much to rally
248
public support, and “Limelight” played
to “good houses.” In New Orleans the
film was withdrawn after three days in
spite of good business and favorable
audience response. The local manager
said that he had been instructed to
withdraw it by the R. K. O. office in
New York.
Whenever there was time to organize
a defense, the attack was defeated. Un-
fortunately this was seldom the case.
By now “Limelight” in the normal
course of should have been
shown. in approximately 2,500 theaters
throughout the country. On February 15
it had been shown in only about 150.
The power of an ignorant and irre-
sponsible censorship “has bene demon-
strated.
The attack on Chaplin and ‘‘Lime-
Hight” benefited from the peculiar and
very personal animosity of certain public
figures toward the comedian. Nowhere
is nonconformism so dreaded today as
in Hollywood, and Chaplin has long
been recognized by Hedda Hopper,
Louella Parsons, and other apostles of
mediocrity as one of a dying but still
dangerous species—the individual with
a mind and tastes of his own. The feel-
ing against Chaplin probably dates back
to ““Monsieur Verdoux,” in which he
unloaded a good many of his ideas about
contemporary .society. Whatever the
cause, personal or political, the pattern
of the attack threatens to become a
dangerously familiar one.
The campaign was well planned and
faultlessly executed. No objections were
offered while the film was still in pro-
duction. By launching the attack at the
last minute its instigators made sure that
no support for Chaplin could Be organ-
ized in time. McCarthy's methods were
copied. Chaplin was accused of “pro-
communism” and ‘‘pro-Communist. ac-
tivities.” No proofs or facts of any kind
were furnished. A secondary campaign
laid emphasis on the comedian’s per-
sonal life, especially his marriages to
women considerably younger than him-
self. An explanation of ~the Legion’s
hostility was offered by Lewis K.
Gough, the tyrannosaurus rex of the
organization, in an interview with the
press on February 25. “We fought for
our country in three wars,” said Mr.
Gough, ‘and since we didn’t achieve
our objectives, we continue to fight for
them now. We are continuing our col-
events
} , eae Ft Pet
lective efforts for Americanism
adequate national security.’ This is a
statement of truly magnificent ambigu-
ity. He added, referring to the Chaplin
case: “If you carry this thinking to its
. logical conclusion, you will permit Com-
munists to write books, to paint murals,
to infiltrate every branch of educational
and cultural life.” The implication, of
course, is that Chaplin is a Communist,
_ although Mr. Gough-did not risk saying
so directly.
THE FIGHT against ‘the spreading pa-
_ talysis of censorship might seem hopeless
were it not for the growing | public
awareness of the nature of the struggle.
Newspapers have reported that the
letters they received on “Limelight” ran
about three to one in favor of at least
offering the film. Exhibitors say they
had many telephone calls objecting to
cancelation of the showings. The Legion
was forced to admit that it did not op-
pose the content of the film but only
Chaplin as an individual. Mr. Gough
remarked that the individual cannot be
disassociated from his work; such a
concept of censorship if consistently ap-
plied would remove most books from
the shelves of our libraries and close
most of our theaters.
Even leading business mea, who
usually prefer to remain opinionless and
solvent, have recognized the danger.
Gunther Lessing, chairman of the So-
ciety of Independent Motion Picture
Producers and a member of the execu-
tive committee of the Motion Picture
Alliance for the Preservation of Ameri-
can Ideals, recently attacked pressure-
group tactics. Mr. Lessing does not like
Chaplin, has no desire to see “Lime-
light,” and is himself a legionnaire, but
he is too shrewd a business man not te
know that the privileges of free business
depend upon the privileges of free men.
Richard Powell, president of the Tele-*
vision Writers of America, has urged
return to the American tradition of
“nothing sacred.” “We can do this,” he
said, “‘only by smashing excessive cen-
sorship from sponsors, agencies, net-
works, pressure ‘groups, pickets, profes-
sional black-listers and blackmailers,
witch-hunters, and sel. appointed guard-
ians of ‘our way of life’.” :
It must be encouraging to Dean Sayre
to know that his is not a still, small
voice of protest. he
The Nat
sa
Fabulous Dialogue
A Review by Thomas. Reed Ponell
HOLMES-LASKI LETTERS. The Cor-
_fespondence of Mr. Justice Holmes
and Harold J. Laski, 1916-1935.
Edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe.
Harvard University Press. Two Vol-
umes. $12.50.
N JULY, 1916, an English lad of
twenty-three who had come down
from Oxford a few years before, had
taught government at McGill for two
years, and was then a junior instructor
at Harvard was taken by his friend
Felix Frankfurter from Cambridge to
Beverly Farms for a call on Mr.. Justice
Holmes, who was more than fifty years
his senior. The occasion was a mem-
orable one. for both. To Laski’s polite
note of appreciation the Justice quickly
wrote a longer reply, and thus began the
correspondence which it takes over 1,400
pages of far from large print to put
between covers.
In this wealth of interchange there is
not a page that this reader has not found
thrilling. The main stuff of most of the
letters is books and people. The writers
swap views on history, philosophy, polit-
“ical theory, law, and literature in mutual
concord and mutual dissent. It is a trib-
ute to the civilized intellectual and emo-
tional endowment of both that the wide
differences between them never move
to any departure from the high level of
intellectual and affectionate regard and
respect.
Witness this beginning of a Laski
letter in 1927:
asm y
My dear Justice: Your letter was indeed
a delight; and though I should, I think,
deny almost the whole of your economic
diagnosis as born of a philosophy contra-
dicted by the whole trend of modern fact
and analysis, I enjoyed every word of it.
I add that it is at bottom the economics of
the soldier who accepts a rough equation
THOMAS REED POWELL, professor
emeritus of the Harvard Law School, is
the author of “Separation of Powers,”
“The Supreme Court and State Police
- Power,” and other books, and a con-
__ tributor to legal periodicals.
between isness and oughtness. I see no
validity in such a creed except upon prin-
ciples I would deny at the stake.
In reply Holmes stood his ground
with firmness, as in an earlier letter he
had said:
I haven’t quite finished your book. You
state the pros and cons fairly—but with
an implied sympathy for beliefs that I
believe to be noxious humbugs—that
grieves me.
These opposing attitudes have long
been familiar to all who have read other
writings of both Holmes and Laski, and
there are many thinkers who will be
far from agreeing with either. The di-
vergences should not be overemphasized
here, for they do not bulk big in the
collection as a whole. They should be
mentioned mainly to highlight the fact
that it was not kinship of viewpoint that
drew the men together but the common
sharing of the delight of letting free
minds roam widely and deeply over the
broadest range of human knowledge and
thought. There could be no doubt that
each was greatly sharpened by the other
and that there was a zest in their think-
ing and their writing that could not be
excited by any solitary enterprise of
fashioning essays for an unknown
audience.
The reading of both men was amaz-
ing. Laski roamed the more widely be-
cause he had more leisure and because so
much of the reading was part of his job.
He helped to compensate Holmes for his
absorption in certioraris and conferences
and opinions and the consequent denial
of prolific personal contacts by filling his
letters to the Justice with reports of many
interesting conversations and with no-
tices of what seem to be thousands of
books old and new. There are at any
rate many too many to count. Mr.
Howe’s superb work of editing has led
him to give 40 pages of a Biographical
Appendix and an index of 175 pages
more. These items of course cover the
references from Holmes as well as those
from Laski.
Happily, doubtless, for the wider
company which can find interest and
delight in these rich volumes, it should
be said that law and economics are but
minor strands in the variegated texture
of the correspondence. One may hope
for informed reviews from philosophers
and literary experts. Indeed, the letters
themselves are a rich mine of reviews
in these fields, often in a single sentence
or brief paragraph. Both men had an
instinct for the jugular, to borrow a
Holmes phrase. The most learned tomes
could be touched off briefly, as could the
most learned men. In it all there was
little if anything of the lamp.
With Laski all the learning and
all the theory and theorizing seemed
to. be pure spontaneous fun. With
Holmes it sometimes seemed that his
reading was im part at least the off-
spring of a puritanical canon of the duty
of self-improvement. But there is no
doubt that he found Laski’s learning and.
comments a great stimulation. He could
hardly have‘responded so enthusiastically
on any other hypothesis.
MORE COMPELLING than confident
assertion of the merits of these recipro-
cating flashes would be copious quota-
tion. Yet the temptation must be resisted
as if a habit-forming drug. It would be
equally hard to make a choice and hard
to stop when once in swing. So instead,
here is a suggestion to others which
one may hope will bear occasional fruit.
An essay and perhaps a book might well
_ be written on each of the major lines of
thought that recur with sufficient fre-
quency. Not that the nuggets could be
fired in a crucible to make a well-
rounded and proportioned pattern or
form. Neither Holmes nor Laski was a
conventional systematizer, and some of
their more fundamental prepossessions
offer less in sight and delight than the
many sparks struck off in quick passing.
Or to change the figure, fragments of
fleece on the hedges of time, as Holmes
has put it. The fragments here ought
not to be left ungathered and unwoven
if there are masters of the several arts -
who could fashion from them a cloth of
gold.
So wide is the range compassed by
this almost weekly sharing of nearly
twenty years that of necessity different
readers will find different parts of major
interest and delight. None, however,
with a fair familiarity with matters of
the mind should find much if any of it
249
‘teally hard sledding. If such spots are
met here and there, the best advice is to
have sufficient character to skip or skim
for a little—but only for a little, lest a
welcome bit be missed. And for any who
would refrain from sampling because of
hostility to views and causes which are
here espoused by one friend or the
other, one can only suggest that the
deep divergences did not deprive them
of serene and. thrilling joy in sharing
with each other their minds and hearts.
The Unreflecting Warrior
A Review by Ednard Crankshaw
AMERICAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS,
1781-1947. By William Appleton
Williams. Rinehart and Company. $5.
VEN in the heat of war the wise
man snatches an occasional breath-
ing space to recall how the war started
and to reflect on what it is supposed to
be about and how it is likely to end.
Action begets action and soon develops
a life and character of its own; and the
unreflecting warrior finds himself caught
up by an avalanche of unexplained cause
and unforeseen effect which, if it does
not overwhelm him, carries him a long
way from where he wants to be, and
always downward. Thus, in the so-called
cold war we snowball on from day to
day, from year to year, rarely asking
where we are going, or why, until we
find we have lost all flexibility and free-
dom of maneuver and the power to
profit by our own mistakes, to say
nothing of the mistakes of others: until,
in a word, what should be a subtle and
elaborate policy for action has been
reduced to the intellectual content of a
college yell swollen to the proportions
of a national anthem.
This mindless emotionalism which
passes for a considered attitude toward
Russia, this progressive illiteracy which
has done away with the rich vocabulary
of negotiation in favor of a solitary
swear word, “appeasement,” this gallop-
ing paralysis of the independent mind
may have gone too far to be cured by
any means short of atom bombs explod-
ing in our midst. But the least we can do
is to try to cure it. And that is why I
EDWARD CRANKSHAW is a lead-
ing British authority on Russia. During
the war he spent eighteen months in
Moscow with a British military mission
* and after the war published “Russia
and Britain’ and “Russia and the Rus-
sians.” His latest book is “Cracks in the®
Kremlin Wall.”
250
hail this book about Russo-American
relations. Mr. Williams is one of the
triers. He tries to get at the roots of
our disease by causing the complete
history of Russo-American relations to
pass before our eyes in one immense
sweep. It is a fascinating story.
The early days make aseptic reading.
Russia was expanding. So was America.
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams
could happily confide in the Czar. His
idea of the United States was ‘‘a nation
coextensive with the North American
continent, destined by God and nature
to be the most populous and most
powerful people ever combined under
one social compact.” In those days
Russia saw in the United States a valu-
able counterpoise to England, and _ its
attitude was the key to American ex-
pansion in a northwesterly direction. It
was not until the Americans got to
Oregon that Petersburg began to feel
uneasy. But even then the Russians were
quite realistic: “They have taken Cali-
fornia, Oregon, and sooner or later they
will get Alaska. It is inevitable. It
cannot be prevented; and it would be
better to yield with good grace and cede
the territory.” Russia, for its part, ex-
pected the United States to smile on
the ‘‘manifest destiny” of Russia “‘on the
Amur, and further south, even in
Korea.” It was about then that the New
York Herald could write about Russia
and America as “two young giants, en-
gaged in the same work—that of ex-
pansion and progression . . . the in-
terests of both demand that they should
go hand in hand in their march to
empire.”
It looked as though they might. But
they met head-on in China. Brooks
Adams, who developed a theory of
capitalist expansion not unlike Lenin’s,
with the difference that he was for it,
wrote in 1899: “Eastern Asia now ap-
pears without much doubt to be the only
See
CS a ae
district likely soon to be able to absorb —
any great manufactures. . . . Whether
we like it or not, we are forced to
compete for the seat of international
exchanges, or, in other words, for the
seat of empire.” The competition grew
strong, and Russia had to watch much .
American capital being poured into
China, only drawing the line at an
American proposal to construct a rail-
way across Manchuria. Even Brooks
Adams was fairly well satisfied. In
terms which the Bolsheviks some dec-
ades later were to make their own he
summarized the American achievement:
“She has long held South America
closed; she is now closing China; and
while caging Europeans within their
narrow peninsula, she is slowly suffo-
cating them with her surplus.” The
only real competitor, he believed, was
Russia. England was fast becoming an
economic vassal of the United States.
DO AMERICANS read their own nine-
teenth-century history? I don’t know.
But I do know that the Russians read it.
And since they still think of foreign
‘policy in the terms of John Quincy
Adams and his later descendant they
not unnaturally imagine that the Amer-
icans still think like that too.
I have dwelt on these early days
because they seem to me supremely im-
portant. Mr. Williams gives much more
space to what happened after the Revo-
lution, where he is on weaker ground.
From 1917 onward American states-
men are hammered for their failure in
logic and for the disastrous muddles
which have arisen from this failure.
Now this, in effect, is an indictment, not
of individual statesmen like Wilson
and Lansing, but of democracy. Democ-
racy is, and must be, shot through with
warm-hearted idealism and can never
emulate the cold, calculating self-seek-
ing of autocracy. Its tragedy lies largely
in the awful mess that follows from the
attempt to blend the interests of power
with spontaneous human generosity. It
is this that makes the Roosevelts and
the Wilsons—and the Eisenhowers. And
it always will. Further, if Wilson and
Lansing had been as ready to do a deal
with Lenin as Stalin was to do a deal
with Hitler, there would be nothing to.
choose between Wilson and Stalin. In
my view there is a great deal to choose
between them. Stalin was a more im-
ae
TI ON e
ha a
“pressive animal than
comes to that, a Bengal tiger. makes
them both look shabby. More to the
point, the policy of America, as of
Britain, since the Revolution has been
moved by hope; the policy of the Bol-
sheviks by the total denial of faith
in human nature—or the negation of
hope. You can take your choice; but a
choice it has to be. Mr. Williams does
not acknowledge this. And thus a great
part of his book, his criticism of Wilson
and Lansing and his championship of
Robbins and Thompson, contains much
special pleading. He puts the Americans
and the Bolsheviks on a level. They
were not on a level.
Nevertheless, muddles and _ idiocies
there were in plenty. And the great
merit of this account of them is that Mr.
Williams shows us American policy as
the Bolsheviks, still thinking in terms of
Brooks Adams, themselves saw it. And
as they see it now. His coda, a more
generalized summary of Russo-American
relations since 1939, is even better.
The Western reaction to Lenin’s chal-
lenge may have been foolish, vacillating,
and misguided, but in broad lines it
was inevitable. Where the West went
wrong, no doubt, was at a later stage,
when it was desirable to ask not only
whether Stalin was having second
thoughts but also what was the exact
nature of those thoughts. Where the
West, and above all America, went
wrong ig particular was in the closing
stages of the last war when with skill,
resolution, and a sense of reality there
was a very real chance—which persisted,
I bélieve, in a modified form until 1947.
In the days of Yalta it was clear
what Stalin wanted. He wanted eco-
nomic assistance on a large scale to re-
build the Soviet Union. He wanted a
three-power agreement to regulate the
world with particular reference to the
security of the Soviet Union. He
wanted, as part of this agreement, a
recognized division of spheres of in-
fluence in Eastern Europe and an
arrangement of frontiers calculated to
render Germany innocuous and_ the
Soviet Union strong. All these aims
were expressly stated. What ~ Stalin
would have offered in exchange for a
‘definite agreement on Eastern Europe
and long-term credits fronm America we
do not know because we never asked
him. Churchill alone attempted a pilot
i
Vee
Wilson; but, if it
Encyclopedia of
ABERRATIONS
A PSYCHIATRIC HANDBOOK
Edited by EDWARD PODOLSKY, M.D.
State University of New York Medical College
With a Foreword by ALEXANDRA ADLER, M.D.
New York University College of Medicine
This is the first systematic exposition of human
aberrational behavior. In this volume over fifty
eminent psychologists and psychiatrists discuss
all types of aberrations, with particular
emphasis on their psychodynamics. The material
is arranged in alphabetical sequence for easy
reference.
SOME OF THE ENTRIES
Abasia
Ablutomania
Abulia
Acalculia
Acataphasia
Aggression
Alcoholism
Amnesia
Anal eroticism
Anancasm
Anti-Semitic attitudes
Anxiety, dental
Aphasia and linguistics
Autism, infantile
Auto-punishment
Benzedrine, addiction
Bestiality
Body image disturbances
Boredom
Brontophobia
Cacodaemonomania
Chloral delirium
Choreomania
Clairvoyance
Claustrophobia
Cocaine, addiction
Crime, neurotic
Criminality
Depression
Devil worship
Dream murders
Dysprosody
Ecouteur
Ecstasy, artificial
Erotographomania
Exhibitionism
Family tension
Fellatio
Fetishism
Folie a deux
Frigidity
Frottage
Gambling
Gammacism
Gelasmus
Gustatory sweating
Gynephobia
Hair-plucking
Hallucinations
Haptodysphoria
Hashish, addiction
Head banging
Heroin, addiction
Heterolalia
Homosexuality
Hysteria
Iconolagny
Illusions
Inferiority feelings
Intellectual
malfunctioning
Kainotophobia
Kakorrhaphiophobia
Kleptomania
Language frustration
Laughter, fits of
Lesbianism
Logorrhea
Lying
Malingering
Masochism
Menstrual anomalies
Mescaline intoxication
Murderer, mind of
Mutism
Mysophobia
Narcolepsy
Necrophilia
Negativism
Nudism
Nymphomania
Ochlophobia
Onanism
Opium, addiction
Pavor nocturnus
Pessimism
Pethidine, addiction
Phobias
Pornography
Psychosis
Puberty, aberrational
Sadism
Schizophrenia
Somnambulism
Sophomania
Suicjde
Therioanthropy
Xenophobia
Zoophilism
OVER HALF A MILLION WORDS
Distributed to the trade by Citadel Press
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251
agreement granting him a free hand in
Rumania and Bulgaria in exchange for
a free hand in Greece and an equal
share of interest in Yugoslavia.
The story of these years is all too
clearly told by Mr. Williams. And any
American who thinks that the cold
war is wholly and in detail due to Stalin
and yet is humble enough to wonder
whether America and the West in gen-
eral can humanly have been 100 per cent |
right all along should go out of his
way to read it. It is the sort of story
which, widely known and understood,
might start in people a fruitful train of
ideas. Or it might not. We are pretty
far gone. One cannot help asking
whether people who believe that Russia
made the Chinese Revolution will ever
have ideas again.
New Books in Brick
Cross-Country Highway
U. S. 40. By George R.\ Stewart.
Houghton Mifflin Company. $5. Mr.
Stewart, whose specialty is giving liter-
ary life to natural phenomena—his
“Storm” and “Fire” will be remembered
by many readers—here turns his descrip-
tive talents to a great work of man, the
highway that in linking Atlantic City
to San Francisco presents a true cross-
section of the continent. The text of his
story of this route, which incorporates
a number of famous roads, is lavishly
supplemented with photographs. Many
of these pictures, all the author’s own
work, have considerable aesthetic appeal.
Their primary purpose, however, is
documentary, and each is accompanied
by a page or so of interpretation which
proves once again Mr. Stewart’s eye for
significant detail.
“Modern routes,” writes Mr. Stewart,
‘“are actually the result of a compromise
between the always inescapable facts of
geography and the equally inescapable
_hand of the past.” Ably assisted by that
prince of cartographers, Erwin Raiz, he
does a notable job in showing the inter-
relation of these two forces.
Man’s Choice
WHO SPEAKS FOR MAN. By Nor-
man Cousins. Macmillan. $3.50. Ever
since the war Norman Cousins has been
taking time off, now and then, from
editing the Saturday Review of Litera-
ture to dart about the globe taking the
temperature of human society and pre-
scribing world federation as the only
«ure for its dangerous aggregation of
illnesses. He observed the mushroom
cloud at Bikini, the beginnings of recon-
struction in Germany, and the air lift
Ze
He interviewed Nehru,
Thyssen, and the survivors of Hiro-
shima. On an assignment from the State
Department to interpret America for
the Asians he visited Japan, Korea,
Hongkong, and India. In this book he
describes his experiences and draws his
conclusion, which is that man is now
in Berlin.
face to face with his ultimate decision
—the choice between a world state and
world destruction. “The end is the
supreme development and release of
conscience, manifesting itself not only
as a brake on conduct but as a source of
majestic inspiration in human affairs—
on individual and group. ... War is an
invention of the human ,mind. The
human mind can invent peace with
justice.” Alas, there are few things more
soporific than restatements of high pur-
poses with which everyone agrees, or
more frustrating than noble aims which
no one knows how to implement.
Parents and Children
DON’T BE AFRAID OF YOUR
CHILD. By Hilde Bruch, M.D. Farrar,
Straus and Young. $3.75. Dr. Bruch
would steer parents away from child-
guidance books, particularly those which
are rigidly authoritarian toward parents
while counseling the most flexible per-
missiveness toward children. She sees
parents as confused and trapped by
simplifications and popularizations of the
very theories which promise to liberate
them. Parent-child relationships
mechanized even in the name of love:
natural childbirth, demand feeding, and
the rest become tests of motherliness,
and the contributions of the psycholo-
gists have themselves become escapes
from freedom.
Parents beset by impossible standards
are
oe
, fo a oe
and artificial demands should be re- x
assured by Dr. Bruch’s calm emphasis
on independent judgment. Some, while
benefiting from her insights, will have
reservations. It is at first refreshing but
on second thought disquieting to read a
book by a psychiatrist which does not
take into account the formidable resist-
ances in our society to the modern —
psychologies and to the innovations they
_ have encouraged in education. These
resistances are reinforced, not alone by
the cultist excesses which she analyzes
so soundly, but by reactionaries who fear
psychology for its liberating potential-
ities, however much they may value it
when it serves their interests. Recogni-
tion of these obstacles might have re-
minded her that such terms as “innate
capacity” and “poorly gifted” are as
loaded as ‘‘permissiveness’ and “real
love,” and that surely she begs a big
question when she settles for the child’s
development of ‘‘proper inner directives
about his place in the world.”
Dr. Bruch is right in pointing out that
theory is not therapy. Yet some aware-
ness of the implications of the terrible
problems of freedom—as seen, for ex-
ample, in Erich Fromm’s “Escape from
Freedom” and Erik Erikson’s ‘‘Child-
hood and Society’’—secures us at least
from oversimplification, including Dr.
Bruch’s assurances that we can “‘simply”
be ourselves.
MacKenzie King
THE INCREDIBLE CANADIAN. By
Bruce Hutchison. Longmans, Green. $5.
It is easy to understand why this study
of MacKenzie King, the Liberal leader
who dominated Canadian politics for
thirty years, should have caused a furor
north of the border. Seeking to explain
“the mystery” of his subject—“‘out-
wardly the dullest . . . inwardly the
most vivid, fascinating, and improbable
issue of the Canadian race’ the author
carries candor almost to the point of
cruelty. Yet immoral as King’s means
often were, Hutchison’s final verdict
seems to be that they were justified by
his achievements in revolutionizing, al-
most stealthily, Canada’s economy and
in welding its disparate elements into a
nation. Here is meat for controversy
best left to Canadians. For readers in
the United States the book is valuable
for the vivid light it throws on recent
The NATION —
= aT
ee former
acy correspondent at Ottawa
and now editor of a British Columbia
paper, is a keen reporter. Despite a dif-
fuse and somewhat purple style, he held
this reviewer's interest to the end.
Student in Peking
OUT OF RED CHINA. By Liu Shaw-
tong. Translated by Jack Chia and Henry
Walter. Duell, Sloan and Pearce—Little,
Brown. $4. Mr. Liu was a student in
Peking when the Communists captured
the city in 1948. To make a living he
joined a Communist training group, be-
came a “‘people’s correspondent,’’ and
“Yanded in the Propaganda Ministry,
where he managed to forge the passes
that enabled him to flee to Hongkong.
His political views are those of a naive
and self-centered urban youth, convinced
that his hatred of communism is an ear-
mark of liberalism. He tells us more
about his joyous participation in office
intrigue than about land redistribution.
Mr. Liu is now in Formosa, appar-
ently serving as a propagandist. His two-
year-old book, Dr. Hu Shih reveals in
an enthusiastic preface, has been “‘some-
what freely embellished” in translation
in this country. The product does credit
neither to Dr. Hu Shih nor to its
publishers.
Theater
oe eee eee eee eee eee ee ee ee oe ee
Harold Clurman
N OUR times, many things are big,
very few have grandeur. We are more
familiar with the complicated than with
the complex. We have nerves rather
than feelings. Our thinking is minute,
tight, microscopic: we are able to write
the Gettysburg address on a pinpoint
and make a camel pass through a
needle’s eye, but our lives, thoughts,
conceptions lack breadth, sinew, scope.
Who paints pictures like Tintoretto?
What men look like Rembrandt's?
What women like Titian’s? Who plans
novels like “Les Misérables” ? Who can
act Shakespeare?
The half-pint will not do. Refinement
sis not enough. Excess must be the norm.
We think of the Shakespearean actor of
the past as an inspired monster. Look
-at the portraits of the older players in
‘Shakespearean roles: they all have
something fabulous about them—the
wildness of Kean’s eye, the defiant
‘gruffness of Forrest’s bearing, the
melancholy in Booth, the painful deli-
cacy of Barrymore’s profile. Laurence
Olivier’s best Shakespearean perform-
ances are in minor character parts.
The City Center “Merchant . of
Venice” was a college-educated stock
production. It had practically no direc-
_ tion whatsoever. There were some pretty
dresses, a bit of haphazard choreog-
_ raphy, intelligible diction, a sympathetic
_ Prince of Morocco in Earle Hyman, and
now and again a nice reading. In the
midst of all this Luther Adler tried to
give us a new, thoughtful, and in cer-
tain respects a highly original Shylock.
No one has yet decided exactly what
“The Merchant of Venice” is. It was a
farcical melodrama at one time, a hu-
manized melodrama at another. It has
been called a fairy tale, a tragi-comedy,
an actor’s vehicle, an anti-Semitic tract,
a propaganda piece for tolerance, an:
Elizabethan potpourri, a bad play, and
a masterpiece. It is probably all of these:
that is its fascination. But it remains for
the director who stages it to determine
what it shall be in a particular produc-
tion.
To me “The Merchant” seems quite
clearly a poet’s parable on the subject
of wealth, justice, and love. Shake-
speare’s Venice is the city of pleasure
and sensual romance founded on mercan-
tile prosperity. The well-to-do wallow in
luxury which verges on corruption.
Their morality is Christians in name
only. Shylock is the poisoned conscience
of Venice. It depends on his services
and despises him for it, as he in turn
despises it for its hypocrisy. Venice spits
on its own face by spitting on Shylock’s.
Shylock destroys himself by responding
to the offense against him in terms of
the city’s own logic. Shylock’s desire for
revenge—all his arguments to justify
his position—are part of a mercantile
error: it takes no account of mercy or
love. Shakespeare tells us in ‘The
Merchant of Venice’ that Shylock and
his tormentors are opposite sides of the
same counterfeit coin—the law, order,
and justice of the ordinary world, a
traffic in trade, wealth, enjoyment with-
out love.
Luther Adler has tried to set a
rational interpretation of Shylock’s
character within this* pattern. His Shy-
lock is a youngish Renaissance merchant
—on the stage of the City Center he
seemed the only Italian rather than the
only “Jew.” He is vigorous, shrewd,
offended (rather than aggricved), iron-
ical, logical, and bitter with the con-
scious bitterness of a suppressed radical.
He sheds few tears: he eschews pathos.
He brings Antonio to trial to prove a
point—that he (Shylock) will be de-
feated in the end even though “right”
is on his side. There is a certain savage
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triumph in his defeat: Shylock has con-
firmed his own pessimism and his scorn.
He knows for all time now that no one
can expect honesty and goodness from
the fawning tradesmen of falsely
Christian faith.
This Shylock holds the attention. The
actor is constantly making a point. He
is plastically interesting, and he has real
dramatic motivation throughout. There
are splendid ‘moments: for example, his
anguished cry of ‘“I*am content’? which
reveals the knowledge that he can never
win over the cruelty of the vested in-
terests against him. Yet our sympathy
is not won; Shylock’s resentment does
not stir us. We are not touched, exalted,
or even—as in the case of the malevo-
lent Shylocks of the past—repelled or
horrified by him.
Adler’s Shylock has vividness and
power but insufficient depth. It is well
conceived but emotionally thin.’ It is
impelled by the actor’s mind and will,
not nourished by his emotions. It is
somehow impersonal, lacking in warmth
and mystery. It is small. This Shylock
loves no one, and though he is vibrantly
angry, also does not hate. He seems
. guilty of nothing—so he cannot suffer.
And without — suffering Shylock is
nothing. For though Shylock must not
be guilty in the meaning given to the
term by his paltry accusers, he is guilty
of a hate as sinful as the vileness that
provoked it. The suffering which gave
rise to and is the consequence of Shy-
lock’s sin is what redeems him for us.
Luther AdlIer is one of the very few
actors among us who could even essay
such a part as Shylock. The limitation
of his effort here is part of the whole
problem of the contemporary theater:
To do Shakespeare on the heroic level
one has to reach beyond the measure of
o 4:
the naturalistic, the sensible, the ex-
plicit. There must be a kind of meta-
physical passion, a reaching inward, out-
ward, upward, beyond the pale of the °
proved and the defined to music, to
poetry, and to the suprapersonal—to
that realm of imagination which is be-
yond formal explanation. But for that
one has to have genius—or a director,
a production idea, a Theater to prepare
and aid in the quest.
Records
B. H. Haggin
NE further observation on Ameri-
can radio music. Commenting last
week on John Crosby’s opinion that the
thing to do was to eliminate not the
American commercial system but its
faults, I expressed my doubt that the
system would correct the faults it was
responsible for in network broadcast-
ing of music—that a system which had
exploited the advertising values of big-
name performers would present cham-
ber music. But what about “Omnibus,”
which represents the position that since
commercial radio and television are
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Em Mm He He eee Eee eee eC
254
ZONE STATE
3/21/53
a
here to stay the best way to use the
Ford Foundation millions is for better
programs within the framework of com-
mercial radio and television? That’s the
way it would seem to the ex-network
people at the Ford Foundation; but
others might wonder whether the mil-
lions are best used for the amount of
improvement possible within the frame-
work of commercial radio and televi-
sion—which is to say, for programs
only as much better as commercial radio
and television can be expected to spon-
sor. Maybe in time this will be very
much better; but the music other than
televised opera so far has been consid-
erably worse. Consider that the public
to which ‘Omnibus’ addresses itself
has for twenty-five years been hearing
the New York Philharmonic and other
orchestras in the standard repertory and
occasionally in contemporary works by
Stravinsky, Bartok, Berg, and Schén-
berg, by Copland and other Americans.
And consider that to this public ‘““Onmi-
bus” has offered not just Ravel’s
“Mother Goose” but (The Nation,
January 17). Helen Hayes in “a read-
ing of Ravel’s ‘Mother Goose’”’; not
Musorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”
but, according to the newspaper report
I read, Stokowski talking about a few
‘of the pictures and playing only the
passages related to them.
I said last week that the improve-
ments in the situation are occurring out-
side of the framework of commercial
radio. And they, it seems to me, are
what foundation millions should be.
devoted to. 3
The.Na x ry iON - 2 4
(ag A eel
“HANDEL'S:
Sonatas Opus 1
for violin, of which the best-known No.
13 in D is one of his finest works, No.
15 in E also is outstanding, and only
No. 5 is uninteresting. Campoli’s tone
isn't compact and clear, but his phrasing
is unaffected; and George Malcolm pro-
vides effective realizations of the
bass on a lovely-sounding harpsichord
(London).
Of the three Mozart sonatas recorded
by Schneider and Kirkpatrick (Colum-
bia) K.305 and 376 aren’t interesting,
but K.526 is one of the finest of the
entire series, with a wonderful slow
movement between its brilliant allegros.
There can be some argument for the use
of the harpsichord in the early K.305,
but none for its use in the later works;
and an argument against it is the brutal
clatter produced by Kirkpatrick in these
performances.
I like Mozart’s Quartet K.493 for
piano and strings better than the more
familiar K.478; and while the perform-
ances by Curzon and members of the
Amadeus Quartet (London) are good,
they offer nothing like the wonderfully
alive string playing by Schneider,
Katims, and Miller in the performance
of K.478 by the New York Quartet
(Columbia), which is heard also in
Beethoven’s inconsequential Quartet
Opus 16 on the reverse side.
A minor work of Mozart, his Diverti-
mento K.247 for horns and strings, is
played very beautifully by members of
the Vienna Octet (London).
Boccherini’s Quartet Opus 6 No. 1,
with a lovely slow movement between
-its engaging allegros, is given a compe-
‘tent performance by the Quartetto della
Scala (Urania); but one hears nothing
like the extraordinary string playing and
‘subtle phrasing of the Quartetto Italiano
performance. On the same record are
an inconsequential Sonata a tre by
Giardini and a piece by Puccini.
Listening to the string quartet version
of Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of
the Savior on_the Cross’ again after a
number of years I have been aware this
time of the matured style of his writing
_in these seven slow movements; and*the
effect it has in the Schneider Quar-
tet’s powerfully phrased performance
(Haydn Society). That the writing
nevertheless again doesn’t interest me is
difficult to. account for; all I can do is
_ feport the fact.
ot BT Sees: x
for solo
instrument and figured bass include six
_ Something I have never been able to
understand—whenever I have heard any
of the music—is the Busoni cult; and
the latest occasion to wonder at the
intense devotion is a recording of the
Sonata Opus 36A for piano and violin
by Edward Weiss and Richard Burgin
(Circle: Composers Workshop). The
work, to ‘my ears, is elaborately dull;
Burgin’s tone isn’t always agreeable.
CORRECTION: The Kreisler recording
of Mozart’s Violin Concerto K.218 on
the Victor Treasury LP that I reviewed
two weeks ago is not, as I had thought,
the one listed as HMV DB-815/8 in
the 1936 Gramophone Shop Encyclo-
pedia, but the one listed as DB-3734/6
in the 1942 Encyclopedia, and was first
issued not in the mid-twenties but in the
late thirties.
Art Notes
CHARLES HELDENREICH’s second
one-man show in the United States is
devoted exclusively to paintings in which
broad masses of harmonized color are
used to interpret figures, city streets, and
still lifes—Salpeter to March 28.
JULIO DE DIEGO has returned from
Europe with impressions of Pompeian
and Florentine scenes. He has incorpo-
rated his memories in a series of brightly
colored fantastic canvases that people
present-day Italian settings with figures
from the past.—Heller to March 31.
THURLOE CONOLLY, Irish artist, is
showing here for the second time. His
paintings stem from Klee and primitive
sources and in low-keyed colors recall
decorative-art motifs and his own Irish
landscape—W illard to March 28.
MICHEL RAFAELLI, young French
artist, shows drawings and lithographs
of figures and still lifes rendered in crisp
and rhythmic crayon strokes and printed
in both black and white and in color.
—W ittenborn-Schultz to March 28.
JOSEPH JESWALD includes in hi&
second show semi-abstract paintings and
drawings of the nude.—A. F. I. to
April 1.
HENRY. MITCHELL, winner of a Ful-
bright scholarship to Italy, presents a
number of realistic sculptures. His sub-
jects are taken from people caught in
their daily work and treated in a pic-
torial and tense manner.—Kraushaar to
March 28.
ALLEN WOLF. Paintings depicting
with sympathy and warmth-the teeming
life of New York’s lower East Side,
with its tenements, push carts, and hu-
man figures.—Barzansky to March 30.
VLADIMIR NAIDITCH, a follower
of the French “‘objective’’ school, shows
an ingratiating series of landscapes, in-
teriors, portraits, and nudes done in
bright warm colors.—Chapellier to
March 27.
YUL BRYNNER
RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN’S
The King and!
A New Musical Play
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
ST. JAMES THEATRE, West 44 St.)
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
Wednesday & Saturday at2:25: $4.20to 1.80.
Nation Readers are cordially invited
to the
48™# Annual Luncheon of the
League for Industrial Democracy
Saturday, APRIL 11, 12:30
HOTEL COMMODORE
NEW YORK
Subject:
THE CRISIS IN AMERICAN
AND WORLD RESOURCES
Citations at Luncheon to ELEANOR
ROOSEVELT, OSCAR L. CHAPMAN,
T. C. DOUGLAS, Premier of Saskatchs
ewan. John Dewey Awards to PAUL R.
PORTER and CLARENCE SENIOR.
Chairman, NATHANIEL M. MINKOFF,
Tickets: $5.00
CONFERENCE ROUND TABLES, Friday
night, April 10, Saturday morning and after-
noon, April 11, on the crisis in our land,
forest, oil, water and power resources and in
world resources, participated in by luncheon
speakers and Ambassador Victor Andrade of
Bolivia and Charles Abrams, John Bauer,
Philip H. Coombs, Maurice P. Davidson,
Robert Delson, Nathaniel Goldfinger, Adolph
Held, Borish Shishkin, Norman Thomas,
William Vogt, Leland Olds, and others.
Admissions to each session, 50¢; to luncheon
speaking at 1:30 P.M., $1.00; to luncheon and
all sessions, $6.00.
For further information write
HARRY W. LAIDLER, Program Chairman
LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
112 East 19th Street New York 3, N. Y.
255
Letters
The “New. Look”
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Dear Sirs: I thought you'd like to know
how much I admire the new format of
the, I hope, perennial Nation, It is
easier on the eyes and pleasanter to the
touch. Good luck!
New York GEORGE W. JOEL
Dear Sirs: The “new look’”’ is a substan-
tial improvement, in my opinion. The
cover iS more _ attractive, and the
‘Around the U.S.A.” page is brightened
up. The back of the book also has
ereater visual appeal.
Los Angeles PHIL KERBY
Dear Sirs: I think the “new look’”’ is a
great improvement, much handsomer
and much more legible. An improve-
ment long overdue.
York, Pa. WALT PARTYMILLER
Dear Sirs: Congratulations on the new
format! It is a handsome and workman-
like job. . The only thing I don't
like is the mixture of type styles in the
captions and the titles of books in the
short reviews. ... The cover is a knock-
out, and newsstand sales should reflect
the magazine’s enormously heightened
appeal.
New York BETTY HULING
... But Some Don’t
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vigorous disapproval of the new style
of cover. . . . It seems to me character-
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tive. I have long been and still am a
warm admirer of Te Nation. I do not
like to see it take a step backward.
GARDNER LATTIMER
Ohio
Cincinnati,
Dear Sirs: Your new format is terrible.
Time was, we could fold the two-column
page down the middle, and read each
column in peace and comfort. Now we
have to fold the paper twice to read
the middle column. .. . I am glad that
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two to the page. ...
SOLON DE LEON
Long Island City, N. Y.
Dear Sirs: The “old” Nation repre-
sented typographical order, national
tradition, and readability..I1 can hardly
read this ‘‘new’ magazine. Examine any
of your pages by the yardstick of good
256
Crossword Puzzle No. 508
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
ACROSS
1 There’s a certain amount of truth
in the way I’m so sharp. (9)
6 See 6 down.
9 The sad state of British economy in
the thirties? (7)
10 Take pains to make the mail gay. (7)
11 Bright but extravagant talk about
getting the help back? (7)
12 In one’s cups, perhaps, at an after-
noon dance? (7)
13, 24 down and 32. What we want to do
in good world leadership. (3, 7, 5)
15 See 6 down,
17 Proving at least one woman is a
member of the bar. (6)
18 We were once told to remember what
is mainly according to the fashion.
19 You’re more likely to be destitute
traveling on them than in them. (6)
22 See 16 down.
25 Notice a sphere would make them
gather on the surface. (3)
27 Pokes fun at that which is no longer
desired. (7)
28 A saint sat here. (7)
30 Sort of shook the head with a final
admonition to be quiet. (7)
31 See 6 down.
382 See 18 across.
33 Useful if you can imply a builder
unsettles your nerves. (5,
DOWN
1 Zeal sounds more difficult without
aspiration. (5)
2 Leigh Hunt said the maid-servant,
the sailor, and the schoolboy enjoy
one beyond all the rest of the world.
3 Implying stop the music? (7)
4 Bad in bowling, good at the fountain
and the bar. (6)
»
PT Ee eT Eis
5 You might make it seem like a race.
6,31 across, 6 across, and 15 across.
Questioning the language of unciv-
ilized but fleet maidens? (4, 8, 3, 4,
-
Richmond is only part of what Grant
takes! (7)
8 Certainly not a long speech, nor a
very important one. (5, 4)
14 This animal shows spirit on a Brit-
ish penny. (5)
15 By implication the television pic-
ture’s still good, and acts like a
private counter. (6,
16 and 22 across Indigestion? (It’s
more or less outlawed among the
civilized.) (3, 6)
17 Around the trunk it might be live,
but not around the neck. (3)
20 If this bird gets on, so could you.
21 What. our predecessors, perhaps,
called Tommies. (7
23 Immediately after that, it’s ngt here.
24 See 18 across.
25 Roger, as a tutor, has Mac all upset.
26 ae typified by the head of
29 Heights obtained by the conclusion:
of 14 and 6 across. (5)
eM e
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 507
ACROSS :—1 INSCRIBING; 6 GLIB; 10
SCARVES; 11 SCOURED; 12 SUPHREMI-
NENTLY; 14 EVASIONS; 15 GEMINI; 16
Cee? 18 SEABOARD; 22 FOUR-LEAF
CLOVER; 24.TEL AVIV: 25 CANASTA; 26
RODS; 27 KIND HEARTS.
DOWN :—1 INSISTENCE; 2 SCARPIA; 3
RIVERSIDE DRIVE; 4 BEST-MAN; 5 NOS-
ING; 7 LORELEI; § BADE; 9 COUNTER-
BALANCH; 13 WINDBRBAKS; 17 TROLL-
ED; 19 BFFACED; 20 ADVISOR; 21 NER-
VII; 23 STAR.
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printing composition and you will see
how vapid throwing around of type
defeats the advantages of a good cover.
As it stands today, the format is ama-
teurish in the worst sense of the word.
. . . Advance cannot be achieved by
flouting the past but requires careful
modification of . . . traditions.
Philadelphia MAURICE SCHNEPS
The Editors Reply
Thanks to all our readers who wrote
—pro or con. And thanks particularly
to those who took the trouble to submit
their own suggested lay-outs. As to the
conclusions to be drawn, there don’t
seem to be any except that the apprecia-
tion of typography, like that of any
other art, is a highly subjective matter.
Letters run about fifty-fifty. One thing
we should like to emphasize: our “new
look’’ was planned by two of the lead-
ing designers in New York.—kEpirors
THE NATION.
Where Credit Belongs
Dear Sirs: I was rather dismayed to find
a startling error in an editorial para-
graph on the Rosenberg case published
in your issue of February 28. The para-
graph states that “Judge Kaufman
stayed execution again pending another
appeal to the Supreme Court by defense
counsel. .. .’” You must know of course
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Kaufman. refused any stay whatever and
set the date for execution for the week
of March 9. It was Judge Learned Hand
—in all fairness to this good and wise
man—who overruled Kaufman and did
grant a stay until March 30 so that the
appeal might reach the Supreme Court.
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LVation 7
March 28, 1953
20¢
Red China
Di ary
by Desmond Donnelly, M. P.
That Critical Strike John T: Dunlop
Less Power to You! Bruce Catton
fee Move the U. N.? Jean Berlitz
EVERY
ee Prodigy’s Escape Eric Temple Bell
A Review of N orbert Wiener’s “Ex- Prodigy”
Around
the
U.S4e
A People Comes
of Age
Los Gatos, California
THERE are more than three million
Mexican Americans in the Southwestern
states today. Although a: sizable racial
minority, they have had no representa-
tion in state or national government and
almost none, except in New Mexico,
in local government. Until recently few
of them ever voted or for that matter
even bothered to register. One saw them
working in the orchards and at the
stoop crops, or on the roadbeds of the
Southern Pacific and Santa Fe, but not
going to the polls.
Mexican Americans have contributed
materially to the wealth of the nation
but got little of it back for themselves.
The president of the Los Angeles
Chamber of Commerce has said that they
have California agriculture in the hol-
low of their hand, and lobbyists for the
fruit interests insist that for every dollar
the state spends’on them for relief it
gets back two. Yet when hundreds of
private housing developments sprang up
in Los Angeles after the war, only one
builder, according to a Los Angeles
housing official; would sell to persons
of Mexican ancestry.
The political awakening of the
Spanish-speaking minority began in Los
Angeles in 1947, under the leadership
of the Community Service Organization
(C. S. O.). An editorial in the Los
Angeles Daily News of June 9, 1948,
stated that the goal of the organization
‘was ‘‘the building of a hitherto relatively
voiceless element in the community into
an integrated responsible segment of
society.’ To carry out its program the
C. S. O. obtained the services of Fred
Ross, formerly field organizer of the
os
Industrial Areas Foundation of Chi-
cago.
The C. S. O. has always stressed the
ballot as a means to its ends. It sent
volunteer Spanish-speaking deputy reg-
istrars into sections of Los Angeles that
had never been registered before. With
the slogan, ‘Vote for whomever you
please, but please register and vote,”
it raised the percentage of voters in the
city’s population from 48 in 1948 to
55 in 1949. Of the Mexican Americans
registered, 82 per cent voted, a con-
siderably higher figure than the national
average for municipal elections.
The deputy registrars found their
kinsmen not apathetic about the ballot
when it was a means of achieving some
real community need, such as a storm
sewer, traffic signal, or crosswalk. And
residents of the community discovered
that the city and county councilmen and
commissioners paid more attention to
their requests when their names were on
the registration books.
e By 1948 the C. S:O.
counted among its members social work-
ers, professional men, laborers, store-
keepers, and college students. In that
year the organization’s chairman, Ed-
ward Roybal, ran for the Council from
the Ninth District and defeated the in-
cumbent two to one. Los Angeles, with
the largest Mexican American popula-
tion of any city in North America
(300,000) except Mexico City, had for
the first time a representative of this
group in the local government. Roybal
has since been reelected without opposi-
tion.
During 1948 and 1949 much of the
energy of the C. S. O. was devoted to
the defense of civil rights. The organ-
ization appealed through Representa-
tive Holifield (D., Cal.) for modifica-
tion of the discriminatory wording of
the registration forms filled out by men
entering the armed services—‘‘Negro,
Oriental, White, and Others’’—and re-.
ceived assurances from the Secretary of
Defense that the Personnel Policy Board
would enforce President Truman’s non-
discrimination policy in the army.
In the field of education it has pro-
tested against interpretations of I. Q.
ratings which failed to consider ~such
determining factors as the lower income
and bilingual background of Mexican
Americans. It has opposed basing
the extension of the industrial-arts pro-
gram on the increasing number of Ne-
gto and Mexican students and has en-
couraged the aspirations of these youths
to enter the professions. It has coop-
erated with the educational authorities
in obtaining instruction in adult-educa-
tion centers to fit the people’s needs.
The C. S. O. has been 100 per cent
behind labor. _ :
e The success of the
C. S. O. in Los Angeles led to the
founding of a branch in San Jose last ! |
May, and already the 36,000 Mexican
Americans of Santa Clara County have
been awakened to political conscious-
ness. A bad situation existed there.
Every year flash floods washed out
numerous families living in the east- *
ern foothills. The backing up of sew-
age and waste disposal from a packing
plant made conditions still worse. The
solution was mostly left to nature until
the C. S. O. and the California Federa- -
a
tion for Civic Unity went to work.
“You've been trying to get results,”
their canvassers told the people, “when
you haven't any voting power.’ Between
cherry-picking and prune-picking 4,000
Mexican Americans were registered who
had never been registered before.
On Election Day these Mexican
Americans went to the polls. Only a few
were challenged. The four o'clock edi-
tion of the San Jose News ran a head-
line, “Voters Questioned at Polls,” but
any intimidating effect it might have ,
exerted on late voters was dispelled by
the Spanish news announcer at six
o'clock, who reminded his listeners of
what their ballots could accomplish.
Mexican Americans are fighting dis-
crimination against their own and
other racial groups. In 1947 they ended
segregation in the schools of El Modino,
California, by electing one of their race,
a barber, to the school board. In San
Jose last fall they protested jointly with
veterans’ organizations against the tfe-
fusal to sell a house in a Caucasian
neighborhood to a Japanese American”
veteran. They have learned that people
make their own history, and they want
a part in the process.
G. W. SHERMAN
[ Mr. Sherman is a social worker and
free-lance writer. ] te Bes
we
Surt' es
2a tee oa
%
5
’
mi
ex ;
, Volume 176, Number 13
New York, Saturday, March 28, 1953
The Shape of Things
Get Your Scorecard!
Over the past week the Western world has been mark-
ing up the score of conciliatory gestures made by Moscow
or Moscow satellites since the death of Stalin. A few
days ago a foreign-affairs expert on the radio put the
total at eleven. The board shows only one entry on the
American side, but an important one—President Eisen-
hower’s promise to meet the Russians “more than half-
way.” As this week opened, score-keepers were waiting
for new moves at the United Nations, first of all in the
matter of the Secretary Generalship. But they were pre-
pared to await the arrival of Moscow’s permanent dele-
gate, Andrei Vishinsky, for any major change of front,
such as a break in the Korean stalemate.
In general the Administration’s policy has been to
avoid unnecessary friction while demanding “deeds” as
tokens of sincerity. At the same time we have been elabo-
rately warned that deeds and words alike are probably no
more than the conventional gambits used in opening a
peace offensive—itself designed to slow down the proc-
esses of Western rearmament and integration while the
new, Soviet regime gets organized and ready to resume
cold-war business as usual. The warning may be well
- founded, but it raises the old question: at what point
does the West decide that Moscow’s moves are intended
to produce peace rather than time—or mere propaganda?
We do not know, but what we hope is that behind the
- score board, diplomats of both sides, or friendly medi-
. ators, are making the preliminary private soundings that
will provide the signal for wait-and-see to end and nego-
_ tiations to begin. Peacemaking never gets under way in
public. Meanwhile it can be taken as a good sign if
Washington continues to soft-pedal the liberation-
crusade theme, which is definitely this side of halfway
toward peace. ,
Germans Bearing Gifts _
Chancellor Adenauer has been hoping that he could
bring to Washington, as a gift to the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration, ratification of the treaties linking the Fed-
eral Republic with the European Defense Community.
has often happened before, his hopes are fulfilled.
ity larger than was expected, 226 to 164, the
is
major
-
"/Vatton
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
German Bundestag approved the rearmament of West
Germany and its integration into the contemplated six-
nation European military alliance. There remain two
further steps: the approval of the Bundesrat, or upper
house, must be obtained, and the Federal Constitutional
Court must decide on the compatibility of the treaties
with a constitution that contains no provision for re-
armament.
In France, which must also ratify the treaties to make
them effective, the Bonn vote had contradictory effects.
For some persons the fact that the Bundestag was the
first legislature to meet the American request for early
ratification puts France in an embarrassing position if
its own approval is delayed. Others see in the collapse of
the German opposition an additional reason to go slow.
Since Adenauer is to follow M. Mayer in Washington, it
is sure that the French premier will try to convince
Eisenhower that French reluctance to ratify the treaties
is based on strong reasons and still stronger emotions.
France needs dollars, but needs still more a guaranty
that it will not be attacked by Getmany a fourth time.
Ellis Island and Its “Isolatoes”’
C. L. R. James is a fifty-one-year-old West Indian
intellectual—author of “The Black Jacobins” and other
books—who came to-this country in 1938 after some
years’ residence in Great Britain, where he served as
special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and
the Glasgow Herald. To his amazement he developed
strong attachment for the American scene and culture—
a trip across the continent “permanently altered” his
attitude toward the world—and he decided to remain
here. In Great Britain he had been affiliated with a small
Trotskyite group, but he is bitterly anti-Communist. A
long involvement with the Immigration Service came toa
climax last year with a stay on Ellis Island and, finally,
a warrant of deportation. His case was argued on Feb-
ruary 4 before the Circuit Court of Appeals, and decision
is expected shortly.
While on Ellis Island, Mr. James wrote an interesting
essay on Herman Melville which, together with an ac-
count of his experiences on the island, he has now pub-
lished under the title “Mariners, Renegades, and Casta-
ways’ (copies, at $1, can be obtained by writing Mr.
James, 1186 Broadway, New York 1, N. Y.) He finds a
remarkable similarity of outlook, background, and condi-
In This Issue .
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 257
Runaway Inquiries 259
ARTICLES
Rabelais: 1483-1953
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 261
Red China Diary; 1. Prague to Peking
by Desmond Donnelly
Move the U. N.?:
The Neutral-Host Concept
by Jean Berlitz 264
nN
nN
N
Less Power to You!
The Attack on Public Power
by Bruce Catton 265
That Critical Strike: Can It be Avoided?
by John T. Dunlop 267
Quirino vs. U. S.:
Philippine Land Reform
by Robert H. Sollen 268
BOOKS
Prodigy’s Escape
A Review by E. T. Bell 270
New Books in Brief 271
THEATER by Harold Clurman 272
FILMS by Manny Farber 274
RECORDS by B.H. Haggin 274
ART NOTES 275
LETTERS 276
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 509
by Frank W. Lewis 276
AROUND THE U.S. A.
A People Comes of Age
by G. W. Sherman opposite’ 257
ST A LTT
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Assoctates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nation, published weekly = copyright, 1953, in ae a 8. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7. N.
Entered — second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
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258
tion between the’ crew of the Pequod (“What a set these
Isolatoes were!” wrote Melville; these “mariners, rene-
gades, and castaways”) and the aliens detained on Ellis
Island. He finds a parallel, too, between Captain Ahab’s
pursuit of the White Whale “as the monomaniac incat-
nation of all those malicious agencies which some deep |
men feel eating in them,” and the current policy of the
Department of Justice toward the alien: the department's
main purpose, he writes, “can be described as the ex-
termination of the alien as a malignant pest.” He has
kind words for the staff on Ellis Island; what he com-
plains “about is an “anti-alien” crusade designed to
reverse the historical traditions of the American people
toward immigrants.
Fiscal Facts of Life
After two months in the White House the President
is beginning to learn the fiscal facts of life. Gone with
the wind are those airy campaign opinions about the
possibility of huge cuts in expenditure; gone are the
hopes held out for substantial reduction of taxes. Now
he has discovered that cutting expenses is never easy,
and unless Congress revolts, it is quite obvious that there
will be no tax relief this year or perhaps next.
Quite properly Mr, Eisenhower is insisting that the
budget must be balanced before tax reduction can be
considered, and this has exposed him to a virulent blast
from that G. O. P. veteran, Representative Daniel Reed:
of New York, chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee. Announcing that he had reluctantly aban-
doned his efforts to force a floor vote on his bill to re-
duce personal income taxes, Representative Reed said
bitterly: “It is considered a crime for a person to buy
a.vote with money, but what shall we call it if a candidate
for office gains office by making promises that are not
fulfilled.”
Mr. Reed has a point there, but the fact is that neither
he noz the President nor any other politician had any
right to hold out hopes of tax relief unless he was also
prepared to advocate drastic changes in the nation’s
cold-war strategy. Probably one or two billions can be
trimmed from the budget by increasing efficiency and
exercising superfluities, But to achieve a balance, let alone
a surplus for tax reduction, it would be necessary to
recast the defense program in a smaller mold. Clearly the
President does not think that is feasible under present ei
international conditions. Indeed, he may find himself
compelled to expand the program to provide stronger
defenses against atomic attack.
The Threat of Surpluses
Commenting last week on his appointment of Lewis
Douglas to head a study of foreign economic problems,
the President remarked that the country must be sure
-
4 - Ps ie c
oR ea ET pe
ory
that its surpluses are taken up. ‘Uhis is an approacn to
trade policies that has been unduly neglected of late.
Since the war, by and large, surpluses have not been a
serious problem; they have been taken care of by a vast
expansion in domestic consumption and by the growth
of exports financed to a considerable extent by grants
and loans to foreign countries. Now a new phase appears
to be at hand. Although domestic consumption remains
very large, industrial production in many lines is begin-
ning to overtake it. And in the field of agriculture we
have mounting surpluses of several leading commodities.
Export markets, however, are threatening to grow
tighter, partly because of production recoveries abroad,
partly because many foreign countries are becoming as
reluctant to accept more American aid as Congress is to
grant it. But the dollar gap remains. If it is filled by
neither aid nor trade, it will be shrunk by a reduction
in American exports on a scale that will create real
surplus problems for many American farmers.and some
American industries.
This is something for Congress to think about next
month when it takes up the renewal of the Reciprocal
Trade Agreements Act. It can safely be prophesied that
hearings on this measure will attract a host of special
interests clamoring for maintenance of present protective
_ duties, if not for higher ones. Should this pressure prove
effective, it will not be just the foreigner who will pay.
The cost will also fall heavily on American farmers and
workers—on the growers of wheat and cotton and the
makers of steel, machinery, trucks, and a host of other
products. Here again is a challenge to Republican leader-
ship and to the traditional high-tariff policy of the
GehP: .
Death of an Idealist
In the death of Haym Greenberg the world has lost
a fine mind and an exceptional exponent of humanism.
A citizen of this country, he was perhaps the chief politi-
cal theoretician of Labor Zionism; he held high office in
the Zionist movement, and was an author, editor, and
orator of extraordinary gifts. But to say all this is to tell
only half the story. For Haym Greenberg was preem-
- inently a moral leader, devoted throughout his life to
the concept that political action must be firmly based
in humanism and cultural values. His Jewish nationalism
was never chauvinism; it was always tinctured by his
feeling for the universality of mankind. Speaking of the
-“territorial roots” which Israel has given the Jewish peo-
ple, he once warned: “I would be less than honest if I
failed to note a spiritual danger which may arise from
the accentuation—or rather the hyperemphasis—of our
new orientation toward space.” Few men of our time
were more sensitive than Haym Greenberg to the need
_ for bringing into concord the divergent concepts of
nationalism and. internationalism.
* Se = — Ad
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pepe
Runaway Inquiries
AN INTERESTING aspect of the protracted contro-
vetsy over the work of the House Committee on Un-
American Activities has been that whenever public
criticism of the committee has mounted it has been mo-
mentarily deflected by a fortuitous change in personnel
or by pious expressions of an intention to tidy up its
methods and procedures. During these spasms of contri-
tion the big guns on the editorial desks have boomed
forth the theme that there is nothing basically wrong |
with the committee’s purposes or objectives; it is only
its “methods” that are objectionable. But while these
recurrent moods of public penance have quieted criti-
cism, they have failed to produce significant reforms.
Recently still another batch of proposals to reform the
methods of Congressional committees of inquiry has
been stimulated by the “excesses” of current hearings.
On February 10 Senator Kefauver introduced Senate
Resolution 10, which would establish uniform rules for
all. such committees; Senator Morse followed up.on
February 20 by introducing a similar resolution (S, R.
83); and on. March 12 Representative Kenneth B.
Keating, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary
subcommittee to investigate the Department of Justice,
announced a new set of rules for that committee. These
latest proposals have evoked the“usual editorial hosan-
nahs with such familiar captions as “A Stand for
Freedom,” “Fair Investigatory Practices,’ ‘Back to Fact-
finding,” and “Curbing the Investigators.” Again the
public is being led to believe that the committees, re-
gretting recent “excesses,” will sin no more.
With requests for a hundred probes now pending, |
there can be no doubt that Congress should adopt a set
of uniform rules governing the conduct of hearings. Each
committee now makes its own rules, and while there is
some similarity there is also much variation in practice.
The proposals offered by Senator Morse impress us as
being particularly good. Committee hearings could be
called only with a minimum of twenty-four hours written
notice to each member and by approval of a majority
vote in’ a meeting at which a majority was present.
Witnesses would have the right to be accompanied by
counsel, and the rights of counsel would be defined.
Testimony would have to be ‘‘relevant and germane.”
Witnesses would be given some indication in advance of
the scope and subject matter of their examination. They
would have the right to make complete answers and to
offer concise explanations of their answers. They would
also have the right to offer a statement at the conclusion
of their testimony. More important, persons adversely
affected by testimony would have the right to appear by
counsel, to cross-examine adverse witnesses, and, subject
to the discretion of the committee, to procure subpoenas
calling for the production of documents and witnesses.
259
We,
a
While even these rules fall short of the standards of
impartiality and fairness that prevail in England under
the Tribunals of Inquiry Act of 1921, they are a notable
improvement over current practices here.
But the best rules cannot correct evils which flow not
from the manner but from the nature of the inquiry. If
Congress is investigating a matter entirely beyond the
wide area of its legitimate concerns, fair codes of inquiry
will not protect constitutional relations from the result-
ing damage. The basic question is simply this: Should
there be no limitation whatever on the power of Congress
to investigate? Can it investigate any subject it wishes,
including those on which it could not legislate? If there
is no limitation on the power, then Congress has acquired
a new dominance not only over the executive and judicial
branches of the government but over the people. While
the courts are showing a willingness to restrict Congres-
sional inquiries to the subject matter defined in the
resolution of authorization, the larger question has not
been answered. For example, can Congress, for any pur-
pose, inquire into matters of individual conscience and
belief? Most of the proposals for the reform of Congres-
sional inquiries sidestep this issue, One proposal, for
example, would preclude a committee from inquiring
into such matters “unless a majority of the committee
thought it was necessary!” And even Senator Morse, who
has shown a lively awareness of the need for reform,
would apparently place no limitation on the subjects into
which such a committee might inquire. In a recent speech
in Chicago he took the position that teachers have
nothing to fear from the pending Congressional investi-
gations of education.
BUT THERE are some subjects, surely, into which Con-
gress should not be permitted to inquire, and these areas
need to be defined. Recently Mr. Velde threatened to
summon before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities a number of leading Protestant clergymen
who had criticized its work. As though in response to
this suggestion, Glenn L, Archer, executive director of
Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation
of Church and State, announced that Mr. Velde and
Senator Jenner should seriously consider “an inquiry
into the un-American doctrines which are currently being
taught in Roman Catholic parochial schools, many of
which are receiving large amounts of public support.”
With the utmost respect for Mr. Archer and the organiza-
tion for which he speaks, we trust that this suggestion
will not be adopted. Nevertheless, it does raise an im-
portant question: If Congress has the right to meddle
in the affairs of education, why should the parochial
schools of the Catholic church enjoy a special immunity?
If there is no subject into which Congress cannot
probe, then Congressional committees of inquiry can be
used to break down the traditional separation of the
260
powers of prone On the one nat ‘Senate ME
Carthy is asserting the power to dictate personnel policies
and practices to the Executive branch of the government;
on the other, the House Committee on Un-American
Activities has virtually abandoned the fiction that it does
not place individuals on trial. Recently, for example,
Representative Donald L, Jackson, speaking for the com-
mittee, said: “We're not interested in textbooks . . . we’re
after Communists.” If Congressional committees insist
upon the power to “try” individuals, they are to this
extent usurping the judicial function. And when such
committees insist upon their power to subject private
citizens—citizens not employed by any public agency—
to a form of political catechism that finds no sanction in
the Constitution, they are violating the spirit if not the
letter of the First Amendment and encroaching on rights
reserved to the people under the Ninth and Tenth.
“Congressional investigations,” said the New York
Times the other day, “are not judicial proceedings. . . .”
“Committees are not courts,” echoed the New York
Herald Tribune. But unfortunately a wealth of evidence
indicates that the committees are functioning as if they
were special tribunals set up to try political offenders.
NOT TO recognize this as a process of trial and punish-
‘ment is to betray an amazing blindness to social reality.
“No punishment?” asked counsel for the defendant in
a famous early American case (40 Mo. 340, decided in
1867); “I defy the history of the world to invent a
punishment more refined and ingenious than to punish
a man through his love of truth. . . . It is indeed an in-
genious punishment; it dispenses with statutes defining
offenses and providing penalties therefor, it dispenses
with courts, with all their paraphernalia of indictments
by grand juries and trials by petit juries, executing the
Jaw upon offenders; all that is needed is that a law be
passed every year or two requiring every citizen to swear
that he has never wronged or defrauded anyone; that he
has never slandered his neighbor; that he has never com-
mitted murder, burglary, larceny, adultery, or fornication;
and if he cannot thus swear, then forbid him to follow~
any profession, trade, or calling, for that will not be
punishment inflicted upon him, but a mere regulation.”
The same point, of course, is made in the old story about
the Quaker and his dog Tray. “Go to,” said the Quaker
to poor Tray, “I will not kill thee, but I will give thee
a bad name.” And so he turned poor Tray into the
streets with the cry of “Mad dog!” and then someone
else did kill poor Tray.
Congress should of course be encouraged to adopt a
uniform set of rules governing the conduct of committee
hearings, but let no one believe that rules alone will
check runaway inquiries. Now as always the best way to
stop a runaway is to slam on the brakes, pull hard on
the reins, and yell “whoa!”
7 he }
sos as Aa ae
TION
THE anniversaries of the world’s intel-
lectual and spiritual heroes offer us a
salutary opportunity to appraise our-
selves and our progress. Last year we
celebrated the birthdays of Victor Hugo
and of Emile Zola. At present four
hundred years after his death, another
great Frenchman, Francois Rabelais, is
being honored all over Europe.
Rabelais represents better than anyone
else certain aspects of the Man of the
Renaissance and gives a measure of that
extraordinary epoch in which Europe
itself was re-created and renewed. He
came upon the scene at a revolutionary
moment. The outlines of the upper
classes were crumbling. The feudal
lord was ceasing to seém a_ paternal
ruler; the church was devoting itself
increasingly to the pursuit of wealth
and power, and the papacy was dis-
credited; the ancient brilliance of the
Empire was tarnished. An_ insatiable
thirst for knowledge turned the Euro-
pean man to philosophy, mathematics,
physics, and medicine. At the same time
the religious reformers, intentionally or
not, were undermining the old social
and cultural order and helping to open
the way to a freer era. ;
In the sphere of literature this mission
was undertaken, by a master of satire,
the author of a work of striking origi-
‘ nality: “Les horribles espouvantables
.faicts et prouesses du trés renommé
Pantagruel, Roy des Dipsodes, fils du
- grand Géant Gargantua.” This is the
_ imaginary history of a dynasty of giants,
remotely based on the chronicle of King
Arthur and the Round Table. It was
* published under the nom de plume of
Maistre Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram
* on Francois Rabelais.
The actual date of Rabelais’ birth is
still a matter of dispute, but the most
generally accepted year, 1483, also saw
the birth of Luther and Raphael, assur-
ing him entry into the world in dis-
tinguished company. Rabelais began his
higher education in a Franciscan monas-
tery, where he learned Latin, studied
scholastic philosophy, and entered into
larch 28, 1953
a.
Rabelais: 1483-1953
a correspondence with the French hu-
manist Budaeus. His academic achieve-
ments brought him into’conflict with the
heads of the order and forced him to
shift to a Benedictine monastery, where
‘the atmosphere was more tolerant. He
did not remain there long. Leaving the
shelter of the cloister, he led for a time
the life of a secular priest, defying
ecclesiastical discipline and _ bringing
upon himself charges of apostasy. He
next enrolled at the University of Mont-
pellier, where he studied medicine and
obtained a bachelor’s degree. To earn
his daily bread he practiced as a physi-
cian in Montpellier and later in the
city of kyon, at that time an important
cultural center in close contact with
Basel, the residence of Erasmus, and
with Geneva, shortly to become one of
the strongholds of the Reformation. The
publication of ‘Gargantua’? made him
famous overnight.
The theologians of the Sorbonne,
whom he attacked with devastating hu-
mor, promptly condemned the book, but
clerical censure could not stop its circu-
lation or dull its effect. “Gargantua” en-
couraged the Paris Protestants to cover
the walls of the royal palace with blas-
phemous posters denouncing the Pope
and his cardinals. The ensuing uproar
forced Calvin and the poet Marot to flee
for their lives across the border; Rabelais"
himself was saved from severe persecu-
tion by the recognition of his talent in
high places. The third volume of
“Gargantua’’ appeared-in 1546 under
the protection of Francis I, who said he
almost died laughing when he read it.
Later, in a fourth volume, Rabelais used
the conflict between the Pope and the
new king, Henry II, as the starting-point
for a riotous satire_on the temporal
ambitions of the papacy.
The reactionaries of his time were
less benevolent toward him than the
crown. The French Parliament was as
bigoted as the Sorbonne and banned the
sale of his book. In 1553 he was forced
to relinquish his ecclesiastical position.
His death in the same year may have
From a 1532 edition
of ‘‘Gargantua”
been hastened by the intrigues and hos-
tilities in which he was involved. Rabe-
lais died in Paris and still rests in the rue
des Jardins, buried under a tall tree that,
like his fame, defied time, surviving
until a few years ago.
Many have seen in Rabelais only a
kind of malicious faun, a cynic and a
mocker—epithets to which Ronsard, the
poet of the Pleiade, added that of
drunkard. But his friend Du Bellay
spoke of him as “lutile and doux
Rabelais.” His immense talent as a
writer permitted him to toss together
facts and fables, myths, glosses, dia-
logues, observations, quotations, without
ever burdening his story with pedantry.
Besides being a great story teller, he was
a superb polemicist who had declared
war on the Middle Ages. He ridiculed
without mercy everything in Europe’s
past that was sick, rotten, or against
nature, beginning with war itself, but
he was full of compassion for the op-
pressed and deceived. Every time he
cracked his whip he felt it on his own
flesh, for to him no protection was pro-
vided by the robes of doctor or monk.
It is this characteristic that especially
distinguished him among the great
writers of all periods who have not been
satisfied with the pursuit of art for art’s
sake or for glory or wealth but have
considered it their inescapable duty, at
whatever cost, to take part in the social
and political struggle of their time. His
profound hatred of, war makes him, even
four centuries after his death, a combat-
tant de la paix.
261
RED CHINA DIARY
I. Prague to Peking . . by Desmond Donnelly
[This is the first of two articles by a
Labor Member who
visited China a few months ago. The
second will appear next week.}
of Parliament
: London
I WAS sitting on the lawn at home
when the telephone rang. “Woutd you
like to go to China in ten days’ time,
traveling via Moscow and Siberia?”
The invitation was from the Chinese
People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, a
body sponsored by the Communist gov-
ernment. Questions flashed across my
mind. Was this an attempt to get me in-
volved in the germ-war scare or in the
Pacific Peace Conference scheduled for
the autumn?- Was it to use me in some
way for Communist propaganda in the
Korean war? But would I be right to
turn down an opportunity to be one of
the first members of the British Parlia-
ment to see Red China since the revolu-
tion which has changed the government
of one-fifth of all mankind? When I
decided, curiosity won.
I was determined to see beyond the
ptopaganda. To be fair and to try to
understand, yet not to be hoodwinked.
To be as objective as I could although
the doctrines of communism are repug-
nant to me as a member of the British
Labor Party.
We flew via Prague and Moscow.
Prague is a beautiful but sad city. The
people are well dressed and well fed but
looked dazed. Slogans about American
aggression shriek at you on every street
corner. Difficult to find but nevertheless
real was the feeling that the struggle for
the body of Czechoslovakia still goes
on in this no man’s land of the cold
wat. Q
Flying over Russia, for five hundred
miles beyond Minsk we scarcely saw a
landmark, just forest and more forest. In
fact, the only thing I recall was the old
walled city of Smolensk and its railway
junction. And then, towering on the
skyline, we saw the white pinnacles of
Moscow's new university, forty or fifty
262
miles away. It stands nearly 1,000 feet
high. One of my companions turned to
me and said, ‘““What a guiding beacon
for enemy bombers if this country meant
war.” The buildings were begun in 1949°
and open their doors next summer to
6,000 technical students.
We spent three days in Moscow be-
fore traveling east on the Russian in-
ternal airlines. There was great building
activity, the university being only one of
several skyscrapers in course of construc-
tion. East of the Ural Mountains new
building more apparent.
Between plane and plane, in a day at
Novosibirsk and two days at Inkutsk, I
saw cities of half a million people rising
like the American boom towns of the
Middle West. Factory chimneys towered
against the sky, Construction seemed to
be going on everywhere.
Many things reminded me of Victo-
rian England, too. Plush draperies, heavy
ornaments, and glittering steel bedsteads
were the order of the day eyerywhere.
In my hotel bedroom at Irkutsk, I had
a brand new inkstand made of white
marble weighing the best part of sixty
pounds, with inkwells the size of large
coffee pots. This obvious badge of
privilege didn’t prevent me from being
badly bitten by bedbugs that night.
* Going east again ‘across Outer Mon-
golia, we stopped to refuel in the Gobi
Desert. While waiting I played football
with two Russian boys, children of the
refueling staff. In the air once more, we
climbed eastward across the mountains
which lay between us and China.
Suddenly somebody said, “There's the
Great Wall of China.” Winding its
way over the hills and down through
valleys, it was exactly as I had pictured
it. Twenty minutes later the hills dis-
appeared, the flat plains of China lay
below us and then the green roofs of
Peking. ‘
We were met at the airport by half
a dozen ministers and officials and a
crowd of schoolgirls carrying bunches
of flowers. At first I dismissed this as
Was even
typical delegation-reception technique, .
intended to win us by flattery. However,
as the days went by I could not deny the
genuine warmth of the welcome we got,
especially from the ordinary people in
the shops and streets.
THE MOST extraordinary thing I saw
in Peking was three men chasing two
flies. And the explanation was almost as
surprising as the sight. A new health
drive had been initiated by the Commu-
nist government a year before. Posters,
propaganda, and meetings of all kinds
were used to try to rid China of the
_ germs of the past. Then suddenly had
come the germ-war scare. The effect was
electric. In this hot Eastern city, with the
temperature in the eighties, not a fly was
to be seen—not in the bazaars and food
markets or in the streets and narrow
alleys between the houses.
The flies have been eradicated by a
universal effort to avoid leaving food or
waste around. But the health campaign
has gone much farther. A typical poster
advertised vaccination against smallpox.
In the center a smiling girl was being
vaccinated and not minding. On the left
was someone who had evidently not
been vaccinated and was dying: On the
right a girl was standing immune while
cartoon germs buzzed round her. An
inset at the bottom showed an American
airman spraying germs from his plane.
The Chinese claim that in three years
307,000,000. people have been vacci-
nated.
Inflation and food supplies were two
of the biggest tasks facing the Reds
after the revolution. All the evidence -
seemed to be that food supplies were
now adequate: there was nothing like
the poverty in Peking that I had seen
in parts of Russia.
To stabilize real wages, the Commu-
nists have instituted a system of fixing
wages not in money but in units. A
man’s daily wage can be any number of |
units, and each morning the newspapers
publish the value of the unit in Chinese
— ~
re people's dollars, based on the cost of
living at current prices. If prices go up
or down, his wages go up or down.
Many shops contained such articles as
can be bought in almost any British or
American city. I had expected to find
the shops state-owned, but in Peking
there were only two state stores and in
Shanghai three or four. These had much
the same range of articles as the pri-
vately owned shops, but I found them
to be busier and was told this was be-
cause prices were slightly lower. The
state store I visited in Shanghai was just
like a London department store. You
could buy almost anything you liked. (1
was very glad to get a box of American
cigars, unobtainable in England.)
Most people dress much as they used
to, but the official classes; men and
women, wear a new drill uniform with-
out badges or medals of any kind, rather
like the early Russian Communist uni-
form. The color varies according to
one’s category in the regime. For in-
stance, a Foreign Office official I met
wore brown. The Chinese even sent a
tailor to our hotel asking us if we would
like a uniform ourselves. The color we
were Offered was blue, the badge of
the intellectual. Modesty compelled me
to decline.
I ASKED about trials and executions,
particularly about the so-called mass
courts in «which the accused is tried in
front of several thousand people and a
general vote taken at the end. Here is
what a professor of law at Peking Uni-
versity told me: —
“Certainly these trials have occurred.
If a person has racketeered in vice or
been guilty of murder and has been able
to get away with it because he was given
political protection by Chiang Kai-shek’s
regime, the people naturally want to
Square accounts with him as soon as he
loses his political power. The sort of
person subjected to this type of treat-
ment was frequently a feudal landlord.
Anybody who had a charge to make
could come forward in front of the
whole community. -Frequently indict-
ments took several hours. The accused
then had the“opportunity of replying,
calling any witnesses he liked.”
“But what chance has the poor chap
of getting anybody to testify for him,
in such a hostile atmosphere?” I inter-
jected.
ry
The professor dismissed my question
by saying there was much more tolera-
tion in China than I was prepared to
concede, and went on: ‘““When the evi-
dence has been heard on both sides,
there is a general discussion. At the end
a vote is taken. What could be *more
democratic?’ ;
“But what happens if there is a large
dissenting minority?”
“Oh well, the discussion goes on
again. We have no need to hurry in
China,” said the professor.
In Peking jail I was told that 70 per
cent of the prisoners were political and
the other 30 per cent guilty of regular
crimes. When pressed on this point, the
governor said that one typical ‘‘reac-
tionary political’ crime was rape. When
I asked him how this could possibly be
classified as political, he said, ‘Oh, you
don’t understand. All this sort of thing
was associated with the Chiang Kai-shek
. regime.”
Shanghai jail was grim in the ex-
treme. In each tiny little cell five or
six men were silently squatting the
hours and the years away. Here and
there in the jails I ran across what we in
Britain call discussion groups—people
sitting and talking together. I asked
what they were doing and was told that
they were being “remolded.”
This “remolding” is a ture of
Communist China, for the government
is trying to carry with it as many people
as possible. If you are prepared to abide
by the rules of the new regime and to
“remold” yourself, then there is a place
for you. Discussion groups for the
“remolded” go on everywhere. Even.
the university student who was attached
to me as an interpreter was going
through a course of “remolding” in
order to be equipped with ‘the weapons
of Marxism-Leninism as expounded by
Mao Tse-tung.”
One person who had “remolded”’
himself extremely well and found that
the new society had glittering prizes to
offer was ex-General Fu, one of Chiang
Kai-shek’s former generals and the man
who surrendered Peking to the Com-
munists three years ago. I was amazed to
find Mr. Fu a minister in the new gov-
ernment, in charge of water conservation
and drainage, one of the key posts in
the battle for food production. He still
looked and spoke like a martinet as he
ordered tea for us to drink.
LAND REFORM is the key to Mao Tse-
tung’s power. In the early years of the
Chinese Communist Party, after its
foundation in 1920, the doctrinaire
theoreticians always insisted that the
revolution would have to be made by
the industrial workers in the cities—the
orthodox Marxist convention. Mao,
however, said that in China, with its
400,000,000 peasants, it must be an
agrarian revolution. In 1927 the party
leadership split, and Mao was driven
into the countryside in disgrace. Himself
the son of a peasant farmer, the indig-
enous product of the Chinese village, he
organized his own Communist Party in
the villages, built it up through the
years, and finally brought it to victory.
Long before the end the theoreticians
threw in their hands and acknowledged
that he had been right.
In the old days peasants used to live
or die on the food they produced from
holdings averaging one-ninth of an acre.
A trick of the weather could mean
death. Yet some landlords owned many
acres. Mao proposed to confiscate the
land and divide it equally among every-
body. Now he has done it, more than
trebling the average holding. He has also
given 40,000,000 shareholders a vast
vested interest in his regime.
Having asked to see examples of the
new land reform, I was sent to a village
about twenty miles from Peking. The ~
village had been given only eight hours’
notice that we were were coming, and
it was clearly no showpiece, for though
it was clean and tidy everybody still
lived in mud huts. It had one shop,
which was the village cooperative. For
its news about the outside world it de-
pended on a wall newspaper where
items were chalked up on a blackboard.
263
I was surprised to find that even in the
village there was scarcely a fly about.
One of the people with whom I
spoke was the president of the local
‘Peasants’ Association. I asked him what
he did before the revolution. He said
he was a peddler, but because he was
the only person who had agitated against
the landlords he was made head of the
Peasants’ Association as §0on as the local
landlord was ousted. He took me to the
landlord’s house, which was now the
village hospital clinic. Patients were
attended’ twice a week by two Chinese
doctors who came on their bicycles,
since cars are practically non-existent.
Although there were so few cars, I
had one placed at my disposal—a large
black American Cadillac which had be
captured from Chiang Kai-shek. Was I
allowed to go where I wanted to, or was
I to see only what was good for me?,
Well, I had this car and a chauffeur
and an interpreter, and whenever I
asked for anything, it always seemed
that my request was granted if it was
humanly possible.
MOVE THE U. N.?
The Neutral- Host Concept . . by Jean Berlitz
THE United Nations is sick. The symp-
toms, apparent to many for years, are
now past concealment, and the most op-
timistic friends cannot deny a vast sad-
ness. Confronted from the beginning
world
which it was structurally unprepared, the
with unforeseen conditions for
U.N. drags out its chronic invalidism in
the chromium and glass cage on East
Forty-second Street. Its decline is not,
however, incurable. A remedy is avail-
able, and its use would give a tremen-
dous lift to U. N. activities. The United
Nations should move to a _ healthier
climate, outside New York City.
- The need for heroic treatment is
undeniable. The history of the U.N. is
one of failure and feebleness, of dis-
tortions of original purpose, of solemn
resolutions remaining always a dead
letter, of accumulating blots on its good
name. Mutual distrust between East and
West has blocked all progress and been
the great impediment to a fair func-
tioning of the organism. And this dis-
trust is constantly exacerbated by the
location of the United Nations inside
the territory of one of the antagonists.
About this, indeed, something can be
done.
' What would the Americans think if
U. N. headquarters had been placed in
Moscow or Leningrad, if pro-American
members of the Secretariat or anyone
who-at any time had expressed his faith
JEAN BERLITZ is the pseudonym of
a member of the U. N. Secretariat now
stationed abroad.
264 -
in the capitalist system were evicted
from the organization after examination
by a Communist commission, if a secret
agreement to that effect had been signed »
by the Secretary General and the Rus-
sian government? True the Russians
themselves have made no move to cotr-
rect this state of affairs, probably be-
cause the discredit which it throws upon
the organization serves their purpose.
But it is amazing that the leaders of
the great powers should have placed an
international organization which was to
maintain peace between two conflict-
ing ideologies in the stronghold of one
of them.
At the’ time persons who were fearful
of American isolationism argued that
the new organization must be installed
in the New World in order to secure
America’s continued interest in world
affairs. To this it was replied that the
United States, whether it liked it or not,
had become a world power with corre-
sponding commitments. It was surely
not occupying Germany and Japan be-
cause of its membership in the United
Nations. Similarly there is little doubt
that the United States would have in-
tervened in Korea even if the United
Nations had not existed. When New ~
York was chosen for U. N. headquarters,
some observers remarked that while the
League of Nations had died from the
absence of the United States, the United
Nations might die from its ubiquitous
presence.
Certainly the United States heavily
dominates «the administration ~of the
United Nations and retains over the
American members of the Secretariat an
influence incompatible with the inde-
pendence and international character of
the organization. Even the foreign staff,
completely submerged in the American
scene, is being gradually Americanized.
The recent row over “‘insecurity” in the
Secretariat has proved that the United
Nations cannot remain within the terri-
tory of a great power without losing
more and fhore of its international
character. Its removal to the milder. po-
litical climate of a small neutral country
is essential to its survival. 3
It may even .be argued that the
United Nations should not have its
headquarters in any of the big cities of
thé world; it should not be subjected to
any kind of. mob influence. From this
point of view New York is a particularly
bad site, being extraordinarily vulner-
able to minor disturbances. unrelated to
international developments. A city like
New York can be badly tied up, for
example, by a numerically trivial num-
¥
ber of strikers, a handful of determined —
~ men like the tugboat crews. Even the
physical conditions in the glass menag-
erie on the East River are a needless
handicap—four skyscraping smokestacks
from the power house a block away
poisoning the atmosphere with their
fumes, the United Nations shadowed
and discolored by the Consolidated
Edison Company, a more powerful and
at present more useful institution.
THE OUTBREAK of war would make
a neutral location for the U. N. impera-
tive. One bomb, not aimed at the U. N.
as such but at a vital American port and
a major industrial center, would paralyze
if not destroy the world organization.
The tall glass Secretariat building would
become an empty shell at the first blow
—the specialized personnel, the docu-
ments, the sum total of the U. N.’s
assets and negotiating tools scattered to
the winds when they would be most
needed.
q
One argument advanced against trans-
ferring U. N. headquarters to another
place is the money that has been spent
on the present structure. It is easily
answered. Apart from the fact that the
Secretariat building was cleverly de-
signed so that it could be converted into
an office building, the initial cost has
already been repaid, in practice if not
in theory, by the profits accruing to
Americans from the U. N.’s presence
here.
Much is made of the fact that the
United States pays about 40 per cent
of the U. N. budget. It is forgotten that
some 90 per cent of the salaries of the
staff, the entire amount spent for ad-
ministrative expenses and for paper,
equipment, printing, and so on, the dis-
bursements of the national delegations
and their families, of the foreign visitors
and press, all revert to the United States.
The United States has probably not only
recouped its own 40 per cent share
of the $40,000,000 budget of the
United Nations but has received in the
form of dollar payments within its terri-
tory the major part of the 60 per cent
contributed by other countries. The
United States can write off the cost of
the headquarters buildings and_ still
show a profit.
From the financial angle the removal
of the United Nations from New York
would have another advantage. Because
of the universal dollar shortage many
countries are hard put to find the cur-
rency to pay for their share of the
budget and the expenses of their na-
tional delegation in one of the most
expensive cities of the world.
The American people should not re-
gard the transfer of U. N. headquarters
to another site as a blow to their pride.
An error was made. Let it be rectified.
The moment is eminently suitable for
a vigorous effort to give a new look to
international politics.
LESS POWER TO YOU!
The Attack on Public Power
Washington
THE forced resignation of Claude R.
Wickard as head of the Rural Electrifica-
tion Administration does not stand by
itself. It is part of the present Adminis-
tration’s relentless attack on the whole
public-power program. I do not mean
that the program cannot continue with-
out Mr. Wickard. What makes his re-
moval important is the way it was done
and accompanying events.
The job of administrator of the
R. E. A. is supposed to be non-political
and for a fixed number of years. Mr.
Wickard’s term had approximately three
years to run. He resigned because the
high command in the Department of
Agriculture, of which the R. E. A. is a
part, made it clear that if he did not
jump he would be pushed. Oddly
enough, this marked the coming home
BRUCE CATTON is a Pee ee
editor of The Nation.
ch 28, 1953
to roost of a rather clumsily begotten
chicken which first took flight in the
regime of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Roosevelt dismissed Arthur E. Mor-
gan from the chairmanship of the Ten-
nessee Valley Authority after a public
disagreement between Morgan and
David Lilienthal, a T. V. A. director,
over negotiations to buy the Tennessee
Electric Power Company. Morgan
fought his dismissal in the courts—like
Wickard, he held a non-political job
for a stated term of years—and the
courts finally ruled in effect that the
President had the power to say whether
the occupant of such a job had con-
ducted himself in a way to warrant his
dismissal.
In the act creating the R. E. A. tenure
of office was defined in roughly the same
language as in the act creating the
T. V. A. This fact and the court decision
in the Morgan case were cited to Wick-
ard to indicate that the President could
. by Bruce Catton
summarily remove him if he chose.
When Wickard protested that there was
no proper ground for his removal, he
was informed that inasmuch as he had
been a Cabinet member under a Demo-
cratic President he was a political char-
acter and consequently did not belong
in a non-political job.
So Wickard resigned. Behind his res-
ignation is the big argument now going
on over one of the fundamental features
of the public-power program—the
R. E. A.’s authority to lend money to
cooperatives and groups of cooperatives
which wish to build electric transmission _
and generating facilities. With such
loans the rural-electrification co-ops are
out from under the dominance of the
public utilities. Without them they are
at the utilities’ mercy.
The R. E. A. makes its loans only in
areas where insufficient power is avail-
able at reasonable rates to meet the needs
of the members of the rural co-ops. In
265
oer
ee sot
SS TS
ere
the past the utilities have sometimes
taken over co-ops. that were not able to
get an adequate power supply. Propo-
nents of the R. E. A.’s loan program be-
lieve that if it is sufficiently weakened,
}
a
7
7
(te
there will be many more such cases. A
co-op unable to build transmission lines
or generating facilities would be easy
prey for the nearest utility.
Wickard’s forced resignation is taken
as a strong indication that the R. E. A.
is to be directed by someone much less
anxious to push the electrification pro-
gram. It may be significant that on the
day it was announced there were per-
sistent rumors that his successor would
be Ancher Nelson, lieutenant governor
of Minnesota and a former vice-presi-
dent of the Minnesota Rural Electric
Cooperative Association. At the last
Republican National Convention, Nel-
son sat in with the group that was
drafting the agricultural plank and dis-
played a good deal of antipathy toward
loans for generating plants and trans-
mission lines.
Before Wickard’s " resignation the
R. E. A. program had already taken a
couple of serious blows in the sacred
name of economy. Just after President
Eisenhower took office, he ordered all
departments and agencies to review their
construction programs and halt non-
essential projects. On the heels of the
White House order Secretary of Agri-
culture Benson directed his subordinates
to hold spending and commitments in
the department for the balance of the
fiscal year at the January level. In Janu-
aty the R. E. A, had lent just under
~ $10,000,000. It can therefore lend
slightly less than $60,000,000 during
the six months that will end July 1. It
has available, however, in budget au-
thorizations for loans, $91,000,000,
plus some $16,000,000 from loans pre-.
viously revoked, The economy order,
therefore, knocked $47,000,000 off the
266
Say i i
lending program for the first half of
1953,
Meanwhile under the White House
order the army has stopped. construction
of Table Rock Dam in Missouri, which
was to have provided extensive generat-
ing capacity for R. E. A. co-ops. Origi-
nally, the government had built Bull
Shoals Dam to meet the co-ops’ needs,
but construction of a defense aluminum
plant in Arkansas diverted that power.
Now there will not be enough electricity
generated to meet the needs of co-ops
in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and
Kansas.
EVEN MORE SERIOUS consequences
to the public-power program may flow
from some recent court decisions. The
Supreme Court of Arkansas has ruled
that the federal government has no
authority to sell steam-generated power.
Under acts of Congress, said the court,
the government can sell hydroelectric
power at wholesale, but it cannot sell it
at retail by integrating steam power into
public projects. If applied all across
the board, this ruling could badly crip-
ple government power projects which
use steam power to firm-up water
power.
And now the United States Supreme
Court has upheld the granting of a
license to the Virginia Electric Power
Company on the famous Roanoke
Rapids site.
The army engineers had drafted, and
Congress had approved, a development
plan for the Roanoke River basin. One
project had been built by the govern-
ment upstream, at Bugg’s Island. The
existence of Bugg’s Island dam, which
is principally a water-storage and flow-
regulating work, immediately made the
Roanoke Rapids site feasible for power
development. In effect, the government
has made it possible to generate large
quantities of hydroelectric power at
Roanoke Rapids, and a private company
reaps the benefit.
The shadow of this decision may fall
a long way. Conceivably, it may reach.
all the way to Idaho, where the great
Hell’s Canyon site on the Snake River
is wanted by a private power company.
In each case a river is under develop-
ment by the government, and a power
company is eager to generate power at a
likely site on the river. Pending before
the Federal Power Commission is an
pe See ee
application by the Idaho Power Com
pany to develop a power project at Ox
Bow—a site that will be inundated if
the long-dreamed-of federal project at
Hell’s Canyon is built. And it will not
be long before the commission is fe-
vamped by new appointments made by
this Administration.
AS A CLIMAX TO all these attacks on
~public power there may be revived the
famous “‘de-socializing” plan proposed
last year by Charles E. Wilson, the
former head of General Electric who
served as Defense Mobilization Admin-
istrator. Mr. Wilson proposed that the
government sell off its entire public
power plant—T. V. A., the Columbia
River developments, Hoover Dam, and
all the rest. The money received would
go to shrink the government debt; the
properties in question would start to
pay taxes; the government would be out
of the electric-power business; and there
would be an end to “creeping social-
ism,” once and for all. 7
Nothing was said about this during
the campaign last summer, but in*Sep-
tember the usually well-informed maga-
zine U. S. News and World Report te-
marked that “the plan will be explored,
and may get a try, if Republicans control
the White House and Congress after
next January 20.” Moreover, when
General Eisenhower discussed river de-
velopment in a speech at Seattle last
October, he said: “I am convinced, out
of my experience with some very big
jobs, that the way to do it is by a sharing
of effort rather than by its concentration.
That means the full use of private re-
sources, plus a local-state-federal part-
nership, here in the state of Washington
,_and the Northwest, rather than depend-
ence upon a daily directive from Wash=
ington, D. C.”"
7 iW ee
eat
aay
THAT CRITICAL STRIKE
Can It Be Avoided? .. by John T: Dunlop
THERE can be no single standardized
formula for settling what are called
“emergency’’ disputes between labor. and
management—that is, disputes in areas
vital to the defense, health, or safety of
the nation. For there is no way to still
the insistent question: if it fails, then
what? If mediation fails, then what?
If fact-finding and recommendations do
not produce a settlement, then what?
If seizure and injunction accomplish
nothing, then what? If the leaders are
put in jail and there is still no settle-
ment, then what?
Ways of Stimulating settlements,
however, do exist—mediation, fact-find-
ing and recommendations, and more
mediation. And about these a number
of useful things can be said. It is a
basic premise that every labor dispute,
certainly every “emergency” dispute, is
in some respect unique. Accordingly,
procedures for stimulating a settlement
should be so far as possible tailor-made
to the case. A single legislative prescrip-
tion for all situations, including those
that may coneeivably arise in the future,
will inevitably be ill-adapted to many
of them.
No machinery to settle disputes can
remain the same over a long period of
time, Use changes it. Grievance ma--
chinery set up in a contract five years
ago works differently today. The Rail-
way Labor Act and the emergency
boards appointed under it, for instance,
operate differently now that the parties
have adjusted their tactics to the exist-
ence of these boards. The principle
_ femains true even when the parties using
the machinery change or when recourse
to it is infrequent. Mr. Lewis and the
United Mine Workers were firied once
JOHN T, DUNLOP, professor of
economics at Harvard University, has
been a member of some of the most
important labor boards in the country
and is the author of several books on
_ collective bargaining and other aspects
0} the trade-union movement.
for contempt of an injunction. On the
second round Judge Keech found no
violation. This experience has not been
missed by other unions.
The very label of an “emergency”
dispute depends on the imminence of
the danger. And on this there may be
great difficulty in getting any consensus,
since judgment involves assumptions
about the future and the enemy. It
seems to me that, in the end, the Presi-
dent should make the decision. No one
else has all the information or should
be saddled with the responsibility.
In the handling of emergency dis-
putes two separate questions must be
considered: how to keep essential pro-
duction or services going, and how to
settle the dispute. Continued production
can be secured in a number of ways:
the threatened stoppage may be post-
poned for a period; the strikers may
permit minimum production for vital
needs; an injunction may be granted
and be respected; seizure may be used.
In this country at present seizure is the
last resort. It works in part because the
government may then obtain an injunc-
tion to prevent a strike but more be-
cause of the current moral conviction
that “‘you don’t strike against the gov-
ernment.” In a different context this
moral sanction might not work.
The most important question before
the country at present in the field of
labor legislation is not how to settle
emergency disputes or revise the Taft-
Hartley act, but rather by what process
laws affecting collective bargaining are
to be enacted. We face two broad
alternatives. The first would make the
legal framework of collective bargaining
primarily a product of the political
process: the details of a labor law de-
pend narrowly upon the division in
Congress on particular amendments. The
second approach would place the re-
sponsibility more directly on labor and
management. This approach would also
cause the two parties to take a more
active part in the administration of the
legal process of collective bargaining.
As a country we are far along on the
first course, and in my judgment it is a
very dangerous road.
IF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING is
to be the cornerstone of our national
labor policy, its legal framework ‘can-
not remain a partisan political matter.
Neither industry nor labor can tolerate
a change in the legal status of collec-
tive bargaining every two or four years
after the election returns are in. Stable
industrial relations cannot be built on
such a shifting foundation.
Labor and industry must share ac-
tively in the development of a substitute
for the Taft-Hartley act. The parties
most directly affected should assume
some responsibility for the legal frame-
work of collective bargaining. The usual
Congressional hearings are not enough,
for in these, people state only their for-
mal positions. In advance there must be
informal consultations between repre-
sentatives of union and management,
with the assistance of neutrals. The next
labor law must not be thrust down the
throat of either side.
It seems certain that statutory pro-
visions for dealing with emergency dis-
- putes will be on the books for some time
to come. Unfortunately these provisions
are likely to be influenced more by the
politicians than by the parties to collec-
tive bargaining. It has occurred to me
that there is an approach to the prob-
lem which deserves some attention. -
The emergency provisions of the -
Taft-Hartley law have been invoked on
ten occasions—in three coal cases, two
maritime cases, and one each in meat
packing, telephones, non-ferrous metals,
atomic energy, and pipe manufacturing.
Emergency disputes can arise in only a
few sections of the economy, the most
important being railroads, atomic en-
ergy, coal, shipping, and steel. In look-
ing over this area of potential trouble
it is interesting to observe that special
machinery is in existence for the rail-
roads and atomic energy. In my judg-
ment emergency disputes have been
most adequately handled in these two
sectors because the machinery in both
cases was in the main either designed
by the parties to the dispute or if by
others had won their full support and
cooperation.
I believe that every attempt should be
made in those sectors where there is no
special machinery—coal, shipping, steel
—to encourage the parties to develop
their own procedures to mitigate emer-
gency stoppages. The interposition of
additional private machinery, or quasi-
public machinery, is desirable between
the initial breakdown of collective
bargaining and resort to emergency-
dispute procedures. The parties can
help to develop “another place to go”
before there is resort to generalized
emergency procedure. If more legislation
seems necessary, let a law be passed
requesting the parties in these industries
to submit to Congress within a year
their suggestions for mitigating emer-
gency-dispute stoppages. I have great
confidence in the ability of the parties
to develop such procedures. They can
work out their own conciliation steps;
they may decide to limit stoppages to
some fraction of the total production of
the industry; they may mutually select
new wage leaders more apt to reach
agreement; they may declare in advance
their willingness to handle vital cargo
or production. In brief, the subject of
emergency disputes should itself, at the
QUIRINO vs. U. S.
Philippine Land Reform . . by Robert H Sollen
TWICE in recent months American
technical-aid specialists in the Philip-
pines have recommended immediate
and sweeping land reforms as the best
way to avert threatened rural revolt.
And twice the Philippine government
under President Elpidio Quirino has de-
nounced these reports as “‘exaggera-
tion,” “‘party-line’’ propaganda, and “in-
terference’ with the internal affairs of
the republic.
Now the only high Philippine official
who has supported the principle of land
reform has quit. “It would be useless
for me to continue .. . killing Huks,”
said Ramén Magsaysay in resigning last
month from his post as Quirino’s Sec-
retary of Defense, “as long as the ad-
ROBERT H. SOLLEN, formerly of the
Milwaukee Journal, visited the Philip-
pines last year during a swing through
the Far East.
JQ
ministration continues to foster condi-
tions which provide fertile soil for
communism.’ Magsaysay then joined
the opposition Nationalista Party and
announced that he would be available
for nomination for the presidency in the
next election.
Ideologically, Magsaysay belongs
with the new democratic Citizens’ Party
rather than with the Nationalistas, who
are as reactionary as Quirino’s Liberals.
But he evidently feels that the new
party is too weak to do him any good
and for tactical reasons is going along
with the Nationalistas. He was the only
important member of the Quirino gov-
ernment who believed that communism
could best be fought by raising the liv-
ing standards of workers and farmers.
The Nationalistas are accepting him not
for his program but for his popularity
among the common people.
American conclusions about the in-
- being used to advance the goal of com-
request of the government, become a sub-
ject of bargaining between the parties.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation
Service should take the lead in urging
and aiding the parties in these direc-
tions.
In short, my suggestion is that the
parties be encouraged to interpose a
layer of private devices for settling dis-
putes or insuring essential production
and services before the general emer- '
gency-dispute provisions are invoked.
These devices would of course be de-
signed to suit the special problems of
each industry.
I feel sure that in twenty-five years
the emergency dispute will have ceased
to be a serious problem. The public .
will have insisted that something be }
done about serious stoppages in vital |
areas. Under this pressure the parties
in the several industries will develop
their own procedures. I suggest that this,
approach be stimulated and hastened as
a matter of public policy.
—~
credibly bad conditions in rural areas of ©
the Islands are formulated in two docu-
ments. The first was prepared by Robert .
S. Hardie, land-tenure specialist of the
Mutual Security Administration; the
second is the work of Robert T. McMil-
lan and other M. S. A. rural sociologists
in collaboration with their counterparts
on the Philippine Council for United
States Aid (PHILCUSA). Hardie
warned:
Misery and unrest among tenants is
munism in Asia. . . . Open and violent
rebellion, rooted in and fed by tenant
discontent, threatens the very existence of
the Philippine Republic. Land-tenure
practices . . . threaten the United States
position in Asia.
Quirino and certain members of the
Philippine Congress denounced Har-
die’s report so violently that last Decem-
ber the American embassy in Manila
ee Se aecles ics for. its: genoral citcula-
tion. Eugenio Perez, speaker of the
Philippine House of Representatives,
demanded that M. S. A. personnel in
Manila be screened for ‘Communist
sympathies,” and linked Hardie to the
“Communist line.’’
When the M. S. A. finally released
the report, it had been thoroughly
substantiated by the PHILCUSA find-
ings, and both are supported by every
recent agricultural, economic, and socio-
logical study of the Philippines.
Various surveys have shown that
from 3 to 10 per cent of the Filipino
people own and control from 80 to 95
per cent of the nation’s wealth. The
middle class has been virtually elimi-
nated. According to Hardie, about 35
per cent of the farmers are tenants and
another 16 per cent are part owners.
Tenancy runs up to 70 per cent in the
areas where unrest is the greatest.
‘Rice yield per acre is no better than
it was in 1918 and is now the second
dJowest in Asia. Half the farmers are
working less than one-fifth of the tilla-
ble land; one-half of the tillable land is
_ divided among one-eighth of the farms.
The PHILCUSA report points out
that nearly half the Philippine villagers
and farmers are worse off than they
were ten years ago. Farmers are almost
constantly in debt as the result of low
yields, high rents, high taxes, and a
credit system which demands up to 300
per cent a year interest on loans. The
average owner-operator nets not more
than $273 a year against family expenses
of $544. The average tenant nets $183
against family expenses of $313.
, SINCE ABOUT 72 per cent of the 21,-
000,000 Filipinos make their living
- from farming, agricultural reform is of
primary importance. But the landown-
ers and money lenders will not let go.
* “Landowners pay. an average land tax of
1 per cent a year and collect about 50
‘per cent of the yield in rent. It is not sur-
prising that they oppose social change.
The head of the Mutual Security Ad-
ministration in the Philippines, Dr.
‘Roland R. Renne, supports Hardie’s
contentions. ‘Most farm families,’’ he
has stated, “lack fair returns for what
they produce. There is need for cheaper
and more widespread rural credit, for
more equitable returns to tenants and
is small owners, for more opportunity for
pees to own land, and for other in-
‘phrased in simple language.
centives that will encourage farm faml-
lies to expand their operations.” De,
Renne has had no easy time with Philip-
pine officialdom. Congress insists on
playing politics with M. S. A. money,
even to the extent of wanting funds dis-
tributed according to congressional dis-
tricts. Dr. Renne has told the Congress
that American-aid funds are for boost-
ing national living standards, not for
Congressmen to use as political leverage.
Meanwhile, President Quirino asserts
that his program for resettling peasants
on undeveloped public lands will ease
the problem of land tenancy and rural
insecurity. Hardie, however, anticipated
this contention. His report says:
The thought that the solution to Philip-
pine agrarian unrest is to be found in the
settlement of undeveloped areas is
based on a false appraisal of the prob-
lem. Firstly, . . . increases in population
will alone serve to neutralize the planned
effects of emigration. Secondly, the ac-
quisition and settlement of such land by
one in the status of a typical Luzon ten-
ant requires cash reserves he does not
have. Lastly, . . . these newly developed
areas are after all a part of the Philip-
pines and subject to the laws and cus-
toms of the land. If not corrected, per-
nicious land-tenure practices which have
led to violent rebellion in Luzon will be
transported to the newly developed area
{largely in Mindanao} and thus spread
the misery and unrest. . . . Settlement of
new areas is an imperative but it is no
substitute for land-tenure reform.
It maintains also that undeveloped
public lands cannot begin to absorb the
number of families looking for land.
McMillan, who in the course of his
sociological research has lived for
months at a time with Filipino farmers,
makes a strong plea for credit reform
and, indeed, managed to push through
Congress a law to aid small rural banks
and provide reasonable credit facilities
for rural development.
The Hardie report calls for govern-
ment purchase of big landholdings, land
redistribution through sale to tenants,
and a rural economy based on owner-
operated family-size farms. For those
who’ must remain tenants, it advocates
a land-rent ceiling of 25 per cent of the
harvest and written ‘tenancy contracts
Land-
holders, it says, should take their money
out of the land and put it into industrial
production. “Industrial development
suffers . . . as long as rentier wealth lies
dormant in land.”
Ramon Magsaysay
A Philippine law provides that if the
landlord and tenant enter a contract, the
rent is held to 30 per cent of the
harvest. Most tenants, however, hesitate
to bargain with their landlords for fear
of being thrown off the land. A Philip-
Pine agricultural official who is also a
landowner told me that his tenants pay
him 50 per cent of their harvest under a
verbal agreement. The effect of the law
has been negligible compared with the
extent of the tenancy problem.
We interviewed several farm families
outside of Manila; we were not inclined
to venture far into Huk territory. Most
farmers said they were not getting
enough from their own rice crop to feed
their families, They ate almost nothing
‘but rice and fish. Dr. Juan Salced, Jr.,
Secretary of Health, has said that “most
of the people, especially in rural areas,
suffer from some form of malnutrition.”
During its nearly half-century of rule
the United States did little to develop
the Philippines for the benefit of the
inhabitants. Recognizing at long last the
danger of the situation, it has now rec-
ommended action and offered to co-
operate. But the Philippine government
refuses to go along with the American
recommendations. Since it offers no sub-
stitute of any~real value, the United
States government should stand firm. It
should again tell the Philippines that
it cannot continue to bolster an economic
and social system that breeds only social
injustice and violence. In return for
economic aid it must demand full co-
operation in administering the program
and democratic land reforms. Because of
the impatience of the masses and the
fast action of the Communists the re-
forms must be immediate and complete.
‘
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1 Be a es Oe
BOOKS
Prodigy’s Escape
A Rea by ET. Bell
EX-PRODIGY. MY CHILDHOOD
AND YOUTH. By Norbert Wiener.
Simon and Schuster. $3.95.
SUITABLE subtitle for this re-
markably frank book might be,
“How not to raise a gifted child.” As
Wiener implies, literate parents today
know more than their ancestors of fifty
years ago did about what to do and
what not to do with a prodigy, thanks
partly; as Wiener admits, to the work
of Freud, although he explicitly repudi-
ates the ‘Freudian jargon.”
Poetry, music, and mathematics have
had more than their share of prodigies.
Of the mathematicians, some fulfilled
their early promise; others did not. Pas-
cal (1623-62), a self-torturing neu-
rotic, never achieved the mathematical
eminence his childhood seemed to
promise. Gauss (1777-1855), the~ most
astonishing example of precocity on
record, became one of the three univer-
sally acknowledged greatest mathema-
ticians in all history. Pascal’s education
was dominated by his scholarly father;
Gauss’s- father was a laborer with only
an elementary-school education, who
never understood his son and who did
all in his power to thwart the boy’s in-
tellectual ambitions. The contrast be-
tween Pascal and Gauss illustrates a
radical difference between two types of
prodigy: the sponge that seems capable
of absorbing any given amount of erudi-
tion and even doing something with
some of it; the born creator who takes
what little he may need from the past
and then strikes out on his own to ex-
plore unmapped territory. The creators
E. T. BELL, professor of mathematics
at the California Institute of Technol-
ogy, is the author of numerous books on
mathematics and allied subjects, the
latest being “Mathematics, Queen and
Servant of Science.” Under the name of
John Taine he has written many exciting
whodunits.
usually start early, not later than about
twenty. There is but one instance of a
first-rank mathematician, Sophys Lie
(1842-1899), starting late. Till he was
twenty-eight Lie had little interest in
mathematics. Then he suddenly woke
up and in a matter of months accom-
plished the work of years and estab-
lished himself.
WHERE DOES Wiener, now fifty-eight,
fit into this scale?” He undertakes to tell
us. He had a scholarly, slave-driving
father—although Wiener does not put
the fact-so harshly—and an inordinate-
ly ambitious mother. After an abortive
start in biology and another in philos-
ophy, apparently under the common de-
lusion of the very young that whoever
knows something of philosophy knows
everything of everything, young Wiener
turned to mathematics, where his talent
lay. About the same time he shook off
the clutch of his parents, as kindly as
he could but none the less resolutely.
Some years later he married. One of the
finest things in the book is his tribute
to his wife.
Wiener’s father, a Russian Jew, emi-
grated from White Russia to the United
States, pausing on the way in Berlin.
_“He arrived in New Orleans in 1880
with 50 cents in his pocket’’—and a
considerable stock of combative arro-
gance. Then followed the usual immi-
grant’s saga of odd jobs for which he
was not suited, till somehow he reached
Kansas City. There he got a chance to
exploit his philological and linguistic
abilities by learning and teaching Gaelic.
This earned him the honorary title of
the “Russian Irishman.” Though the ”
father’s personal adventures are absorb-
ing, as Wiener: retells them, the only
one relevant here is his foray into peda-
gogy, with his son’s precocious mind as
the coveted booty. How successful he
was may be inferred from Norbert’s
academic career: entered college before
the age of twelve; bachelor’s degree be-
fore ahcen doctorate (from Harvard) |
before nineteen. It took the prodigy
several years to break away from the ;
implied paternal discipline and begin to
outgrow and to live down his prodigious
youth. He only really found himself -
when he began doing mathematical re-
search of more than temporary interest.
His childhood, apart from the incessant
cramming, had been like that of any
normal American boy, including games ,
and fights.
THERE IS so much of interest in this
honest autobiography that we must pass '
on to a few significant samples of the
whole. At Harvard, Wiener had a short
exposure to biology. He dropped the
subject because his manual ‘‘clumsiness”
made experiment unattainable. But it
was not all a waste of time; years later
he was to recall enough of what he had
learned to help him in the field where
he has done his most individual work,
communications—the (possible) topol-
ogy of the nervous system being one
detail of the comprehensive program.
Some of this appears in his popular
book, “Cybernetics.” Incidentally, the
success of that book astonished Wiener’s
publishers and perhaps himself.
On the social level at Harvard the
young prodigy suffered humiliations,
partly on account of his “Jewishness.”’
The snobbish exclusiveness—or what
he took for that—and the pronounced
anti-Semitism gave him a galling sense
of inferiority. Why this obviously supe-
rior young man should have felt him-
self an inferior freak is not clear. He
was not alone in his precocity. In 1909
there were other prodigies with him—
Roger Sessions, then nearly fifteen and
a first-year graduate student, and A—A. :
Berle, among others. One of them
achieved an unenviable fame as a prod-
igy: W. J. Sidis, a grievously misedu-
cated young man who finally rebelled
against his upbringing and his journal-
istic fame. He accomplished nothing.
Wiener sampled the Philosophy De-
partment at Harvard. It evidently has
survived his pungent comments. Some
of his portraits of the Harvard faculty
are done in chemically pure caustic.
President Lowell happily has passed
on; so he is spared the discomfort of
seeing himself as Wiener saw him.
Likewise for W. F. Osgood, the czar of
Harvard mathematics in his day, who ||
according to Wiener was so chagrined
at his failure to grasp the revolutionary
Lebesgue theory of integration, which
lay right under his hand, that he for-
bade the teaching of it at Harvard.
Wiener’s emancipation began at the
age of nineteen, when (1913) he went
to Cambridge, England, to study under
Bertrand Russell. His appraisal of the
English upper classes will not please
eur friends across the Atlantic. He
found them snobbish and callously cruel
to their social inferiors. After meeting
some ofthe leading British mathemati-
cians, who befriended him, he modified
this somewhat brash opinion. Russell
of course was cordial and helpful. His
liberalism was warming after the cold
New England Puritanism.
Trips to Germany (Munich), back
to Cambridge, then to Gottingen, broad-
ened his mind if not always his sympa-
thies. The family went along. When the
war broke in 1918, he returned to Co-
lumbia University, where he was un-
popular. From all these journeyings we
get sketches by a young man just emerg-
ing from adolescence of some of the
“greats” in the mathematics of the near
‘past—Hardy, Landau, Klein, and the
last of the giants from the nineteenth
century, Hilbert. All are now dead.
AT THE AGE of twenty-one Wiener
finally grew up and escaped from his
father, them professor of Russian at
Harvard. He became’a docent at Har-
vard and lectured to the girls at Rad-
cliffe, much to his own embarrassment
_ and theirs. An instructorship at Har-
| ward seemed on the way, but he did not
get it, because of a student prank re-
membered against him from his days as
an undergraduate. When it seemed that
America must enter the war, he joined
the “Harvard Regiment.’’ He now had
definitely abandoned philosophy for.
mathematics, and was rewarded with an
_instructorship at- the University of
Maine. If what he says about that seat
of learning is just, it should retaliate
by bestowing an honorary degree on
him.
As his next attempt to get into stép
and make himself socially acceptable he
went to the touted O. T. C. camp at
Plattsburg, hoping for a commission—
which he did not get. He was inexpe-
| tienced enough to be. shocked by the
_ “bottle-drinking and foul-mouthedness
eka :
of even these gentlemen sham-soldiers.’
Determined to do his share in the war,
he joined up as an enlisted man, after
being rejected for officer training on ac-
count of his eyes. He returned to mathe-
matics, making a living in Albany by
hack work on the “Encyclopaedia Bri-
tannica.” He next applied for a posi-
tion at the University of Puerto Rico.
His application was ignored. Finally he
got real war work at the Aberdeen
Proving Ground, where he could use
his mathematical ability.
Among his other misadventures was
a spell as a feature writer on the Boston
Herald. He was fired when he wrote up
the_atrocious conditions in the Lawrence
mills. Wiener has never lacked either
moral or physical courage. He even
joined Calvin Coolidge’s citizen volun-
teers in their attempt to curb violence
during the Boston police strike, and so
had a part in Coolidge’s election to the
Presidency of the United States. At last,
at the age of twenty-five, he got an ap-
pointment to the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, where he has done
creative mathematics ever since.
Looking back on. his varied career,
with its false starts and its wasteful ex-
cursions into blind alleys, what does
Wiener think of it all now? Would he
educate his own children as he was edu-
cated? The answer is inconclusive; the
circumstances would have to be taken
into account. For his defeated father,
who might have been a great philolo-
gist, he has only sympathy. In mathe-
matics he has been fortunate. Nearly all
his early work, including his study of
biology and perhaps even some of the
lore he absorbed from the ‘‘Encyclo-
paedia Britannica,” has proved useful
in his final attack on the problem of
communication. His studies on Brown-
ian motion, mathematical logic, the
theory of probability, periodgram anal-
ysis, and so on have fused together into
what his colleagues call “Wienerian
mathematics,” a peculiarly personal cre-
ation of wide applicability to many dis-
parate problems. Without looking for —
the author’s name on a paper, any
trained mathematician would recognize
Wiener if indeed he were the author.
And although there are no formulas in
his autobiography, his acquaintances
will spot him instantly.
New Beolee in Brief
AGienhiberdl
YOU NEVER LEAVE BROOKLYN.
The Autobiography of Emanuel Celler.
John Day. $3.75. A record of thirty
years in Congress by a liberal who has
fought for civil rights, civil liberties,
freer immigration, anti-monopoly legis-
lation, and support for Israel. Mr. Celler
is no great shakes as a writer, but his
book can be recommended as a simple,
modest self-portrait of an able Congress-
man who has almost always been on the
side of the angels.
With Relevance for
Our Time
ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND STATE.
By Lord Acton. Introduction by Douglas
Woodruff. Viking. $6. Among the great
Victorians whose work is being ex-
humed and reevaluated, Lord Acton,
historian, political scientist, and philos-
opher, is one whose thought has a par-
ticular relevance for our time. He had,
as Mr. Woodruff points out, “a pro-
phetic preoccupation with the very
questions with which the twentieth
century has found itself preoccupied.”
His first concern was the relation of
the moral ends of society to moral
means. He wrestled unremittingly with
such problems as how to safeguard free-
dom without undermining the necessary
authority of the state.
Acton was not always consistent in
his ideas, but he was consistent in his
championship of. “freedom of con-
- science, that is, of what is highest and
best in man.’’ A devout Catholic, his
distinction between “the things of
Caesar and the things of God,” together
with his refusal to condone the perpet-
uation of historical errors in the sup-
posed interests of the church, brought
him at times into conflict with the
hierarchy. The “Essays on Church and
State,” for instance, the product of his
early years, originally appeared in a
short-lived series of lay Catholic reviews
which became the victims of clerical
hostility, Most of them deal with church
history and politics. There is, however,
one long discussion of the causes of the
American Civil War, written in May,
1861, which does little credit either to
Acton’s prescience, since it assumes
permanent disruption of the Union, or
to his liberalism, since it includes some-
thing like a defense of slavery. Even so,
its analysis of the problems of federal
democracy are well worth reading.
ACTON’S POLITICAL PHILOSO-
PHY: AN ANALYSIS. By G. E. Fas-
nacht. Viking. $4. Mr. Fasnacht’s vol-
ume, which draws on MS notes, as
well as published lectures and letters,
provides a guide to Acton’s thought in
his later and more liberal years, organ-
ized under such headings as The Theory
of Conscience; English and American
Political Traditions; The State, Govern-
ment, and Democracy; Socialism; and
The History of Freedom. It is not easy,
however, to arrange the products of
Acton’s mind—a mind always alert to
the interconnection of ideas—in such
convenient compartments, and Mr. Fas-
nacht has been unable to avoid some
repetitions. Nevertheless, his book does
provide the student with the essence of
Acton.
HERE’S TO A BETTER AMERICA!
The supreme social challenge of this Age
(whose alternative is social chaos) is to
make the world an ever better place in
which to live. The challenge exists because
the job is now possible. Doing it involves
placing the General Welfare of ALL men
first, through social cooperation. This can-
not be done in our society which, through
competitive personal aggrandizement,
places individual interests first. Present
society, because of its divisive economic
and social organization, institutionalizes
conditions ever breeding mutual dissen-
sion, in which neither peace, cooperation
nor good will can reign among men.
To meet the challenge of this Age, a di-
rected social mutation is now required.
This will have to be a projection and ex-
pansion of the best in our present society
into the form of a Democratic-Scientific
Social System. It is now possible to design
such a system and to install and operate
it democratically.
North America hag the social knowledge,
the scientists, engineers, technieians, edu-
cators and literate population; the skilled
labor force, management know-how, in-
stalled technology and natural resources;
the required democratic institutions and
traditions; and also many functional oper-
ations already foreshadowing the Better
America of Tomorrow.
If interested, write for the I. S. E. Orienta-
tion Course (noncommunist—nonfascist)
outlining the democratic-scientifie ap-
proach to social problems, $1.50 postpaid.
INSTITUTE of SOCIAL ENGINEERING
Dept. N
2623 Lawrence Ave., Chicago 25, ilk
Poe 9? 3 0S OO 00 0? oe a
i PZ,
eee le ten on bs ek
Life in the Midwest
AMOS BERRY. By Allan Seager.
Simon and Schuster. $3.95. An ambi-
tious but not altogether successful novel
that attempts to combine the psycho-
logical, the historical, the philosophical
levels in fiction. The protagonist is a
respectable Middle Western business
man whose wife is secretly planning to
divorce him, The stery is told by his-
son, who is determined to break with
the conventions that have destroyed his
father and to become a poet. The town
life of the Middle West from the early
1900’s to the present is done well; the
psychological insights of the novel hard-
ly need the melodrama which is inserted
to support them. The contrast between
the hidden conflicts of conventional suc-
cess and the fulfilment of the artist’s life
is rather flat. In the end the son under-
stands the father’s compulsion to mur-
der and to commit suicide, but most
people in similar circumstances merely
go on living.
In Post-War Italy
THE FIFTH GENERATION. By
Dante Arfelli. Translated by Adrienne
Foulke. Scribner's. $3.50. This is a
novel of post-war Italy with the thesis
that maturity of outlook has no reward
in the present moral vortex. It is a
convincing work as long as Mr. Arfelli
writes about what he knows from his
own experience. His protagonists, Berto
the extrovert and Claudio the reflective
type, make sense to the reader when
they talk of their own time. But when
Arfelli, who is too young to have re-
membered much of the rise of Fascism,
tries to characterize the tensions of that
period, he lapses into flaccid fabrication.
Pitted against such Italian writers as
Pratolini and Berto, of whose work his
is an echo in a thinor key, Arfelli suf-
fers on every level. His characters lack
the humanity of Pratolini’s; his political
issues lack the conviction, the searing
moral fire of Berto. ‘The Fifth Genera-
tion” is longer and more ambitious than
Arfelli’s first novel, “The Unwanted,”
but the author does not yet make the
grade with a foreign audience. The
story of how these two young men cope
with the war, the false armistice, and the
problems which beset their ruined coun-
try somehow fails to move us. Since the
translation is exceptionally smooth, it
cannot be held responsibile.
In the Publishing World
LANDFALL. By Helen Hull. Coward-
McCann. $3.50. Another well-written
but undistinguished novel, accomplished
in detail, rather tedious in effect. Miss .
Hull's satiric gift appears to advantage
in the minor portraits of the publishing
world. The story gets bogged down in
the domestic’ relationship between a
capable female editor and an errant
academic husband. Career versus love,
complicated by the husband’s illness and
- dependence on the heroine, solved by
her decision to abandon—guess what?
Theater
—_—— Tt i Ts = = —— sau ces
Harold Clurman
I ENJOYED the .new production of
“Porgy and Bess” (Ziegfeld Theater)
very much. In a sense, there is little
more to say about it, not only because it
has become a kind of classic, but because -
the quality of its emotion is one which
communicates itself easily and directly,
and one accepts it without critical cavil.
Gershwin’s music has a certain smart
sophistication, but its outstanding char-
acteristic, it seems to me, is warm senti-
ment or a kind of yearning for senti-
ment. It is as if a skilful popular
composer were trying to reach some area
of feeling beyond the.clatter and glister
of “Broadway’s” surface, an area purer, . ©
richer, more tender than what others
were satisfied with. :
Everyone in the twenties seemed to
be dizzied by the brilliant energy and
prosperity of the times, but the more
sensitive found themselves lonely and
wistful. They were “a lookin’ for a
home’’—a safe place amid the surround-
ing jungle in which there might be some
repose, sweetness, heart. The music of ©
——————— eS SSS
| brio and-fine touches of color.
0 rind Bess” voices that quest: Tei is
9 accident that George Gershwin, who
was Jewish, should have found the
hi material for his masterpiece in what
_ amounts to a Negro folk tale—and that
the combination, with the aid of the
highly gifted lyrics of Ira Gershwin,
1
should have a lasting appeal for all
_ Americans.
‘For me the most characteristic num-
‘bers in “Porgy and Bess”
are not the
| gay and witty “It Ain’t Necessarily So,”
/ which has a significantly mock-heroic
aspect, or “A Woman Is a Sometime
Thing,” but the love duets, ‘Bess, You
Is My Woman Now” and “I Loves
You, Porgy.” They are almost hymns
of longing, expressions of desire which
transcend their personal objects.
The new production has admirable
It is
_ genuinely lively. That its exuberance is
sometimes indiscriminate and that the
storm scene is awkwardly staged—
_ Owing to the scenic arrangement—seem
‘to me minor faults. The director, Robert
Breen, is to be congratulated, as is most
of the cast. Leslie Scott’s Porgy is un-
affected and affecting. Leontyne Price as
Bess is vocally lovely as well as other-
| wise attractive, and while Cab Calloway
does not make one forget Avon Long’s
electric Sportin’ Life, he (Calloway) has
a “classy” musical style which inspires
his delivery of the numbers and his
acting.
’
YOU MAY THINK Albert Husson’s
“My Three Angels’’—originally ‘La
Cuisine des Anges’ —(Morosco Theater)
~a wicked prank or simply a pleasantly
° 5 a ”
' Servant in the House,
_ puckish comedy. But I could not help
i seeing it as a malicious fairy tale of
_ contemporary France. It twists the fa-
6 tBrniliar pattern of, let us say, “The Pass-
| ing of the Third Floor Back” or “The
in which a moral,
neatly divine stranger brings content-
ment to a disturbed household. In ‘My
‘Three Angels” three convicts in French
| Guiana—two of them murderers, the
|
|
third a thief—set everything aright in
the home of an honest French family in
straitened circumstances by killing two
distasteful business «men.
To understand how such a story can
be made ifito an often hilarious play—
i something the French press and public
designate as délicieux—one has to know
e mental climate of France today. As
id
Pa
ie ee
Le
Ser
a "real of the events af 1939-45—the
betrayal of their country by some of
their most revered leaders, the break-
down of their illusions during the war
and the occupatioh, and the terrible
wounds inflicted on their self-esteem—
all “‘righteousness’’ is now suspect to the
French. A “respectable” citizen—par-
ticularly one of the solid upper middle
class—ninety-nine times out of hundred
is regarded as the worst kind of fraud.
The “hero” of the new French drama
therefore is either an almost sadistically
mad religious fanatic or the blackest sort
of sinner—in either case, a demon of
some sort. It is as if the French did not
trust anyone but a blackguard, that is,
a frank, determined, unblinking black-
guard,
n ‘‘My Three Angels,” which shows
the smiling phase of this new cynicism
(it has its pathetic and even ‘noble’
side), the criminals are likable fellows
with a keen understanding of life, and
the business men—scions of the old
Third Republic—are mean, cold, wretch-
edly calculating creatures, who deserve
nothing better than the venomously far-
cical death they are dealt. “The means
justify the ends,” one of the three says
with cherubic assurance.
Another reason for the play’s success
in Paris is that it is written in a style
which corresponds to its artistic mean-
ing: the avenging “angels’’ speak
like poets with positively exquisite deli-
cacy and wit, while the bourgeois speak
with boorish bluntness. Thus the play
possessed a literary allure in the original
which it lacks in the American version
by Sam and Bella Spewack.
The fairy-tale feeling of “My Three
Angels” is rather neglected in the cur-
rent production, making the play rather
less distinctive than it might be. Only
Walter Slezak as the most unregenerate
of the play’s villainous ‘heroes’ gives
his part the proper style of charming
mischief. The others—none of whom
is bad—are directed too prosaically. Be
that as it may, it is only fair to point
out that the scene in which the younger
of the two victims writhes in a death
agony (from snake-bite) while the three
“angels” calmly go on discussing their
plans is one of the most outrageously
comic to be seen on any stage anywhere.
It convulsed me with astonished laughter
—and I did not seem to be alone in
this.
PENTAGON
POLITICS
WILLIAM H. NEBLETT
Former National President of the
Reserve Offieers Association
With a professional military
clique seeking to gain complete
control of the nation, every polit-
ically minded citizen should read
this clear and detailed presenta-
tion of the facts behind the cur-
rent trend toward military dicta-
torship, spearheaded by our Gen-
eral Staff.
Colonel Neblett proposes a co-
gent solution to the problems of
America’s “cold war” defense and
answers such vital questions as:
Why—failure of UMT?
Why—retired generals and ad-
mirals turned lobbyists?
Why—A-bomb secrets released
to Russia?
Of special significance today—
with a five-star general in the
White House and an ex-General
Motors magnate as Secretary of
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7 273
Films
Manny Farber |
HE directors of two new films—
“The Naked Spur’ and “Jeopardy”
—having worked on a number of low-
budget thrillers, claim space this week
for a notation of their talents. John
Sturges, director of “Jeopardy,” is a
deft mechanic who has turned out such
pictures as ‘“Mystery Street’’ and ‘The
Case Against O'Hara.” He has almost
Defoe’s talent for creating circumstan-
tial detail, along with the ability to
make hard-to-do things seem easy. In-
terested in the problem of how “‘people
like you and me’ express ourselves at
work, Sturges steers his films away
from melodrama semi-
documentary studies of such subjects as
law-office routine or sleuthing in a
college laboratory. He has a restrained
hand with actors, a moderately realistic
camera style, and a remarkable talent
for letting us know what goes on in
the minds of people faced with a
into literate,
scientific or mechanical problem.
7
i
en re
Only as individual a director as
Sturges could have concocted anything
worth seeing out of “Jeopardy,” with
its picture-postcard settings, ragged dia-
logue, and Pearl White-type thrills that
have been guidebooked by a dozen
other hair-raising films. The story,
which could have been worked out for
a radio play, has Barry Sullivan trapped
under a jetty, with only his wife (chief
desperate star Stanwyck) to save him
from drowning in the in-coming tide.
The help she finally gets turns out to
be a sex-starved killer (Ralph Mecker)
who commandeers her car to escape
from his crime. Some of the dialogue
sounds as if it came from a Collier’s
gangster: “Is there anything your hus-
band has that I could use?” leers
Meeker. However, Sturges has lowered
the temperature of this frantic story by
turning it into a kind of examination of
wild landscape, car problems, and how
one can outwit nature on a holiday trip
along the coast of Lower California. By
searching with the lens into every cor-
ner of a late-model Ford convertible and
creating interest in such things as lug-
wrenches, spinning wheels, and raising
a car without a jack, Sturges made a
274
fine study in car mania, one that speeds
along at a fast clip and would be clear
and suspenseful even to a deaf person.
Anthony Mann, director of “The
Naked Spur,” is good at making action
films come to life after the sun sets,
when in delicately underlighted episodes
he demonstrates that nothing is more
fascinating than an objective study of
nihilistic evil, death, and destruction.
The Marquis de Sade of the Metro
directing crew, Mann not only gives
genuine form and style to his cruel-
toned works but has almost vindicated
Hollywood's technique with mountain
slides, Indian and shooting
matches by showing how a deluge of
violence scenes can create striking visual
rhythms that are like powerful if devas-
tating music. Mann did a careful and
artful job with the ingredients of “The
Naked Spur,” but he got some of his
material—the theme of human greed—
distinctly third-hand via the Huston
fights,
Or eS el aE
es Tales 579
earer a
eth aa < i= Sty
“aa
44a em
“Sierra Madre” epic. Just five people 4
—a cagy desperado, a _ merciless
pursuer, an old prospector, a dishonor-
able cavalryman, and an_ attractive
blonde—go along on the hoked-up ride
through the rocky hills of Colorado.
Each of the roles, except Millard
Mitchell’s slow-witted prospector, is
played as if the actor thought he could |]
do this job blindfolded at the bottom :
of a well. For a while Robert Ryan and —
his companion in flight, Janet Leigh, are
as mean a couple of coyotes as you will
find in a Western, but then Leigh casts
off her unglamorous disguise, and Ryan
starts in with his oily lago-type expres- ©
sions of self-assured evil. Perhaps there
is too much predictable plot complica- |
tion here to please old Anthony Mann
fans, but his particular gifts are evident © |
anyway: the unique love scene that is
cut in against the eerie patter of rain on
outdoor eating utensils; the three-way ~
shooting match around a rocky cliff that
builds up a frightening chorus with the.
ping of bullets on rocks. A laudable
achievement, too, is the way all that ‘
Technicolor landscape is kept under
control, seeming to be as plain and solid
around the cowboys as in any good
black-and-white horse opry.
Records
B. H. Hagein
HE record ‘First Chair’ (Colum-
bia), which is being sold for the
benefit of the Philadelphia Orchestra
Pension Fund, presents. the orchestra’s
great solo oboe, Marcel Tabuteau, in
Handel’s beautiful Concerto No. 3; its
great solo flute, William Kincaid, whose
unique silvery tone is heard in Griffes’s
Poem, a work I don’t care for; its great
solo -horn, Mason Jones, who amazes
one with the extraordinary beauty of his
tone, its fluidity and subtle inflection in
an engaging Larghetto by Chabrier; its
brilliant solo trumpet, Samuel Krauss, in
Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary; its fine
solo clarinet, Anthony Gigliotti, in the *
inconsequential Weber Concertino (why
not a movement of Mozart’s Clarinet
Concerto?); its excellent solo bassoon,
Sol Schoenbach, ‘in an inconsequential
Concert Piece by Burrell Phillips (again
why not Mozart?); its solo cellist, Lorne
Monroe, whose technique in an engag-
ing Weber Adagio and Rondo is
dazzling, but whose tone is made edged
and brash by the recording; and: its
concert-master, Jacob Krachmalnick,
whose tone also is poorly reproduced in
Beethoven’s uninteresting Romance No.
2 (again why not a Mozart concerto
movement?). The beautiful sound of
the entire orchestra is well reproduced’
in the Purcell, Griffes, Handel; and
Chabrier pieces, but acquires a hash of
distortion in the Weber Concertino and
Phillips piece.
Handel’s Concertos Op. 4 Nos. 1 and
2 for organ and orchestra (London) I
don’t find interesting. The performances
by Jeanne Demessieux with L’Orchestre
de la Suisse romande under Ansermet
are good. ays
q
|
' magnificent performance of Elgar's _
ie er slioz’ s oP sped Funeral and
Triumphal Symphony (Lyrichord) the
operation of the Berlioz mind, always
interesting for itself, this time produces
* music which doesn’t persuade and affect
_ .« me as it usually does. The performance
by Cologne brass and string orchestras
and chorus under Fritz Straub’s direction
seems good, except that I can imagine
the finale more impressive played a little
more slowly.
The charming Rossini pieces bril-
liantly orchestrated by Respighi in ‘‘Ros-
siniana” are played well by the Covent
Garden Opera Orchestra under Braith-
_ waite (MGM). On the same record are
the less consequential Cimarosa pieces
orchestrated by Malipiero in ‘““Cimaro-
siana’” and the Overture to “Il Matri-
monio Segreto.” Surfaces are noisy.
In Toscanini’s 1936 recording of the
Brahms-Haydn Variations one can hear
how marvelously sensitized the New
York Philharmonic was to his direction;
in his new recording of this lovely piece
(RCA Victor) one hears how close the
NBC Symphony’s playing has come to
the 1936 Philharmonic’s—close, but to
my ears still not all the way. As for
Toscanini himself, I was struck by a
couple of details—a slowing down in
the second part of Variation 3 that I
felt was disproportionate to the basic
tempo established in the first part, and
a similar acceleration in the final pas-
sacaglia—details which struck me, and
which I mention, only because one of
Toscanini’s outstanding characteristics is
his sense for coherence in tempo, which
is evident in his treatment of the same
two passages in the 1936 performance.
The two details don’t make the new
performance anything less than a superb
one; and’ the record also offers a
“Enigma” Variations.
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 is
played by Schmidt-Isserstedt and the
‘ Hamburg Radio Symphony with the
- traditional distortions that make it senti-
mental and hysterical (London).
I enjoy some passages of Stravinsky’s
Piano Concerto (1923-24) now that I
didn’t when I first heard the work al-
_ most thirty years ago; but I still don’t
like it as much as some of the subse-
quent works in which he used the same
method with increasing elaboration and
expertness. It is performed effectively
(RCA Victor) by Stravinsky with a
ie
Dame
aay ee
Victor orchestra and his son Soulima as
solo pianist. Stravinsky also conducts
the orchestra in the Scherzo a la russe
that he wrote for Paul Whiteman, and
a chorus of men and boys in a Pater
Noster and Ave Maria—none of which
pieces I care for.
Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 (1944),
one of the best of his later works, and
unusual in the sustained and involved
construction of its first and third move-
ments, is given an excellent performance
by Tuxen with the fine Danish State
Radio Symphony (London).
Roger Goeb’s Symphony No. 3 is
for Stokowski, who conducts the per-
formance (RCA Victor), one of the
works in which “the most talented
American composefs are expressing
through Tone and Rhythm our concep-
tion of the life of action and feeling
of America’; but I can only report that
its “complex interweaving of dynamic
rhythm and vigorous melodic lines”
communicates nothing at all to me. The
same for Bartok’s Sonata for two pianos
and percussion, in which Stokowski
conducts Gerson Yessin and Raymond
Viola, pianists, and Elayne Jones and
Alfred Howard, percussionists, and con-
cerning which he emits long stretches
of his portentous-sounding zero-talk.
The performances are excellent.
Art Notes
FRANK DUNCAN shows oils and
water colors of still lifes and landscapes.
The landscapes are of Majorca, Spain,
and Rhode Island. His colors are warm
and pleasant with greens and reds pre-
dominating. —Durlacher to April 4
MICHEL G. GILBERT, French-born
painter, has had three shows at this
gallery. These recent neo-Impressionist
paintings are landscapes of Paris and
New England.—Passedoit to April 4.
ANTONIO FRASCONI, a native
Uruguayan who has lived in the United
States for the past eight years, is a
leading woodcut artist. These powerful
color blocks depict the activity around
the Brooklyn Bridge and the Fulton
Fish Market in strong, opaque colors.
—Weyhe to April 14.
JEANNETTE M. GENIUS, a South-
ern artist, in her first New York show
exhibits a group of semi-abstractions
concerned with buildings and figures.
They are light and gay in color treat-
ment with interesting textures——Con-
temporary Arts to April 3.
SIDNEY SIMON in his third one-man
show presents New York scenes in-
segmented,
that suggest various French influences.
—Grand Central Moderns to April 7-
semi-transparent paintings
RECENT PAINTINGS
NAT RAMER
March 30-April 11
Helen Goodman Gallery
137 East 27 Street, New York
—30% Less than List on LP Records—
Send 15¢ for LP catalog to:
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Box 175, Radio City Station, New York 19, N. Y.
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RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN’S
The King and I
A New Musical Play
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
ST. JAMES THEATRE, West 44 St.)
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
Wednesday & Saturday at2:25: $4.20to1.80. _
IN THE NAME OF SIMPLE HUMANITY
Rally to Secure Clemency for
ETHEL & JULIUS ROSENBERG
SUNDAY, MARCH 29—8:30 P.M.
Adm.: $1.50 orchestra; $1 balcony
CARNEG
154 West 5
HALL
th Street
SPEAKERS:
Dr. Bernard Loomer
Dean, Divinity School,
University of Chicago
Rey. Kenneth Ripley Forbes
Philadelphia
Mr. William Harrison
Associate Editor, Boston Chronicle
Miss Ruby Dee,
Star, Jackie Robinson Story
Jack Levine Distinguished Artist
Choral Presentation
Auspices: National Council, ASP © 35 West 64th Street ® SU 17-4677
Ss
Letters
Intolerance in Italy
Dear Sirs: The battle for religious lib-
erty in Italy is being lost. Notwithstand-
ing the promises of the Gasperi govern-
ment, and the guaranties of the con-
stitution, the Peace Treaty of 1947, and
the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce,
and Navigation of 1949, Italy’s clerical
government continually violates reli-
gious freedom. The Vatican-controlled
officials of Italy are using every device
to impose their control on Italian life.
On Reformation Sunday, October 30,
1949, a seminary for the retraining of
Roman Catholic priests was opened in
Portici at Naples—the Evangelical Bibli-
cal Institute. It was founded and financed
by me and a group of American
friends. Iam an American and for more
than a quarter of a century I was active
as a minister and school teacher in New
York and New Jersey. At present the
school and its enlarged activities have
friends and supporters all over the
United States.
Since the summer of 1952 the Roman
church has shown increasing Opposi-
tion to the school, and last January I
was ordered to leave the country. An
appeal to Prime Minister de Gasperi
was fruitless.
American correspondents in Italy
asked me why I was being expelled, but
an Associated Press dispatch in one
Rome newspaper had already given the
answer. ‘“Caliandro’s troubles,” it said,
“follow difficulties reported for the past
three years by the Church of Christ, the
Baptists, and the Pentecostals. . . . The
order from the Interior Ministry ex-
pelling Caliandro was the latest move
in a three-year strife between Italy’s
Catholic government and some Protes-
tant Evangelical groups.”
We are continuing our work at Por-
tici as if nothing had happened. Many
people, including civic leaders and in-
tellectuals, are assuring us of their sup-
port and openly criticizing the action of
the Italian government.
The Treaty of Friendship, Commerce,
and Navigation of 1949 between the
United States and Italy guarantees to
the nationals of both countries full re-
ligious liberty in the following terms:
The nationals of either high contract-
ing party shall within the territories of
the other high contracting party be per-
mitted to exercise liberty of conscience
and freedom of worship, and they may,
whether individually, collectively, or in
276
Crossword Puzzle No. 509
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
=
nm
158)
ri ri
DY) ty) raieeen
eda | | oy hes I
oon
+
| | a ae
ACROSS
1,6, 18 down and 24 down. Giving the
third and last three members of the
orchestra the lead in pot-pourri?
(7, 3, 4, 6, 3, 5)
10 He has the make-up of a cad and a
liar! (7)
11 See 19 across. R
12 Cereal desserts—on the house, per-
haps. (8) :
13 Para, by a different name, sounds
like one associated with a talking
animal. (5)
15 Katisha was such a daughter-in-law.
17 It might be the base of what affects
you, in one sense. (9)
19,11, 29, and 1 down. Implying the
most devout Quaker is required to
fix locks? (3, 4, 2, 7, 4, 4)
21 Joseph Rodman, perhaps, sort of
acted like Maud Muller. (5)
23 “That bustle so illustrious
’Tis almost consequence,
Is the of death.”
Emily Dickinson. (5)
24 Sharp change of course, more or
less outmoded in marine warfare?
27 Where there’s no hope of getting
praised? (7) :
28 Tug commander, perhaps, with a
crop of flax. (7)
29 See 19 across.
380 Observes an animal found in an
island of the Dutch East Indies.
(10)
DOWN
1 See 19 across.
2 To plead for the life of Rana, in an
immature way? (7)
TTTiELLLE. oe
re Ea
CO
HY)
nm
ae a
?
Descriptive of Cinna’s people? (5)
Spooner certainly wouldn’t imply a
burning spirit here, (4, 5)
ae a broken shaft, evidently.
Would Wagner’s opera cycle have
such a form? (7)
Does it put a strain on the com-
mander of a merchant vessel? (10)
The mixed breed that Master
Cratchit is superior to? (8) .
14 Warm up the bird, and give it to the
master; the people here are filled
with disbelief. (10)
16 Sounds like a tough description of
ai for a salientian. (4, 4)
18 See 1 across.
20 Implies the service entrance when
one does. (7) me
22 A synonym is contained in 4 down.
24 See 1 across.
25 Rise aloft, like one who might 28
if decapitated. (5)
26 Time for Irving’s Bones to get away
from tiresome platitudes. (4)
of e
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 508
ACROSS :—1 APHORISMS; 9 DOLEFUL; 10
MYALGIA; 11 RADIANT; 12 TEABALL; 13,
24 and 32 SHE AMERICA FIRST; 17
BERTHA ; 18 ALAMO; 19 UPPERS; 25 ADS;
27 DERIDES; 28 THERESA; 30 OSHKOSH;
33 MASON JARS.
DOWN:—1 ARDOR; 2 HOLIDAY; 3 RE-
FRAIN;4SPLITS; 5 SEMITE; 6, 31, 6 across
and 15 across WHAT ARE THE WILD
WAVES SAYING; 7 VAGRANT; 8 SMALL
TALK; 14 ELAND; 15 SOUNDS OFF; 16 and
22 GAS ATTACK; 17 BOA; 20 PERCHER;
21 REDCOAT; 23 THEREON; 25 ASCHAM;
26 STATES; 29 ANDES.
KO5 100" Fe Ore ice
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's ‘ground rules.” Address
requests to Puzzle Dept., The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, |New York 7, New York.
t
’
“ Al ~ 5e" x
Poe ett
4 oy a i
arto het 5 cy oe
4p
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In English — 548 pp. — $1.50
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He will recognize talent and create the op-
portunity to use it! Write for terms—TO-
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PHILADELPHIANS interested in
contemporary art should visit the
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LECTURE
y—"* Friday, March 27, 8:30 *———,
WILLIAM MANDEL
¥ Noted Authority on Russia discusses
THE SOVIET UNION—WHAT NOW?
THE CHANGE FROM STALIN TO MALENKOV
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i
ee ee.
aes ma eT »
ul —
j jae
religious corporations or associations, and
without annoyance or molestation of any
kind by reason of their religious belief,
conduct services, either within their own
houses or within any other appropriate
buildings, provided that their teachings
or practices are not contrary to public
morals or public order.
As an American, I know that .the
United States government faithfully
lives up to the letter as well @s to the
spirit of this treaty. I cannot say the
same thing for Italy, where I have re-
sided since it went into effect.
A very large number of fine Italian
citizens complain with much feeling
that the American government is lend-
ing its support to the so-called Christian
Democratic Party of Mr. de Gasperi.
This government is a purely clerical
government—not democratic and not
Christian. ANTHONY CALIANDRO,
Director, Evangelical Biblical
Institute of Italy
Portici, Naples, Italy
That Plea for Heretics
Dear Sirs: After reading in your Janu-
ary 3 issue the extracts from Dr. Mac-
beath’s Plea for Heretics, I wrote the
author for permission to publish in
pamphlet form the entire remarkable ad-
dress. He gave me permission, and the
full text can now be obtained at 15
cents per single copy or $10 per hundred
by «writing to me at 507 East Orange
Grove Avenue, Pasadena, California. If
there is any profit left after the cost
of printing 1,000 copies has been
covered, it will be used to start a fund
for doing what Professor Macbeath says
we must do—put some of our fdeas
into intelligent action.
Pasadena, Cal. J. G. MOORE
In Defense of Ingersoll
Dear Sirs: 1 confess that as an inveterate
agnostic I was shocked to read the
notice in The Nation of Cramer's new
biography of Ingersoll, and particularly
the statement that there was a generous
amount of showmanship and “‘rascality”
in Ingersoll. . . . The late Haldeman-
Julius asked me about three years ago
to review critically Ingersoll’s attacks
on orthodox tfeligion, Christian and
Jewish. I consented rather reluctantly.
. . . My surprise was pleasant and keen.
Ingersoll is extremely modern and phil-
osophical as well as scientific... . He
cannot be dismissed as a Quixote or as a
mere phrase-monger.
La Jolla, Cal. ~ VICTOR YARROS
Printed in the U. 8. A. by StmINBmEG Peuss, INc., Morgan & Johnson Aves., Brooklyn 6, N. ¥. Rea oa 173,
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THIS MAN DECIDED NOT
TO BECOME PRESIDENT
OF GENERAL ELECTRIC!
WHY?
T. K. Quinn, for many years vice-president and “white-
haired boy” of Gerard Swope’s giant industrial empire,
answers this question for Nation readers in a series of
brilliant, intimately written pieces* which have pro-
found social implications for today’s America.
Here is the inside story of American Big Business by
an insider, told with candor, warmth, and humor. The
Editors of The Nation believe that Mr. Quinn’s articles |
are absolutely unique in their field.
*Extracted with the consent of the author from his autobiographical ‘‘Giant Business—Threat to Democracy”
soon to be published by Exposition Press.
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The Bricker Amendment i
© | i
Hog-Tying
Our Treaty
Makers
by Merlo J Pusey |
h
The Real: Prokofiev Alexander Werth
Be Auto Workers Speak Arthur Eggleston |
SINCE | i}
psa Vishinsky Returns . { Abarez del Vayo
Around
the
USA
Pittsburgh Rushes Off
in All Directions
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
PITTSBURGH was stirred to its depths
not long -ago by the disclosures of
Matthew Cvetic, of a
munist’’ fame, and the subsequent activ-
ity of Judge Michael A.
which was patterned after that of Sena-
tor McCarthy ona national level. Names
from Mr. Cvetic’s memory filled the
“I was a Com-
Musmanno,
pages of the Pittsburgh newspapers, and
humble obscure social-work
agencies lost their jobs as poor security
risks. On the heels of Mr. Cvetic’s con-
fessions, Judge Musmanno pounced on
the local Communist Party headquarters,
and finding that it contained no copy
of the United States Constitution,
clerks in
The NATION
[] with Harper’s Magazine .. .
The NATION
[_] wth Consumer Reports . .
ordered the rooms padlocked and the
officers arrested.
Judge Musmanno then stepped out
of the robes of a Common Pleas jurist
and as a private citizen prosecuted Steve
Nelson, Andrew Onda, and James
Dolsen. Having obtained their convic-
tion as Communists under a state sedi-
tion law—they have since been indicted
under federal law—he became justice
of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
© Concomitantly _ Pitts-
burgh has shown a feverish desire to
better itself, in all directions. A new
airport has been built. ALCOA has
erected a great aluminum building,
United States Steel a steel building’
Slum areas are being razed for public
auditoriums, parks, and parking’ lots.
The Golden Triangle is bursting with
derricks and bulldozers.
The exciting experiments with gamma.
globulin for polio originated in Pitts-
burgh. The city water department puts
fluorides in the water. A local FEPC
ordinance is passed. International art
exhibitions and music festivals are held.
Pittsburgh’s institutions of learning im-
port famous names in every field—for
»example, Dr. Benjamin Spock in pedi-
atrics and Dr. Roy Harris in music.
With Dr. Harris’s appointment at the
Pennsylvania College for Women the
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city’s craving ioe superiority collid d
* House committee,
with its craving for conformity. Rover
boys Musmanno and Cvetic ran across
Dr. Harris's name in the files of the
House Un-American Activities Com-
mittee. Not only had he been affiliated
with some of those organizations on the
Attorney General’s list, but he had
dedicated a musical work to the Red
Army. Judge Musmanno promptly per-
~suaded his local post to send him as a
delegate to the next meeting of the
American Legion, and there he offered
a resolution denouncing Dr. Harris for
alleged subversive leanings. Impas-
sioned as always, he cried, “Dr. Harris
must leave Pittsburgh. He is a disgrace
to Pittsburgh.’
Colonel John H. Shenkel, chairman
of the Americanism Committee of the
Legion for the past eighteen years, op-
posed Musmanno and his resolution.
The committee unanimously recom-
mended its rejection.
-
@ Meanwhile Mr, Cvetic
had written 2 letter to the paper and
been answered. He was reminded that
Dr. Harris had made the dedication in
question in 1943, when several million
other Americans, including General
Eisenhower, were. hailing the ‘ Soviet
Union and the Red Army, ‘and that~-
thorough investigation by the Pennsyl-
vania College for Women had com-
pletely cleared Dr. Harris of disloyalty.
Dr. Harris expressed disgust with the
effrontery of Musmanno and Cyetic and
asserted his willingness to defend him-
self under oath before the House Un-
American Activities Committee. He said
further, “I hope that the committee
would be eager also to investigate the
reprehensible practice of exploiting our
hatred and fear of communism for per-
sonal, political, or financial gain.”
At its March meeting the American
Legion rejected the Musmanno resolu-
tion. The Judge withdrew gracefully,
telling the delegates that since Dr. . ©
Harris was willing to appear before the
he was satisfied.
When asked whether he too would be
willing to appear before the committee
to repeat his charge under oath, he re-
plied, “I will answer it this way. I am
at the disposal of my government at any
time, whether on the battlefield or- in
public service.” TERRY MILLER
[Terry Miller is a preelance s uae in 4
Pe : eon
i
Lt
New York, Saturday, April 4, 1953
The Shape of Things
The Brightening Eastern Sky
As we go to press, China has announced its readiness
to cooperate in hurdling the last barrier to the long-
_ sought truce in Korea. Thus, according to Peking, the
American—and United Nations—demand that prisoners
are to be repatriated only on a “voluntary” basis is to be
met. Only those prisoners would be returned home who
want to go. Others would be turned over to a “neutral
state” pending a final disposition of their status. This -is
substantially the plan which India earlier presented be-
_ fore the current session of the General Assembly and
which, in an amended form, was turned down by China.
At no time since the outbreak of the Korean war has
the outlook for peace been greater. Peking has made its
bid; it is up to the West to meet it.
Softening Up the F. T. C.
The appointment of Edward F. Howrey to a seven-year
term on the Federal Trade Commission—he will be the
new chairman—is quite in keeping with the what-is-
good-for-business-is-good-for-the-country philosophy of
the Eisenhower Administration, Bruce Catton, who was
apparently the first reporter to note the significance of
the selection, pointed out in The Nation of March 14
that Mr. Howrey will not have to bone up on the work
or procedures of the commission. For twenty years now
he has represented a powerful clientéle of special interests
before it and is perhaps the best-known and most influ-
_ ential lobbyist in the field.
But the appointment involves another issue. In a con-
servative understatement the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- notes that the appointment of Mr. Howrey was “‘inade-
_ quately reported.” It is not surprising, therefore, that the
nomination should have been quickly. approved by the
_ Senate Commerce Committee. Is this another instance of
the Democrats’ electing to “play dead”’ in the hopeful an-
ticipation that the Republicans will dig their own graves?
Trans-Channel Trade _
At the meeting of the Organization for European
Economic Cooperation in Paris last week Britain suc-
_ ceeded in banishing some of the doubts about its poli-
cies that had been agitating the European chancelleries.
In the first place it announced that the unrestricted
meprpRoriOn of its European imports, reduced during last
yeat’s crisis from 90 to 44 per cent, would be raised to
ent and that foreign-exchange allowances for
‘Nation
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
British tourists would be increased from £25 to
£40. These moves, together with a parallel relaxation”
of import quotas by the West German government,
should help to lift the total of intra-European trade
and prove of particular assistance to France and Italy,
which have been suffering from a decline in exports.
Even more welcome was the British readiness to stay
in the European Payments Union for another year unless
there was a unanimous agreement to transform the union
into a larger system, This quieted fear of a private deal
between Britain and the United States to restore sterling
convertibility. Whatever its hopes may have been, the
recent British mission to Washington obviously learned
that the Eisenhower Administration was either unwill-
ing or unable to make commitments in this direction.
As a result the Churchill government seems to have
decided that a purely Commonwealth approach to the
problem must be abandoned in favor of one that em-
braces the whole Western European partnership. We
may expect, therefore, to see new efforts to strengthen
economic ties between Europe and the sterling area as
the first step in collective action for trade expansion and
general currency convertibility. In theory such a plan
would be much more warmly received than any unilat-
eral scheme: in practice, since it will be much harder to
turn down, it may prove more embarrassing.
Mayer Heads for Trouble
If Prime Minister René Mayer’s mission had ended in
Washington it could have been defined as very success-
ful. Indo-China, one of the chief concerns of the French
government, is now definitely included in the field of
American international obligations. The joint warning
to Communist China that aggressive warfare anywhere
in the Far East would be considercd a violation of a
Korean armistice and would “have the most serious con-
sequences” implies an American commitment to military
support of France in Indo-China which goes far beyond
the agreements made at the last NATO meeting.
The amount of additional American financial aid to
be allocated to winning the fight in Indo-China was not
stated. It-was left to be settled at the next NATO meet-
ing in Paris, starting on April 23, But it may be assumed
that once the agreement has been made in principle and
the plans for military action accepted, the money will be
for OME e,
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 277,
The Bohlen Affair 279
ARTICLES
Bricker Amendment:
The Treaty-Making Power
by Merlo J. Pusey 280
Vishinsky Returns
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 283
A Fillip for Labor:
The U. A. W. Convention
by Arthur Eggleston 284
The Real Prokofiev:
Now It Can Be Told
by Alexander Werth 285
Red China Diary:
II. Germ-War Exhibit
by Desmond Donnelly 287
TV Commercials by Frank Orme 289
BOOKS
Soviet Russia as It Is
A Review by Mark Gayn 290
New Books in Brief 292
THEATER by Harold Clurman 293
MUSIC by B. H, Haggin 294
ART NOTES 295
LETTERS 296
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 510
by Frank W. Lewis 296
AROUND THE U. S. A.: Pittsburgh
Rushes Off in All Directions
by Terry Miller opposite 277
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Associates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. ae A. by
The Nation Associates; Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York N.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879 3 at the Post Office
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portance of the settlement of the none of the Saac”—
an asset in Premier Mayer's balance-sheet. But on this”
point there is a countervailing liability. The French min-
isters had to reciprocate by pledging themselves to speed
ratification of the European Army treaty and by identify-
ing themselves with the official American view that in
the recent overtures of the new Russian government there
has been little to encourage hope of negotiation, These
two concessions are already being criticized in influential
non-Communist circles in France. Premier Mayer must
complete his mission at home, and it is an easy predic-
tion that his next appearance in the French Parliament
will prove more hazardous than his visit to Washington.
Tito Makes a Hit London
Tito’s visit was epitomized by the incident at the
luncheon given for him by the Labor Party's National
Executive at the House of Commons. Before his arrival
there was some concern that he would be monopolized
by Aneurin Bevan, who had interviewed him summer
before last. But when Sir Waldron Smithers, the half-
comic pre-Victorian Conservative strode in and ex-
changed some words with him in the Serbo-Croat he had
picked up while fighting at Salonika in World War I,
it was apparent that Tito was doing all right.
The indignant letters of Catholic leaders, plus Evelyn
Waugh and Graham Greene, were passed. off rather
lightly. Communist protests were so mild as to seem pro
forma. The bulk of the British people were prepared to
welcome Tito heartily because there is high regard here
for a brave patriot, particularly when his patriotism ts
in Britain’s interest. Anthony Eden and the Foreign
Office were won over by his cooperation in helping to
rebuild the East Mediterranean section of the cordon
sanitatre.
Tito said on leaving that he had “attained all we
hoped for.” It had previously been taken for granted
that any attack on Yugoslavia by the Cominform coun-
tries would be considered a cause for war by the West,
but considerable remained to be done in planning and
implementing a counter-strategy. During Tito’s visit 1€
became clearer that Britain will be the funnel through
which Western aid to Tito will flow. Anglo-Yugoslav
military talks will be resumed in Belgrade shortly. Tito
was satisfied. ANDREW ROTH
Last of the New Dealers
Frances Perkins, the last of the New Dealers, is re-
tiring from the federal service after completing a seven-
year term on the Civil Service Commission. As Secretary
of Labor in the original Roosevelt Cabinet, ‘Miss Perkins
faced tremendous handicaps: she was the first woman to
serve in the Cabinet—and a cruel cross this proved to be
—and she was not “of labor.” But she managed to ride
The NaTION ©
uoP i OS Aly: ek ot ee,
a,
yur. “
out storms of abuse without losing her admirable sense
of humor or her capacity for efficient public service. Miss
Perkins probably had a clearer conception of the New
Deal and was more unselfishly dedicated to the achieve-
ment of its goals than any of her colleagues. The list of
social achievement with which her name is associated is
indeed impressive. Always a modest person, Miss Per-
kins left Washington so quietly that her departure was
scarcely noticed in the press. She has our best wishes.
The Bohlen A ffair
_ THE PROBLEM with the Bohlen affair is how to score
it. Who won? who lost? how should the final score be
reckoned?
asm 4
Defeated on the main issue, McCarthy and “the little
group of wilful” Senators who supported him made
several telling points. Mr. Bohlen’s usefulness as a
career diplomat has been seriously impaired. The de-
moralization of the foreign service has been accelerated.
Congress has again won thé right to inspect confidential
F. B. I. reports. More important, McCarthy has again
succeeded in raising a doubt in the public’s mind about
_the integrity of the State Department’s conduct of for-
eign affairs—a doubt which he will exploit to the full
whenever the international situation gives him an oppor-
tunity. Nor has McCarthy surrendered. With three of his
henchmen he serves on the Senate Appropriations Com-
mittee, and he has already promised Mr. Dulles a lively
session when the Secretary of State appears before the
committee in support of his department’s budget. More-
over, it should not be forgotten that the Bricker amend-
ment will be used even more effectively than the attack
on the Bohlen appointment to embarrass the Administra-
tion. The fight on the Bohlen appointment was so timed
in relation to the death of Stalin as to make it an ideal
means of warning the Administration what to expect
should it open negotiations with the Russians for a
general settlement. There can be no doubt, as the sharp
exchange between Mr. Dulles and Senator McCarran
: indicated, that the Bohlen affair was regarded by both
. sides as the “acid test’—the test, that is, of who is
directing foreign policy. McCarthy can count votes as
, accurately as the next man. He knew he could not prevent *
Bohlen’s confirmation; his real objective was to establish
a beachhead from which a broader attack on the Ad-
ministration might be launched. The beachhead was won.
Nevertheless, the Administration seems to have racked
up more points than McCarthy.-The haste with which -
Joe’s most ardent admirers deserted him on this issue is
a fair measure of the ground he has lost. It means some-
thing when the New York World Telegram denounces
McCarthy for his “back-alley tactics” and refers to him
as “this loud-mouthed rowdy,” when the Hearst Jowrnal-
_ American interrupts its red-baiting long enough to say -
“we've had enough of this kind of malicious mischief
in American life,” and when the New York Daily News
concedes that its hero was “off the beam” in the Bohlen
case. “Not since F. D, R. wrecked the national support
accorded him in 1936 with his controversial court-
enlarging plan of the following February,” writes Frank
Conniff in the Journal-American (Match 25), “has a
politician dissipated his reservoir of support as quickly
as Battling Joe.”
Nor can there be much doubt: that McCarthy made
a serious mistake in isolating himself on the fringe of |
his own party. The bitter clashes with Senators Knowland
and Taft, the sharp comments by Senators Tobey (who
suggested that the Senate’s theme song should be “I’m
forever chasing rumors”) and Flanders, and the Pres-
ident’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger rebuke, certainly
did not enhance McCarthy’s prestige. Of even greater
importance, in our view, is the fact that McCarthy’s
vicious attack on Bohlen created a new awareness of the
assorted evils for which his name is now a label. Colum-
nists referred tartly to the “fifth column” in government
that has been leaking information to McCarthy and
McCarran, called attention to McCarthy’s brazen lying
with a new directness and emphasis, and noted with
asperity how the F. B. I. carelessly includes in security
reports gossip of a “poison pen” madness that should
promptly call for an investigation of the letter-writers.
The Bohlen affair, moreover, was reported with a vivid-
ness of detail that has not always characterized the cover-
age of McCarthy’s adventures in slander.
TO ENLARGE the scope of the survey somewhat, just
how do things now stand with McCarthy, Velde, and
Jenner? To Velde’s sharp setback in his exchange with
the clergy may now be added McCarthy’s first tactical
defeat. In the last sixty days McCarthy and his colleagues
have sent more fresh recruits to his opponents than have
enlisted in the last six years. Despite some division, the
Protestant leadership has been deeply offended by their
threats and is now thoroughly aroused. An influential
sector of Catholic opinion—witness caustic editorials in
America and the Commonweal and Dr. George N.
Shuster’s fine speech in Washington—has been alienated
by the bigotry and recklessness of McCarthy and Mc-
Carran. Telecasts of recent inquisitions have brought a
new understanding of the ugly menace of McCarthyism
to thousands who were formerly indifferent or unin-
formed. A large audience heard one witness demand
that the’ Senate find out how McCarthy “was able to
bank 175,000 bucks while making a salary of $15,000
a year.”
It is doubtless true that McCarthy, Velde, and Jenner,
in their more recent sorties, have succeeded in rallying
the malcontents and consolidating the support which is
theirs as a matter of psychological and political affinity.
But these gains have been purchased at an extremely high
price. However one totals the score, the gains in the fight
against McCarthy of recent weeks have been sufficient
to give new hope to a large and growing ppposition. If
the Democratic leadership in Congress—note an honor-
able exception for Senator Lehman—would only emerge
from its long hibernation and join the fray, it is possible
that 1954 might find McCarthy, Velde, and Jenner o
the run. It is much too early to crow, but the suggestion
we advanced some weeks ago that a revolt against Mc-
Carthy was in the making has been borne out by the
losses he has sustained in the Bohlen affair. No Paul
Revere has yet ridden forth to sound the alarm, but here
and there Minute Men have begun to assemble.
; + -
BRICKER AMENDMENT
The Treaty-Making Power . .
A FLANKING movement against
American leadership in world affairs has
gained alarming headway in Congress.
Led by Senator John W. Bricker of
Ohio, it has easily won adherents by
playing upon fears that the power to
make treaties may be used to curtail or
destroy our rights and liberties. With
the aid of this lusty hobgoblin, the Sen-
ator is dangerously near to setting the
country back more than a century and
a half in its foreign relations.
More specifically, the appealing idea
that Senator Bricker holds out to his
colleagues and to the country is a way
of preventing the internationalists from
supplanting the Bill of Rights with new-
fangled foreign agreements. Unless the
Constitution is amended, he contends,
the whole structure of our government
may be altered through the treaty power.
To counteract that peril, he would clamp
severe restraints on the President and the
State Department and transfer a large
measure of control over foreign relations
to Congress.
Some observers of the Washington
scene believe that Senator Bricker is
striking obliquely at’ the United Na-
tions. With the U. N. Charter coming
up for automatic revision in 1955, the
neo-isolationists in Congress would like
nothing better than to force a retreat
from our U. N. commitments. Whether
that is part of Mr. Bricker’s game or
MERLO J. PUSEY, associate editor of
the Washington Post, is author of a
‘biography of Charles Evans Hughes that
won a Pulitzer Prize.
whether he is sincerely concerned about
a possible eclipse of rights is a matter
of little consequence. The effects of
blunderbussing can be just as disastrous
as those of malicious scheming.
Thus far Senator Bricker has been
astonishingly successful in convincing
his fellow-legislators that his proposed
constitutional amendment is an urgently
necessary reform. His new resolution has
been introduced with sixty-four sponsors
—-precisely the number of votes needed
to push it through the Senate. And an
Associated Press inquiry among mem-
bers of the Eighty-third Congress in-
dicates that they favor by eight to one
the “principle” on which Mr. Bricker
has taken his stand.
Apparently the strategy of the spon-
sors is to bring the resolution to a vote
in the Senate as soon as possible—before
either Congress or the country is fully
aware of what is happening. If the
Senate can be induced thus to vote no
confidence in itself as the guardian of
the treaty-making process, it is assumed
that the House will quickly acquiesce.
For many years the*House has had an
itch for some measure of control over
foreign relations, and if it finds the
Senate ready to hand over some of its
exclusive power in this field, nothing
is likely to stop the Bricker drive. In
view of their frequent complaints about
treaty encroachments on their local laws,
the state legislatures may be expected to
join eagerly in forging fetters for the
treaty-makers. :
Some stout opposition, to the plan
appeared at the hearings before a Senate
by Merlo J. Pusey
Judiciary subcommittee, and the Depart- ~
ments of State and Justice will soon
voice their apprehension. President
Eisenhower has spoken mildly against
the resolution at two press conferences,
but there is no assurance that the Ad-
ministration can overcome the momen-
tum that the Bricker bandwagon has
already attained. The chairman of the
subcommittee in charge of the measure
is Senator Langer, one of the two mem-
bers of the Senate who voted against
approval of the United Nations treaty.
Considering all the circumstances, it
looks as if only a tidal wave of public
opinion could save the treaty power
from a clumsy overhauling by its
enemies.
NOW TAKE a close-up view of this
backward-looking resolution. Senator
Bricker lays greatest stress on Section 1,
which reads:
A provision of a treaty which denies or
abridges any right enumerated in this
Constitution shall not be of any force or
effect.
One might suppose from the nature
of this prohibition that the people had
been deprived of some highly prized
sights by treaties surreptitiously ap-
proved by the Senate and blindly up-
held by the Supreme Court. But nothing
of the sort has happened. Indeed, spon-
sors of the amendment cannot point to
a single treaty in all our history that
represents an abuse of power. What they
are trying to do is to upset a system that
has worked reasonably well for more
than a century and a half in
order to ae
as
_ prevent even consideration of suggested
prove unwise.
The chief explanation given for this
distrust of our treaty-making system is
an alleged Achilles’ heel in the Consti-
tution. The supremacy clause of that
document provides that the Constitution
and federal laws ‘‘made in Pursuance
. thereof’ and “all Treaties made, or
which shall be made, under the Author-
ity of the United States’ shall be ‘‘the
supreme Law of the Land.’ Treaties, the
revisionists note, are thus put in a less
restricted category than are statutes. Con-
sequently the power given to the Pres-
-ident and the Senate is unlimited, and
treaties can be made to override the
Constitution.
It happens that there was a good
| historical reason for separating treaties
and statutes in the supremacy clause.
The Founding Fatliers did this to avoid
4 casting any reflection on the treaties that
had previously been made under the old
Articles of Confederation, including the
peace treaty with England. Obviously
these could not have been saved if the
Constitution had recognized only trea-
-ties to be made under its own terms. So
James* Madison and his confréres
- brought within the “supreme Law of the
Land” all treaties made ‘under the
Authority of the United States.”
WHAT, THEN, is the authority of the
United Statés? Since the adoption of the
Constitution it must be the authority
given the United States by that docu-
ment. Ours is a government of limited
«powers, and no limits are more rigidly
fixed than those which safeguard the
rights and freedoms of the people. To
assume that a treaty made “under the
Authority of the United States’ can
demolish rights which all officials of the
|. United States are forbidden to infringe
is to inflate the treaty clause beyond all
reason and to drain the substance from
. the remainder of the Constitution.
It is not necessary, however, to rely
upon logic alone. The Supreme Court
} has repeatedly said that treaties cannot
} override constitutional rights. The
*
v. Holland, in which the court upheld a
treaty with Great Britain in behalf of
| Canada for the protection of migratory
| birds. An act'of Congress for the same
| purpose had previously been held un-
future treaties which they fear would:
Bricker forces like to point to Missouri
constitutional in a lower court because
the control of birds is one of the powers
reserved to the states by the Tenth
Amendment. When it became a question
of dealing with another nation in re-
gard to migratory birds, however, the
federal government had to act, because
the states are not permitted to deal
directly with foreign powers? In this
sense the resort to the treaty power did
=a
Y
Senator Bricker
create national authority that could not
otherwise have been exercised. But Jus-
tice Holmes was careful to point out in
the opinion upholding the statute which
gave effect to the migratory-bird treaty
_that the power to make treaties is not
unlimited. “The treaty in question,” he
wrote, “does not contravene any pro-
hibitory words to be found in the Con-
stitution.”
Still more explicit is the court’s opin:
ion in Geofroy v. Riggs (1890), when
it upheld the right of a French citizen
to inherit land in the District of Colum-
bia under the Treaty of 1853. In ex-
plaining the scope*of the treaty power
the court observed:
It would not be contended that it ex-
tends so far as to authorize what the Con-
stitution forbids, or a change in the char-
acter of the government...
Instead of being unlimited, the treaty
power is circumscribed by some of the
severest restraints known to our check-
and-balance system. If ‘the President
should ever, violate his oath by sponsor-
ing a treaty in conflict with the Bill of
Rights, it could be voted down by one-
third plus one of the Senate. Should the
Senate be tricked or intimidated, the
offensive treaty could be upset by the
Supreme Court. And evén if a majority
of the Supreme Court should succumb
to the virus of some new and subver-
sive internationalism, Congress could
nullify the treaty overnight, so far as
any domestic repercussions might be con-
cerned, by passing a simple resolution.
The “menacing loophole’ in the Con-
stitution that the revisionists talk about,
therefore, simply does not exist. It is
readily apparent from the resolution
itself, moreover, that Senator Bricker .
is not merely trying to keep the treaty
power in its traditional groove. Section 2
would create a no man’s land in which
the treaty power could not operate. This
it would do by outlawing any treaty
permitting a foreign power or interna-
tional organization “to supervise, con-
trol, or adjudicate” constitutional rights
of American citizens. within the United
States “or any other matter essentially
within the domestic jurisdiction of the.
United States.”
NO ONE KNOWS precisely what is
meant by the latter phrase. Presumably
it forbids American participation in the
International Monetary Fund, the Inter-
national Telecommunications Union, the
World Health Organization, and all
similar agencies maintaining some de-
gree of supervision over activities that
are usually left to domestic regulation.
The language strongly suggests also that
international control of atomic energy—
the only hope of arresting the race in
atomic weapons—would be placed be-
yond reach of the treaty power. Senator
Bricker vehemently rejects this interpre-
tation but offers no comprehensive guide
to indicate what is, or is not, “essentially
within the domestic jurisdiction of the
United States.”
Some experts believe that Section 2
would leave the United States without
power to enter into agreements to resist
aggression through the United Nations,
for this sort of activity is supervised and
controlled by the Security Council. The
United Nations Charter contemplates the
creation of a Military Staff Committee
that would control all the anti-aggression
forces assigned to U. N. duty. Already
an international agency controls our
vast investment of men and money in
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Would these defense arrangements also
be outlawed ?
It is true, of course, that the prevail-
281
SS
eS
ing concept of what is within a nation’s
domestic jurisdiction changes from
time to time. As free nations are driven
into closer relationships for their own
protection, what is regarded as domestic
will inevitably be narrowed and what is
regarded as international will be ex-
panded. Meanwhile, however, it would
be suicidal for a leading world power to
deny itself the authority to place under
allied control activities that may pre-
viously have been regarded as domestic.
In these days of cold war and perpetual
crises the risk of having our foreign
policies upset by an arbitrary formula
fabricated from such unpredictable
phrases as ‘domestic jurisdiction” ought
to send cold chills up the spine of any
responsible statesman.
WHILE narrowing the scope of the
treaty power, Mr. Bricker would also
make it more difficult to get a treaty into
operation. Section 3 of his resolution
provides that “‘a treaty shall become ef-
fective as internal law in the United
States only through the enactment of
appropriate legislation by the Con-
gress.” A similar provision was de-
feated in the Constitutional Convention
of 1787 by a vote of eight to one. Noth-
ing has since happened to reflect on the
soundness of that judgment.
There are, to be sure, many instances
in which treaties by their own terms re-
quire separate legislation to make them
effective as internal law. The Genocide
Convention and the present drafts of
the proposed Conventions. on Human
Rights and Freedom of Information,
about which Senator Bricker and his co-
horts protest so much, are all non-self-
executing. There seems to be little
chance of these conventions getting
through the Senate, but in any event
they would encounter precisely the sort
of double check that Senator Bricker is
trying to impose on all treaties.
A lower court in California gave a
good deal of impetus to the Bricker
movement when it held that a pledge in
the United Nations Charter to promote
human rights without distinctions as to
race is the law of the land. That had
not been the understanding when the
Charter was drafted and ratified. The
Supreme Court of California soon set
the situation right, however, by ruling
that the pledge in the Charter is not
self-executing. The court found in the
QI
equal-protection clause of the Four-
teenth Amendment ample authority to
strike down the racial discriminations
of California’s Alien Land Law.
No constitutional amendment is
needed, therefore, to regulate the trans-
_lation of treaties into law. If an extra
check seems desirable in specific in-
2 :
stances, it can be required -by the Presi-
dent or by the Senate in consenting to
ratification. And where there is no rea-.
son for such precautions, as in the adop-
tion of treaties of friendship and com-
merce, which have traditionally been
self-executing, time-wasting rigmarole
should be avoided. There has been no
abuse of this power, and a compulsory
double ratification would serve only the
purpose of obstruction.
It is sometimes said that this provi-
sion requiring an act of Congress to
make such treaties the law of the land
would bring American practice into line
with. that of other countries. But that is
a reckless half-truth. Under a parlia-
mentary system the party or coalition in
power can automatically put its treaties
through the legislature which it con-
trols. The nearest approach to this that
could be made under our Presidential
system would be to have treaties ap-
proved by simple majorities in the
House and Senate. At various times
there has been strong agitation for a
reform of this sort. But it finds no place
in the Bricker amendment. The Bricker-
ites retain the two-thirds-vote hurdle in
the Senate and pile on top. of it the re-
quirement of majority votes in the
House and Senate. No major country
burdens its Foreign Office with such
futile supererogation.
SOME OFFICIALS in the State Depart-
ment are even more worried over the
squeeze play that Section 4 of the reso-
lution would authorize as to executive
agreements. In the first century and a
half of its existence the United States
entered into nearly 2,000 pacts of which
_ 1,200 were executive agreements. Even
such vital actions as the annexation of
the Hawatian Islands and Texas and the
surrender of Germany in 1945 were ac-
complished through executive agree-
ments. John Bassett Moore once said
that without this power the Secretary of
State would find it ‘impossible to con-
duct the business of his office.” Yet
Senator Bricker would lift control over
globe and give our enemies new hope
that the American giant is bent on self- |
this function out of the executive branch
and confer it upon Congress.
Mr. Bricker’s resolution closes in on
executive agreements like two jaws of a
vise. On one side he would allow the
President to make ‘“‘executive or other
agreements” only “in the manner and |
to the extent to be prescribed by law.”
Apparently the President could not even
_ agree to receive a foreign dignitary, te
exchange ambassadors, or to halt a wat
by means of a truce without Congres-
sional consent. With the Senate. still
plagued by filibusters, our relations with
our allies could thus be paralyzed by a
handful of malcontents.
The other jaw of the vise is a rigid
provision that executive agteements
“shall be subject to the limitations im-
posed on treaties, or the making of
treaties, by this article.” In other words,
Congress would have to give its consent
after as well as before-the making of
such agreements. While most executive
agreements, in current practice, do have
legislative sanction in one form or an-
other, these rigid limitations would im-
pose critical handicaps on the day-to-day
conduct of our foreign affairs.
Especially disastrous, if the amend-
ment should be literally enforced, would
be the effect on the President's power
as commander-in-chief of the armed
forces to make agreements with our
allies in time of war. In practice, how-
ever, public sentiment would probably
demand a free hand for the President in
the conduct of a war, and this segment
of the resolution would become a dead
letter. Where the pinch would be more
likely to come would be in arranging’
the numerous details incident to the
making of peace.
It is doubtful whether any proposed
amendment fraught with so much~dan-
ger to our constitutional system and to
our standing as a nation has ever won
so much favor in the Senate. Apparently
legislators have viewed it as a mild
and relatively harmless protest against - |
some international policies which do
not have their sympathy. If so, they are - |
harboring a dangerous illusion. The ,
Bricker Resolution strikes directly at the
ties that hold the free world together.
Its approval as constitutional law would
cause dismay to our friends all over the
defeat if not self-destruction.
]. Alvarez del Vayo
Vishinsky Returns
MRO VISHINSKY teturned. to New
York at a good moment. Two pieces of ,
week-end news—the amnesty and reduc-
tion of sentences decreed for many
classes of prisoners in Russia by the
Soviet government and the Communist
offer to exchange sick and wounded
prisoners in Korea, coupled with the
proposal for a resumption of the truce
talks—made a profound impression in
the. United Nations. But even if an
armistice should be concluded, the polit-
ical problems surrounding the Korean
conflict would remain and would keep
Mr. Vishinsky very busy.
It is true that the expectation of dras-
tic action in the Far East after the
advent of the new Administration in
Washington has not been fulfilled. But
the fact remains, in the opinion of many
qualified observers here, that final de-
feat of Communist China has become a
fixed goal of American foreign policy.
Only by keeping that most important
fact in mind can the complexity of the
situation be fully grasped.
The “roll-back” policy applied to
China cannot be taken lightly. It is in-
spired by the conviction of powerful
groups in this country that the third
world war will be lost or won on the
ibattlefields of Asia, and that unless the
‘Communist regime in China is over-
thrown, nothing can prevent the rest of
the Asiatic continent from becoming
Communist sooner or later. The only
alternative would be for Mao Tse-
tung to turn Titoist and break with
Moscow, but every present sign points
' in the opposite direction.
As long as this view prevails in influ-
ential American circles, it is most un-
likely that Vishinsky can accept a peace
formula for Korea that leaves the dipho-
matic position of Communist China un-
changed. To do so would violate the
| solidarity between the Soviet Union and
Communist China, which seems to have
increased rather than diminished in
| strength since the death of Stalin.
As far as Russia is concerned, any
Andrei Vishinsky
agreement on Korea must include the
assurance that a representative of Mao
Tse-tung will one day replace Chiang
Kai-shek’s spokesman, at the U. N. This
demand becomes more imperative in the
degree in which American policy is
directed toward the defeat of Chinese
communism and American help is sent
to the lord of Formosa. Membership in
the United Nations would of course offer
only a minimum of diplomatic protec-
tion; but Mr. Vishinsky will fight to
obtain this minimum, This is not pure
speculation. The government of New
Delhi, which has continued to explore
the sentiments of Peking, has come to
the same conclusion.
I am convinced that Mr. Vishinsky
brings with him definite instructions to
extend to the United Nations the cam-
paign for a general settlement of all
pending questions—Korea, Germany,
and the rest—launched by Premier
Malenkov and sustained by the series of
conciliatory gestures: which have been
the subject of so many comments during
the past few weeks. The majority of
these comments are, however, inspired
by views that seem to me fundamentally
wrong. The Soviet peace campaign is
being interpreted as the desperate action
of scared men or as the wise action of
new and wiser men, instead of as an
established policy, clearly defined by
both Stalin and Malenkov at the last
party congress.
As the danger grows that the cold.
wart may degenerate into actual war,
Soviet diplomacy is expanding its activ-
ity in all directions. Until a Big Four
conference or an Eisenhower-Malenkov
meeting is arranged, Soviet propaganda
will use any medium and every oppor- |
tunity to repeat its thesis of coexistence
and its suggestion of a large-scale top-
level debate on major issues. The
United Nations provides an ideal forum *
for such propaganda, Mr. Vishinsky’s
appointment as permanent delegate does
not therefore mean—as has been gener-
ally assumed—that he has been de-
moted, but rather that the diplomatic
importance of the U. N. is being
emphasized. Now Mr.. Vishinsky will
be at the U. N. permanently. He will be
seeing delegates, he will have the trib-
une of the Security Council at his dis-
posal, and will be able to complement
the work of Mr. Molotov in Moscow.
Of course the debate this week in
the Political Committee that ended in
the defeat of the Czechoslovak resolu-
tion charging the United States with
using Mutual Security funds to finance
espionage and subversion in the coun-
tries of the Soviet area hardly offered
evidence that the Soviet tone had sub-
stantially changed. Mr. Gromyko may
have felt compensated by the number
of abstentions—fourteen this time—and
by the fact that the representatives of
several Arab states, in explaining their
abstention, identified themselves with
the Russian denunciation of “‘interna-
tional Zionism.” But let no one be de-
ceived by the violent tone of the Soviet
speeches. It would be utterly wrong to
deduce from them that Malenkov’s
peace campaign has been merely an epi-
sode. Nor should Mr. Vishinsky’s mis-
sion be judged by the first days of his
reappearance in the United Nations. It
is a long-term operation.
aS.
SS
A Fillip for Labor
The U. A. W. Convention . . by Arthur Eggleston
Atlantic City, N. J.
THE fourteenth constitutional conven-
tion of the C. I. O. United Automobile
Workers made one thing clear: the
C.I. O. is not going to disintegrate. It
has strengthened its bargaining position
“with the American Federation of Labor
in the coming unity talks, and if the
U. A. W.’s economic and political pro-
gram is carried out, it should be stronger
in other ways. The breach between the
two biggest unions in the C. I. O., which
together account for over 50 per cent of
its 4,200,000 members, appears to have
been closed by the assurance piven the
U. A. W. delegates by David J. Mc-
Donald, president of the United Steel-
workers, that “the Steelworkers will not
destroy the C. J. O.” Both unions will
drive for a guaranteed annual wage and
for organic unity with the A. F. of L.
without sacrifice of industrial-union
principles.
Organized labor’s most imperative
need has been to clear up the low-wage,
non-union areas, particularly in the
South. If, by a miracle, unity with the
A. F. of L. could be achieved, many
obstacles to an effective organizing drive
would be removed. One difficulty, how
ever, would remain—the attitude of
both the C. I. O. and the A. F. of L.
toward the United Mine Workers and
other independent unions. It is with
these unions that the fiercest jurisdic-
tional battles are fought, and “‘organiz-
ing the already organized’ dissipates
the energies and funds of all.
The problem of run-away plants is
acute for all labor organizations. It will
be attacked from two sides if a real
organizing drive is launched and if
the automobile workers and the steel-
workers carry out their announced pur-
pose to make a guaranteed annual wage
“the next major collective-bargaining
goal” in coming contract negotiations.
ARTHUR EGGLESTON has been a
labor reporter for many years.
This two-pronged attack on insecurity
means of course a head-on clash with
powerful employer groups which in
1946 chose the South as a “refuge”
from unionism.
The delegates approved almost unani-
mously a statement on foreign policy
proposing that the United States con-
Walter Reuther
tinue efforts “to find a basis for nego-
tiating settlements of issues which
threaten war between the Communist
and the free nations of the world.”
While not expressing confidence in the
bona fides of Premier Malenkov’s re-
mark of March 15 that there are no dis-
puted or undecided questions that can-
not be decided by “peaceful means,”
the resolution declared that this “‘can
be determined by sitting down with the
leaders of the Kremlin and talking con-
crete cases.”” One of the concrete cases
cited was Korea.
The same statement denounced “‘reck-
less military adventurers” who would
2” 1eR
support Chiang Kai-shek’s “hopeless at-
tempts to reestablish himself as a leader
of the Chinese people.” It condemned
any despotism which thwarts the aspira-
tions of the peoples of the world for
freedom, whether “imposed by other
nations which bind them to colonial
status, or by foreign corporations which
a Riles ere errr,
‘in some thirty states.)
-
extract the wealth without just recom-
pense, or by their ruling classes which
monopolize their land and exploit the
workers.’ The Bricker resolution limit-
ing the power of government to make
treaties strongly opposed, and
President Eisenhower was criticized be-
cause “‘on the crucial question of Korea
immoral and unrealizable campaign
promises have evaporated.”
On the domestic front, the U. A. W.
expressed its belief that President Eisen-
hower’s election was a personal triumph
and that “the American people in no
sense repudiated the goals for human
welfare and economic and social prog-
ress they have indorsed in the past
twenty years.’’- In agreement with the
increasing number of labor leaders who
object to making the labor movement
the “captive” of one political party, the
convention called for a “new alignment
of political forces in America,” with a
clear demarcation between a _ party
“standing for the people” and a party
“representing prosperity, privilege, and
profits.”
The best way to achieve this end was
held to be the encouragement of “an
independent political-action movement”
by labor, working farmers, and other
liberal forces. The practical steps pro-
posed were to throw full labor support
behind liberals in Congress, state legis-
latures, and local governing bodies, to
keep an accurate record of votes in the
Eighty-third Congress, and to call a
national conference of labor, farm, and
was
other liberal forces in the spring of —
1956, before the party conventions. In.
the meantime similar conferences should
be held in each state to map plans for é
state and Congressional elections. But
the immediate task was to set up local
labor and farmer committees to build
“independent political-action machinery
in every Congressional district in which
the U. A. W.-C. I. O. has member-
ship.” (The U. A. W. has local unions
|
|
=
‘The convention took a strong position
on the subject of civil liberties. “Step by
step a rule of fear and smear is being
imposed upon us by some who see in it
a road to political power and by others
who hope to turn it to profitable account
in a business way,’ the convention’s
resolution declared. “Under the guise
of protecting us from Communists, un-
scrupulous men are using their posts in
Congressional investigating committees
to denounce their fellow-citizens with-
out proof, condemning them on charges
of anonymous informers, denying them
the right to know and to confront their
accusers, and refusing them-fair oppor-
tunity to speak up in their own defense.”
While Congressional committees get
the headlines, the U. A. W. declared,
the Defense Departihent’s Industrial
Employment Board, the Atomic Energy
Commission, and various “‘loyalty’”’ pro-
grams are equally guilty of denying due
process to persons accused or suspected.
U. A. W. members were asked to co-
operate with church leaders, educators,
and parents “in defending our schools
against the attack of unscrupulous in-
vestigators and to fight back against
every assault that is made upon the
liberties of the American people.” The
resolution, however, was weakened by
the fact that it called merely for amend-
ment of the Smith act, the McCarran
Internal Security Act, and the McCarran-
Walter Immigration Act ‘‘so that these
Jaws will fully protect the security of
our nation without endangering the
civil liberties of the people.” The theory
that the danger to civil liberties is only
a by-product of these acts can hardly
be substantiated.
A twenty-three-point legislative pro-
gram formulated by the convention in-
cluded defense of the Employment Act
of 1946 as insurance against future un-
employment, amendment of the Taft-
Hartley act, repeal of little Taft-Hartley
acts, blocking of the offshore-ojl steal,
tax relief for low-income groups to in-
crease purchasing power, defense of the
social-security system and state unem-
ployment insurance laws, provisions for
low-cost housing, an adequate health
program, and raising the minimum
wage to $1.25 an hour.
On the debit side of the convention”
ledger should be placed the decision to
give the International Executive Board
greater power “to run the local down on
the bottom,” as one delegate put it. A
proposal by the top leadership to permit
the International Board to review de-
cisions of trial committees in local
unions was adopted by overwhelming
vote. President Reuther said the purpose
of the change was “to make it possible
that in cases of specific kinds of charges
. . charges related to (1) people who
are either Communists or Fascists, (2)
people who are racketeers or gangsters,
and (3) people involved in embezzle-
ment or fraud, the International Execu-
tive, if it believed there was a miscar-
riage of justice, could have the case
retried.”’ Since Reuthet controlled 90 per
cent or more of the delegates, the oppo-
sition, though highly articulate, was in-
effective.
The larger implications of this grant
of power to the International to retry a
case already decided by a local union
trial committee may be more important
than its effect within the U. A. W. Con-
gress is now considering measures which
would permit the government to exercise
strict political control over dissenting
unions by setting up official black lists
of officers, members, and even of unions.
The action of the U. A. W. could en-
able proponents of such measures to cite
this limitation of local-union autonomy
as a precedent for Congressional action.
In fact, they have already cited a similar
case. After the C. I. O. expelled a num-
ber of its unions, witnesses before the
Humphrey subcommittee of the Senate
Labor Committee referred to its action
as a precedent for the government.
*
THE REAL PROKOFIEV
Now It Can Be Told 8 by Alexander Werth
Paris
IF SERGEI PROKOFIEV tealized that
he was dying at the same time as Stalin,
a grin must have spread across his face.
It must have seemed as ironical as any-
thing that had happened to him since he
returned to the Soviet Union from his
Paris “exile” in 1934, including the de-
nunciation of him by Zhdanov and the
new pundits of the Composers’ Union
ALEXANDER WERTH, now ‘The
Nation’s Paris correspondent, spent
many years in Russia. He is the author
| of “Musical Uproar in Moscow.”
1953
in 1948 as one of the evil Western in-
fluences in Russia, and the description of
him by that triumphant little mediocrity
Tikhon Khrennikov in 1949 as a hang-
over of Diaghilev decadence.
Prokofiev met the attacks on him with
greater equanimity and dignity than
most of the other composers. Shosta-
kovich ate platefuls of humble pie. So
did Khachaturian. Miaskovsky was
broken-hearted. Prokofiev shrugged his
shoulders and while agreeing, in his
letter to the Composers’ Union, that
there was a lot to be said for Socialist
realism, warned musicians against the
dangers of sinking into platitude and
mediocrity.
I never had the slightest doubt [he
wrote} about the importance of melody,
and I consider it by far the most impor-
tant element in music. Nothing is more
difficult to discover than a melody which
would be immediately understandable
even to the uninitiated listener and, at the
same time, be original. Here the composer
is beset by numerous dangers: he is apt
to become trivial and vulgar or else dish
out a repetition of something already
heard before. . . . One must be particu-
larly vigilant to make a melody simple,
but without allowing it to become cheap,
sickly, or imitative rubbish.
Comrades Khrennikov and company
could put that in their pipes and smoke
it. What had they ever written to equal,
in the way of melody, the choruses of
“Alexander Nevsky,” the great main
theme of Prokofiev's ‘Ode to Stalin,”
the scherzo of his Fifth Symphony, or
some of the tunes of ‘“Romeo’’ and
“Cinderella” ? These were all written
during Prokofiev's last, or “Soviet,”
period, in which, as he admitted, he had
“got nearer to the people” than ever
before.
But his arrogance in 1948-49 was
provocative, and the Khrennikovs made
him suffer for it. The opera he com-
posed during this period, which he
promised would be in the “new line,”
was disdainfully rejected by the Com-
posers’ Union, though it dealt with a
war theme and was full of “folk ele-
ments.” But gradually a modus vivend:
was established between Prokofiev and
the party. The composer was willing
to go halfway, and the party decided
it would be folly to waste or drive to
despair the most brilliant of Soviet
musicians. So Prokofiev wrote his
“Peace Oratorio” for a _ children’s
chorus, with its Peter and the Wolf
elements—which were quite acceptable
—and with the highly “prokofievist’”’
satirical movement about the American
capitalists and warmongers, which was
even more acceptable. Much else that
he wrote received high praise, and
finally his Seventh Symphony, apparently
his last work, was greeted by the Soviet
- press with unanimous enthusiasm; the
critics remarked on his marvelous lyrical
genius, a genius which had so often
been hidden in the past behind a facade
of sardonic sophistication. This Seventh
Symphony was, indeed, regarded as a
sort of final reconciliation between
Prokofiev and the Stalin regime, though
perhaps the praise was partly at least a
sop to a sick man who had been treated
a little too rough and who was, after all,
probably the greatest Soviet composer.
PROKOFIEV had a curiously mixed
attitude to the Soviet Union. There were
undoubtedly moments when he hankered
for the “artistic freedom’ of the West.
Yet he was profoundly Russian at heart,
and even the bureaucrats of the Com-
posers’ Union could not destroy his feel-
ing that he had deep roots in the country.
He was quite sincere when he said that
Prokofiev
he loved inventing good melodies and
that originality did not exclude ‘‘Rus-
‘sianism.” ;
Although writing odes to Stalin was
not quite in his line, it must have given
him great satisfaction to feel that he
had written by far the loveliest of
those odes—his “‘Zdravitsa” of 1939. In
the last few years he seems to have
decided that, on balance, there was more
for him to do, and a wider audience
for his,.work, in the Soviet Union than
in the West. Obviously he was unhappy
about some things: the deportation to
the north of his half-Spanish, half-
French ex-wife, who had an incurable
habit of hobnobbing with foreign diplo-
mats in Moscow, cannot have been a
pleasant experience for him.
I used to see Prokofiev very often
during my years in Moscow. He was a
familiar figure at concerts, with his tall
lanky body, his long gorilla-like arms
with the fine pianist’s hands at the end
of them, and the grin that was boyish at
one moment and disdainful and cynical
the next. He looked juvenile in his
fifties, and yet formidably certain of
himself and of his reputation.
I remember having a long talk with
him in 1945, when he had just com-
pleted his Fifth Symphony. He loved to
show off his English, which he spoke
fluently and almost without accent. Of
his new symphony, he said:
The idea of this symphony is a pretty
old one—many of the themes are two or
three years old; I set them down in my
theme book and then put them aside.
When the time came, I was ready to work
in
month, on a three- or four-line score. Then
I stopped for a month or two and took
the thing up again, and in another month
I finished it.
“How,” I asked, ‘‘do the themes come
to you?”
Well, I somehow have a feeling that a
musical idea wants to pop out [that was
the exact word he used]; sometimes it
~ happens when [ am sitting at the piano,
sometimes not. Sometimes a theme comes
in the middle of the night; I then turn on
the light and write it down, If I leave it
till the morning, I am apt to forget. I be-
lieve in the Schumann principle of com-
posing in your head and then checking it
on the piano. Eventually the themes be-
gin to group themselves into a composi-
tion—if one is certain enough that they
belong to the same composition.
On .the subject of style Prokofiev
said:
-If a composer has discovered a lan-
guage, an idiom, of his own, and then
goes on using it forever, he dies as an
artist. In the main I have my language,
but I don’t want to be satisfied with it
and go to sleep in the happy belief that
having mastered the “Prokofiev language”
I need not look for anything new. Too
much has been said about the “grotesque”
in my music. It’s the talk of ignoramuses
with untrained ears. They did not realize
that there was a strong lyrical strain in
my first period, as well as later.
And on his own taste in music:
I like Brahms, but when I analyze
Brahms, I find that he is never perfect.
His melodies are weaker than Chopin’s
or Liszt’s. His orchestration and counter-
point are not of the highest quality; and
yet he has something of the essence of
music which is truly captivating. I prefer
Beethoven to Mozart—in spite of my
“Mozartian” Classical Symphony. But I’ve
loved Beethoven ever since childhood. I
frankly prefer Schumann to Chopin, even
though Chopin had a better mastery of
his material, was a better melodist, and
was technically much superior. And nat-
urally I prefer Moussorgsky to Tchaikoy-
sky; Tchaikovsky had immense creative
power, but his composing power was not
so hot! Rachmaninov—well, I'd rather
' Say nothing about him. The truth is—we -
hated each other’s guts!
Pleased with his
Prokofiev grinned broadly. He then said
he was “interested” in what Shostakovich
was doing, though he thought he had
not concentrated on melody sufficiently
and was apt to ramble. “I don’t think,
he should cover such enormous space in
his symphonies; he should be more pre-
cise and compact.”
colloquialisms, <
very fast—I wrote the whole thing in a
\
I.
|
ally?” I asked. He gave a grin and a
’ shrug and a vague gesture of depreca-
tA )
Pabout Series” music Puck
tion—or of comic despair. “Need we
talk about that?” he laughed. But then
he continued:
No, we really have some good men.
There’s old man Miaskovsky. A lot of his
stuff is good, if only he weren’t so lazy
about inventing anything fresh. Khacha-
turian is gifted, but he’ll have to work a
lot more before he really attains perfec-
tion. Of the younger people, I'd say the
best were Weinberg—very interesting,
very free; Knipper, who has a marvelous
sense of the orchestra and whose handling
es J
ney
“of Oriental themes is sometimes very
good; and Gabriel Popov—he is still
“soft” and lacking in a proper construc-
tive sense, but he is talented, and ‘may
produce results in time.
All this was pretty lukewarm praise;
he had named only six Soviet composers
who he thought were good or potentially
good.
“But the others, Mr. Prokofiev?”
“What others? Oh, those’’—he hesi-
tated for a second—"those babes in
arms !’"
It was the “babes in arms’’ wha, three
years later, were to tell Prokofiev how
to compose “acceptable” music. I did
not do him the disservice of quoting his
remark, but the “babes in arms” knew
what he thought of them, for caution
and .discretion were not among Proko-
fiev’s virtues.
Perhaps the greatest miracle of Proko-
fievy is that, unlike Shostakovich, most
of whose latest music is little more than
imitation Moussorgsky, he should have
managed in some measure to adapt his
creative genius to the musical world of
the “babes in arms’’—and still remain
his own unmistakable self, and make
the “babes” look silly.
RED CHINA DIARY
IL Germ -War
London
AS TO THE germ war, to my amaze-
ment the Chinese never mentioned it,
nor did they raise the question of the
Korean prisoners unless I brought it up
first myself. On my last night in Peking
I was approached by Dr. Joseph Need-
ham, a British scientist then visiting
China, At, that time I did not know the
object of his visit. Later I was to dis-
cover that he was one of the authors of
the germ-war report now published. He
asked me and my MP. colleagues if we
would like to visit a germ-war exhibition
incognito before we left for Nanking.
“Sure,”’ we said.
It was dark when we arrived, and I
- noticed as the car swung in through the
gates that troops kept the entrance clear
* so that no one could see who was in
"from Life and Time dealing with Amer- ©
the car. The exhibition was well done,
‘ but anybody knows that an exhibition
~ is not necessarily evidence. It began with
panels of enlargements of -pages taken
DESMOND DONNELLY, a Labor
Member of Parliament, visited China a
few months ago on the invitation of the
Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign
Affairs. The fist part of his artisle
ie : appeared last week.
Exhibit
ican investigations into germ warfare
It continued with details of the alleged
incidents—the time, place, and so on.
There were pictures of Chinese peasants
who had given testimony and pictures
and case histories of the people who
had died of the various diseases which
the Chinese claim were spread by Amer-
ican airmen. A whole section was de-
voted to insects in test tubes and rats in
spirit bottles which it was claimed had
been dropped from the air, and some of
which it was alleged belonged to species
unknown in China or Korea. Not being
a scientist, I can make no comment.
Then we came to examples of Amer-
ican leaflet bombs and a parachute can-
ister which it was said had been used
to drop the insects. I raised with the
Chinese the point that the apparatus on
view looked very primitive. “If the
Americans had really gone in for germ
war, I should have thought they would
have done it im super-duper fashion,”
I said. The Chinese agreed and said that
they could only give their opinion that
it was a small experimental unit.
Farther on we saw the “‘confessions”
in their own handwriting of the Amer-
ican airmen whom the Chinese had
captured. And finally we heard record-
ing of the voices of Lieutenants Quinn
and Enoch. Here the interesting thing
by Desmond Donnelly
seemed to be that they did not make
the usual vague statements, like, “Sure,
we are guilty of all this: a wicked
American fascist beast told us to do it.”
Their stories were detailed: “I was
briefed by Captain Wilson of the
United States army air force at such
a time and such a place. Present at the
briefing was so-and-so.” In fact, the
most detailed documentation appeared
to be given. I make no comment. I
merely report. |
I TRAVELED to Nanking by train.
Each coach carried four guards with
tommy-guns who jumped out on to the
line every time the train stopped. What
they were guarding us against I never
discovered. Apparently trains in China
always carry guards.
We spent a day in Chiang Kai-shek’s
capital, a wide spacious city. On the
docks we saw Chinese junks bringing
wood-oil from the interior and ferrying
liquid eggs down the Yangtze. In the
morning we went out to see the tomb
of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary
leader of pre-Communist China. Visit-
ing the tomb along with us was a group
of Chinese high-school girls thoroughly
enjoying their day out. To my amaze-
ment they insisted on giving us a rous-
ing chorus of Chinese. folk songs on the ©
287
' .
STE IERIE TS LI NNT ED Som oS — SRR SOE a as
steps of the tomb and then demanded
“Daisy, Daisy, Boops a Daisy’’ in reply.
I couldn’t help contrasting this with
Lenin’s tomb in Moscow, which the
crowds still file past in awestruck silence
in queues never less than a quarter of a
mile long.
Traveling east to Shanghai I was puz-
zled by the question, “And would you
like to meet the national bourgeoisie,
Mr. Donnelly?” What: an extraordinary
people, I thought. I was very curious by
the time the “‘national bourgeoisie’ came
to dinner in the luxurious Kin Kong
Hotel where I stayed. They turned out
to be Red China’s capitalists. One was
Mr. Yung, whose diamond tie-pin glit-
tered as he offered me a cigarette from
his gold case.
“What do you do?” I asked him.
“Iam the owner of the Sung Sing
Spinning and Weaving Company em-
ploying 18,000 workers. I own six fac-
tories,’ he answered.
“What on earth are you doing in a
Communist country?” I asked.
“Making money at last,” was the
suave, self-confident reply.
THAT EVENING we had a long dis-
cussion, and as toast followed toast in
Chinese rice wine Mr. Yung and I be-
came more friendly. The “national bour-
geoisie,”’ I discovered, are quite different
from the “bureaucratic capitalists,” using
the terminology of Communist China.
The former are capitalists who have
made their peace with the Communist
regime and now, protected from for-
eign competition, are doing extremely
well. The latter are those who were
associated with Chiang Kai-shek and
had to flee the country.
‘How long do you think your money-
making will last, Mr. Yung?” I said.
“They say twenty years,” he replied. ‘In
288
the old days, inflation and labor trou-
bles robbed me of my profits. Today
trade unions organize my workers. Pro-
duction and profits are booming.”’ This
was strange commentary on capitalism
in a Communist country!
I met an investment banker. He said
he was quite free to do what he liked
with his money, and since 80 per cent of
China’s economy is. still
hands, there was still plenty of scope.
As the evening wore on, I tried hard to
catch out these gentlemen; but not once
did I succéed. At the end they were
looking the worse for wear, but not
from cross-examination. I felt, too, that
I had earned their respect as I walked
quite steadily to the door.
In Shanghai I visited a model hous-
ing estate, showpiece of the new hous-
ing in Communist China. It is certainly
a vast improvement on the insanitary
conditions of the past. Houses are pleas-
ant and clean and airy, although, of
course, by our Western standards a fam-
ily of several people living in one room
is not acceptable. The people were de-
lighted with their new homes, without
any doubt at all. But it will be many
years before any real impact is made on
the housing sttuation.
I also visited in Shanghai a state-run
textile dyeing and printing works and
one of Mr. Yung’s spinning and weav-
ing factories, which employed 6,000
workers. The state factory was com-
paratively small, with 1,360 employees.
The boss took us round. He said he
had previously been a miner but had
won a scholarship and become a factory
manager. I wondered if this was suit-
able apprenticeship, and I formed the
impression that the person’ who really
ran the factory was the trade-union
leader—young, capable, and confident.
Working hours had been reduced to ten
a day, six days a week.
In Mr. Yung’s factory the manager
was undoubtedly boss, although he was
assisted at every turn by a pretty girl
who said she was chairman of the union
in private
of 6,000 workers. The machinery in °
Mr. Yung’s factory was more modern;
some of it American and some of it
British, imported since World War II.
On our way back from Shanghai to
Peking we saw from the air the great
Huai Valley irrigation and flood-control
scheme. Designed to harness the flood
waters of the great Yangtze, this is a
pee
ay hoo
T. V. A. to beat all T. V. A.’s. For a
hundred years it has been talked about.
In 1948 the Communists actually began
it, and they plan to have it finished in
1955. Working on it are two million
men. The deputy engineering director
of the whole scheme, I was told, is a
gitl of twenty-nine.
AND WHAT of relations between
~ China and Russia? Not until I was al-
most stepping on the plane for home did
I get my clue. “You will need some:
money to buy food on your trip across
Russia,” said Mr. Chi, governor of the
Bank of China, who had come to see us
off. “In case you haven’t any rubles,
here are two hundred American dol-
lars.”
“Have you not any rubles you could
let us have?” I asked.
“Alas, no,” said Mr. Chi, despite the
fact that he was the chief financial boss
of Red China.
And then it occurred to me to ask:
“Shall we get the official artificial rate
of exchange which the Russians insist
on with the American embassy officials
in Moscow or the real world-market
rate, which is much more favorable?”
Mr. Chi looked sad. “I am afraid you
will only get the official rate,” he said.
On my way home I could not help
contrasting the Chinese with the Rus-
sians. In Russia my papers and camera
had been taken and sealed. In China no
one had minded. As I was leaving the
airport the Foreign Office official said to
me, “We notice you have taken many
photographs, Mr. Donnelly. If there is
anything militarily damaging to China
in them, I hope we can rely on you to
destroy it.”
When we got to Irkutsk, we were
given an even more thorough exam-
ination at the customs than we had
been given coming from the hostile
West. All our papers were emptied out
and our cameras taken. The customs
official knocked on a little trapdoor in
the wall. The door opened, disclosing
darkness behind. A __ sinister-looking
hand came out and scooped away our
belongings. Later they were returhed to
us sealed, including an English transla-
tion of a Chinese book I had bought,
“How to Be a Good Communist,” by
Liu Shao Chi. “This is not to be opened
in Russia,” were my strict instructions!
Yet in conclusion I must record a
The
os
-
.
a
NATION
|
|
‘ a r
Peter pane SN
uM
P = Bey 2 el
incident at Minsk on the last
; ap our journey home. We were
counting up what’ rubles we had left at
the lunch table in the airport restaurant.
When we came to pay the bill, a young
Russian sitting at the next table leaped
forward and grabbed it. “I speak Eng-
lish,” he said. “I couldn’t help hearing
what you were saying. It is a matter of
national honor and you must allow me
to pay.” We said we could not possibly
ey fy
3 ae
agree to such a thing, charmed though
we were by his generosity. However, he
was adamant. It transpired that he was
a diplomatic messenger who had been
to America and thus learned some Eng-
lish.
As I sit on my lawn at home again,
dictating my story in the sunshine,
China seems another world, but an im-
portant one whose part in current his-
tory cannot be ignored.
: Los Angeles
ASIDE from the ethical objections to
over-long, offensive, fraudulent and
semi-fraudulent television commercials,
there is a practical question which
broadcasters might well consider: Is
television endangering its economic
future by undermining the confidence
of the public in its integrity as an adver-
tising medium ?
At a recent meeting of advertising”
executives in Los Angeles the district
representative of General Electric’s
small-appliances division said: ‘Tele-
vision commercials have almost reached
the point where I don’t believe a dog-
gone thing I hear on the air. For in-
stance, we haven’t manufactured a cer-
tain vacuum cleaner for twelve years.
Yet it is being boosted on TV as the lat-
_ est thing.” And a few weeks ago Paul
! Price, critic of the Los Angeles Daily
News, called upon the National Associa-
tion of Radio and Television Broad-
‘casters to “junk its soealled ‘Seal of ©
. Good Practice’,”” the symbol used by
. 90 per cent of all television stations in
the country to show they comply with
‘ the television code adopted by the in-
dustry on March 1, 1952. Price wrote:
“Tt [the Seal} doesn’t mean a thing. . . .
The very stations that have been permit-
ting dishonest pitchmen to peddle the
mastic paints, carpets, and freezer food
» plants—all completely discredited now
—are the same ones that make much of
FRANK ORME, editor of TV maga-
TV COMMERCIALS
by Frank Orme
their Seal of Good Practice. Seal of
Malpractice would be more fitting.”
These are not isolated protests. They
are but a tiny part of the swelling vol-
ume of dissatisfaction ‘expressed by
viewers and commentators in both
the trade and the regular press. The
million and a quarter set owners in Los
Angeles have learned that TV fare in-
cludes hundred of plugs for $8.95
vacuum cleaners, $19.50 sewing ma-
chines, hair removers and hair oil,
chlorophyll pills, cigarettes, and used
cars which “have just been sold’’ when
prospective buyers appear to snap up
the bargains. The managements of TV
stations have let down the bars to all
sorts of misleading statements and ig-
nored all standards of good taste.
Los Angeles, of course, is a particu-
larly rewarding hunting ground for the
video hucksters, but their activities are
not confined to this area. Advertising
Age, the national trade weekly pub-
lished in Chicago, remarked some time
ago:
It is truly amazing to find that TV,
with so bright a future, is willing to mort-
gage its wonderful prospects for slight
immediate advantage. The mortgaging is
being done by the acceptance of high-
pressure, scarcely credible, and scarcely
honest advertising that observes the rules
of the 1870 pitchman, and practically
nothing else. Not all stations are guilty
of accepting this kind of business, but it
is surprising, to say the least, to discover
it on reputable and presumably prosperous
outlets. It violates the spirit and letter of
The TV code, subscribed to by all
four of the networks, “suggests” time
standards for good advertising practice
which limit presentation of commercials
to a maximum of six minutes an hour
for evening time and to seven minutes
an hour during day or late night hours.
However, during the past months I have
frequently timed commercials on pro-
grams regularly scheduled by networks
and found they ran to more than ten
minutes during single half-hours. Re-
cently I sat at a TV set for more than
eight hours on a Saturday afternoon and
evening clocking commercials presented
by an independent Los Angeles station
which subscribes to the TV code. In the
successive hours the time consumed by
commercials was 9 minutes 30 seconds,
7 minutes 25 seconds, 5 minutes 40
seconds, 9 minutes 35 seconds, 14
minutes 15 seconds, 13 minutes 15 sec-
onds, 4 minutes 30 seconds, and 14
minutés 40 seconds.
HOW DOES station acceptance of
shoddy off-color advertising affect the
economy of the industry? Are legiti-
mate merchants staying away from TV
because they do not want their products
associated with the numerous high-pres-
sure pitch deals? Has the public become
wary to the point that it is suspicious of
all television advertising? Advertising-
agency executives are beginning to ask
themselves these questions. And _ set
owners are beginning to ask themselves.
whether they must accept the standards
of the carnival pitchman as the price
for listening to TV programs in their
living-rooms.
When I discussed the situation with
Klaus Landsberg, general manager of
television station KTLA in Los Angeles
and vice-president of Paramount Tele-
vision Productions, he referred me to the
record of his own station. KTLA, it
appears, maintains the highest standards
in commercials, with respect both to
length and to content, of any of the
seven Los Angeles stations; in 1952
KTLA donated to the community the
equivalent of more than $350,000 in
free, unsponsored time; and KTLA
operates at a profit in a market where
three or four competitive stations are in
the red. In this instance, at least, public
service, good taste, and protection
every radio and television code. It is, in
fact, the kind of advertising which most
~ media won’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
against misleading advertising are com-
| -zine, has contributed several articles to
; patible with economic sense,
The Nation. .
289
ue
BOOKS
Soviet Russia As It Is
A Review by Mark Gayn
STALIN VERSUS MARX. By Klaus
Menhert. The Macmillan Company.
$2.
THE RUSSIANS IN FOCUS. By
Harold J. Berman. Atlantic Monthly
Press Book. Little, Brown and Com-
pany. $3.
RUSSIA AND HER COLONIES. By
Walter Kolarz. Frederick Praeger. $6.
MINERALS. A KEY TO SOVIET
POWER. By Demitri B. Shimkin.
Harvard University Press. $8,
THE ULTIMATE WEAPON. By Oleg
Anisimov. Henry Regnery Company.
$3.50.
THE END OF A REVOLUTION. By
Fritz Sternberg. The John Day Com-
pany. $3.
4A CENTURY OF CONFLICT. By
Stefan T. Possony. Henry Regnery
Company. $7.50.
STALIN. A SELF-PORTRAIT. Farrar,
Straus and Young. $1.
STALIN. By Nikolaus Basseches. Trans-
lated from the German by E. W.
Dickes. E. P. Dutton and Company.
$4.75.
MY UNCLE JOSEPH STALIN. By
Budu Svanidze. Translated by Wa-
verly Root. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. $3.
EVER, not even in the infant days
of Bolshevism, has Russia loomed
so large in world affairs as it does today.
The death of Americans in Korea, the
political strains in Europe, the end of
Democratic rule in Washington, and in
fact the very political climate in which
we find ourselves today—all these, in
one way or another, are by-products of
communism in action.
This is the moment, then, when we
must understand Russia and its rulers.
Does the Communist Party hold power
MARK GAYN, author and foreign
correspondent, has visited most of the
Communist countries and interviewed
their leaders.
290
in Russia solely because it controls the
secret police and the machinery of state?
Has it extended its influence over half
the world merely because it is a diabol-
ical conspiracy, as Stefan Possony ap-
pears to suggest; or does it offer some-
thing tangible to large segments of the
population, as Harold Berman indicates ?
What will be the result of the conver-
sion of revolutionary parties into vast,
impersonal, often incompetent
bureaucracies? Is there revolutionary
anti-Communist ferment in Russia, or is
this, as Oleg Anisimov argues, a danger-
ous fantasy?
These are all questions of import to
us. Yet, perhaps inevitably, even our
literature has become a casualty in the
ideological conflict. Dispassionate studies
and
of the Soviet system are rare—more so -
here than in England, where one can
still find such excellent pieces of re-
search as Isaac Deutscher’s biography of
Stalin, Sir John Maynard’s “Russia in
Flux,” or Edward Crankshaw’s ‘Russia
and the Russians.’ There is nothing
I know in American literature that does
for Soviet political thought, or “‘party
line,” what a group of Harvard pro-
fessors has recently done for commu-
nism in China. And in what other era
in American publishing has it been
necessary for a reputable author to ex-
plain on the book jacket that though
his impartial approach to Soviet prob-
lems has earned him enemies, “no one
has ever accused [him] of being pro-
Soviet or a fellow-traveler”’ ?
The crop of books on Russia is rich,
for its volume and diversity if not al-
ways for its quality. In the stack before
me there are no Deutschers or May-
nards, but there is everything from
minerals to Stalin’s love life. At least
three of these volumes first appeared
abroad; two of them are very good in-
deed. What is noticeably missing, how-
ever, is at least one Soviet book that
would, through its defense of the Soviet
system or its denunciation of ours, give
_inflamed nationalism. In Russia itself
us some insight into the workings of |
the Communist mind. A few weeks ago —
I had occasion to read some of Georgi
Malenkov’s choice prose. Ordinarily this
might have been an exhausting task.
Malenkov’s emergence as the dominant
figure in Russia, however, has now en-
dowed his statements with a signifi-
cance that none of the ten books before
me could possibly match. It was all
there—the hatred and prejudices, the
hopes and nationalist pride, the faith «
in the party’s ability to move mountains,
the profound gaps in the understanding
of the West, and, at times, a glimpse
of our own weaknesses. It was propa-
ganda, but it was also information '!
essential to our own survival. Why must
we depend on International Publishers
to bring this knowledge to us?
BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT of
the books before me is.Dr. Klaus Men- *
nert’s “Stalin versus Marx,’’ first issued
in Germany; it is a genuine conttibution
to an understanding of the Soviet “party
line.’ Menhert himself is a German
historian who has spent some time in
Russia and has obviously studied Rus-
sian historical works with great. care.
The point of departure in his inquiry
is Professor Michael Pokrovsky, a Bol-
shevik historian who died, ,burdened
with Soviet honors, in 1932. On May
16,1934, in a decree signed by Stalin,
Pokrovsky’s historical view of Russia
was condemned, and his disciples were
branded as “contemptible Trotskyist
agents of Fascism.’ Dr. Menhert’s 32,-
000-word essay sees this decree as the
beginning of a process in which Stalin’s
party abandoned orthodox Marxism in
favor of vigorous nationalism.
What led Stalin to desert the Marxist
dogma? In the early. thirties, Dr. Men-
hert argues, Russia suffered a series of
reverses that called for a reassessment
of party thought and policy. It had be-
come clear that world revolution was not
around the corner. In Germany, Hitler
had come to power with the help of —
village collectivization was exacting a
ghastly price. Faced with the crisis, Dr.
Menhert suggests, Stalin decided that _
Soviet policy would have to be based
less on world revolution than on the
support of the Soviet peoples, and es-
pecially . the Russians. An orthodox
Marxist who saw the Bolshevik Revolu-
tion as the beginning of Russian history, 4
ad
>i
1
|
a et a 1953
ae — ey Ia the pays ane fae
sian historians embarked on the twisted
course of rediscovering pre-Bolshevik
history, patriotism, and motherland. In
the process they discarded the “foreign”
Varangian chief Rurik, long regarded
as founder of the Russian state, and
went back six hundred years farther to
pick the Scythians as the “‘first Russians.”
And since. the Russians could do no
wrong, the attacks of the Scythian bar-
barians on the highly civilized Western
community of Olbia came now to be
depicted as efforts to liberate the op-
pressed classes of Olbia. From here it
was but a logical step to Malenkov’s own
man-hunt for the Kazakh and Kirghiz
writers who dared to attack the Russian
carpet-baggers of the nineteenth century.
Erudite and readable, Dr. Menhert’s
essay is essential to understanding the
mind of Malenkov and of the “new
Soviet man.” It also goes well together
' with Professor Berman’s primer on how
the Stalinist dogma affects Russian life
and behavior. In brief chapters, ranging
in theme from the Red soldier, worker,
and peasant to law and planning, Ber-
man gives the interested but uninformed
reader a close-up of the Soviet system
and people. Considering its brevity, the
book provides a great deal of fresh and
important factual material.
WALTER KOLARZ’S volume on Soviet
minorities*is the third of the books that
deserve a wide audience. A Czech jour-
nalist, Mr. Kolarz provides an admirable
study, based primarily on Soviet sources,
of what has happened to the minor com-
- ponents of the Soviet Union. While
‘ Stalin is credited by Communist propa-
ganda with having solved the “question
of nationalities,” it is less widely known
that in the post-war period alone the an-
: swer has called for the dissolution of
four autonomous Soviet republics and
, the disappearance of four major and
several minor nationalities. Their mem-
bers were scattered over Siberia, and
their political and cultural institutions
destroyed. And, as Mr. Kolarz notes,
once it was possible to disperse the
Volga Germans ‘or the Kalmuks, if was
simple to champion the reshuffling of
peoples in the rest of Europe, such as
the uprooting of Germans from Silesia
(given to Poland) and Ko6nigsberg
a Py Russia). Mr. Kolarz’s mate-
ass a
re
“i Oa
chapter on the Jews, is of great topical
interest.
Perhaps the most prodigious job of
research is displayed by Dr. Shimkin’s
study of Soviet mineral resources. A
highly technical book for the expert—
or the cold-war planner—it deals with
-the volume and methods of production,
resources, and deficiencies. Dr. Shimkin
notes that while Soviet mineral strength
approximates that of the United States,
there has been little genuinely thorough
geological study in Russia, and therefore
discoveries of new resources are much
more likely there than here.
WHAT ARE THE ANSWERS to the
threat posed by communism and the
Soviet Union? At least two of the books
before me deal, in part, with possible
counter-action. The most striking thing
about both of them is that they are
totally unconvincing.
Oleg Anisimov is a White Russian
émigré who was in Riga, Latvia, when
the Nazis arrived in 1941. He became
an interpreter to the German Economic
Inspection in Occupied Russia and later
head of a German-sponsored agency in
Riga helping the Russians who fled West
before the Red Army's advance. In
1944 he escaped to Germany, where he
remained until 1951, working with
various Russian émigré groups. He is
now in this country. Despite the
author’s background, the book is oddly
dispassionate and, if one bewares of the
bear traps—such as his defense of the
renegade Red Army general, Vlassov—
very informative. Anisimov feels that
America should not count on national
rivalries within the Soviet Union; nor
should it expect the Russians to love
advancing American troops any more
than they loved the Germans; nor rely
on revolutionary disaffection in Russia.
Yet, despite his close look at war-time
Russia, or perhaps because of it, Anisi-
moy’s plan of action is not persuasive.
What he proposes essentially is the cre-
ation of a new Department of World
Affairs, which would foster anti-Com-
munist organizations throughout the
world, smuggle agents into Russia, and
draft a clear political program that
would appeal to the peoples under the
Red flag. This is a naive answer to the
problems posed by the immense political
e
rial is Paes unknown to. the Western
‘reader, and much of it, such as the
and economic forces exploited by the
Communists in Asia and Europe.
Fritz Sternberg is perhaps on firmer
ground when he champions a program
of vast economic aid to Asia, Western
rearmament, and a world-wide ideologi-
cal war designed to show that Russia has
betrayed its professed concern for hu-
man welfare. But unfortunately this
program is not spelled out in detail, and
it is part of an unsatisfactory little vol-
ume which offers neither fresh facts nor
a new approach.
THREE OF THE BOOKS before me
deal with the man who molded the So-
viet state as we know it now. Mr. Bas-
seches’s biography of Stalin covers the
man, his enemies, and his period ade-
quately. Yet I have found the book
oddly disconcerting, as much in some of
the data it presents as facts as in some of
the interpretations. Thus the author ex-
plains Stalin’s rise in terms of the tradi-
tional hatred of the common people for
the upper, or educated, class. It was the
“upper-class” leaders who brought the
revolution to victory in 1917, but after
that the common people, as personified
by local party leaders, tossed them out
For background on the
news ftom Moscow
at tead
RUSSIANS
IN FocUS
by HAROLD J. BERMAN
@ Drawing on information gath-
ered from Russian D.P.’s in France
and Germany and on day-by-day
- study for Harvard’s Russian Re-
search Center, Professor Berman
neatly spotlights the important
facets of Soviet society — labor,
the peasantry, education, the press,
religion, planning, law, the Com-
munist party and many more. A
brilliant, objective presentation of
the basic minimum that any edu- .
cated American should know to
form judgments about the Soviet —
way of life.
An Atlantic Monthly Press Book
$3.00 at all bookstores -
LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY ;
Boston 6
291
er
et et eee
\ aa
; s
SanEREETR UE a
a a
x
ft
{i
In favor of a fellow-commoner, Stalin.
“Stalin—A Self-Portrait’ is a collec-
tion of thirty-four photographs with
brief captions, some of which are witty.
As for Budu Svanidze’s volume, trans-
lated by Waverly Root, it introduces to
us a sort of a Georgian Lanny Budd.
Mr. Svanidze, who says he is a nephew
of Stalin, has had the tremendous good
fortune to have been present at every
major turn in Stalin’s life, from two of
his weddings to the period when he was
deciding to purge the purger, Yagoda.
It is perhaps not unexpected, then, that
the outbreak of the war finds Mr.
Svanidze fishing with Stalin in the
Black Sea. I am persuaded by Mr. Root’s
preface that Mr. Svanidze is Stalin’s
nephew, and even that he was one of
Stalin’s war-time secretaries. I am less
convinced, however, that Mr. Svanidze ~
could have worked for anyone named
“Lvovitch Protzaenko’ or that Stalin
could have referred constantly to the
great Russian general as “Suvarov.’’ One
could just as well expect General Eisen-
hower to refer to the first President of |
the United States as “George Wishing-
ton.”’ As I think I indicated before, the
books before me form a mixed crop.
New Books in Biict
Revolution in East Asia
NATIONALISM AND COMMUNISM
IN EAST ASIA. By W.Macmahon Ball.
Cambridge. $4.50. Few subjects are of
greater importance than the revolution
among the half of the world’s people
who live in East Asia. In two hundred
pages of penetrating analysis, W. Mac-
mahon Ball surveys the whole scene,
country by country, from Japan to India.
The common features are the struggle
for national independence, for social and
economic advancement, and for Asian
equality with the West. Nationalism and
communism are interwoven, though not
identical, with these basic drives.
The spectacular success of nationalist
revolts is clear in the post-war record
of colonies that have won independence.
Progress in social welfare is much less
evident. But the struggle-is there, con-
fusing the political picture in each of
the countries treated. The failure of
economic development to briag broad
social welfare, so evident under colonial
rule, is a deeply disturbing factor.
As an Australian, Ball views East
Asia from an angle which causes him
to challenge many of the underlying as-
sumptions of American policy toward
each of the major countries. He raises
the issue, for example, whether the re-
cent peace treaty reduces or increases the
likelihood that Japan will return to a
policy of military expansion. He thinks
the danger increased. He also speculates
whether, in the event of war, Japan’s
leaders might not find their interests
better served if they joined the Chinese
292
Communists rather than the United
States. '
In a general chapter on East and West,
Ball examines the methods available to
Western governments to influence the
decision of the 700,000,000 people,
mostly in East Asia, who are not com-
mitted for or against communism. The
military instrument is difficult to use
without making more enemies than
friends. Economic devices are hazardous
because of the probability that they will
benefit only the influential minority and
thus widen the gap between an anti-
Communist government and” its own
people. The difficulty of all psycho-
logical approaches is the difference in
the morals and standards of judgment
of Eastern and Western peoples. Propa-
ganda must work through not against the
great movements for nationalism, a new
social order, and Asia for the Asians.
Ball concludes that if East Asia is
saved from coming under the control of
the Soviet Union it will not be done by
Westerners but by East Asians them-
selves. The best hope he sees is that the
latter will resist domination by the
Soviet Union with the same resolve they
have shown in winning freedom from
domination by the West.
Mr. Brooks’s Standards
THE WRITER IN AMERICA, By Van
Wyck Brooks. Dutton. $3. Under this
somewhat neutral title Mr. Brooks de-
fends his own theory and _ practice
against the ‘“‘new critics” who accuse
him of having no “standards.” They
tere
have made criticism technical, rigorous,
highly specialized, and purely aesthetic.
Mr. Brooks pleads the case for the more
generous attitude which recognizes the
value of a literature that is not always
“pure” and is a function of, rather than
a realm separate from, the whole moral
political, and social life of a nation. As
has often been the case before, he seems
at
to have read almost too much, and he .
cites almost too many opinions in sup-
port of his position, but it will seem a
sensible as well as sound one to those
who find it hard to take seriously the
kind of “rigor” which leads John Crowe
Ransom to rejoice that poetry has “lost
its public support” and to insist that it
should be “nothing but poetry” and
that the modern poet concerned only
with the ‘‘aesthetic effect’’. quite proper-
ly “cares nothing professionally about
morals, God, or native land.” No great’
literature, Mr. Brooks replies, was ever
written upon such convictions, and
whatever the limitations, past or pres-
ent, of our own, they are not due to the
fact that writers have usually been inter-
ested in something besides pure form.
A great writer really does need some-
thing to say. ,
Bigness Is Bad
THE ORGANIZATIONAL. REVO-
LUTION. By Kenneth E. Boulding.
Harper. $3.50. This second volume in
the series on Ethics and Economic Life
sponsored by the Federal Council of
Churches is a most provocative work.
Professor Boulding is concerned with ~
the economic and ethical consequences
of the tremendous growth of organiza-
tions—corporations and business asso-
ciations, trade unions, farmer groups,
and, above all, governments—that has
taken place in the last century. It is a
development he tends to deplore, both
as economist and as Christian of the
Quaker persuasion, because it has under-
mined the free market which, he be-
lieves, is at once the most efficient and
least coercive regulator of economic life.
The market, Boulding argues, diffuses
power; organizations, and most of all
the state, concentrate it.
This is not an unfamiliar argument,
but Boulding presents it with a fresh-
ness and sincerity that should inspire
fruitful discussion. Indeed, it has al-
ready done so. The concluding section —
The NATION |
5 rains
7
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|
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ofl
|
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/
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}
|
* artists,
rapt 83. wh Aut
of the I D Bilsconixins a Ione and stimu-
lating essay by Reinhold Niebuhr chal-
_ lenging both its premises and its conclu-
sions, followed by a reply from the
author, who also deals with briefer:
comments by various economists, theo-
logians, sociologists, and business men.
Service Side Lights
PENTAGON POLITICS. By William
H. Neblett. Pageant Press. $3. While
this volume by a former president of
the Reserve Officers Association is large-
ly devoted to a statement of the case for
a “citizen military force’’ on the Swiss
model, it contains some by-products
which are of more interest perhaps than
the main theme. For example, what
Colonel Neblett has to say about the
admirals and generals who since the war
have retired on full pay to become
lobbyists for concerns dealing with the
Pentagon—a portion of which appeared
in The Nation of January~3, 1952—is
of great interest. So, also, are his revela-
tions of the bitter in-fighting which is
an important aspect of service poli-
tics. And there are some amusing side
lights on the extent to which the army is
top-heavy with administrative and cleri-
cal personnel. When Colonel Neblett
returned to Washington after V-J Day |
as a “chair-borne’”’ colonel in the legis-
lative and liaison -division. of the air
force at the Pentagon, he was provided
with a personal staff of two civilian sec-
retaries and thirty-odd officers and men,
although at no time in the two years he
served, he says, was he given enough
work to keep himself and one secretary
busy.
Theater
Harold Clurman
HATEVER the precise moment
of its composition (the copyright
date of the one-acter from which the
present version was made is 1948),
Tennessee Williams’s “Camino Real”
(National Theater) should be regarded
as a work of the author's nonage.
Though this is what I sensed immediate-
{| ly as I watched it in the theater, I could
not help feeling irritated with it. As I sit
down to write about it a day later, I
| ..am inclined to view it more sympatheti-
cally. The “‘history’” of this change may
constitute the main point of my notice.
Being essentially a youthful work,
“Camino Real’ is immature. But like
the youthful and immature work of most
“Camino Real” is significant of
its author’s seed thoughts, impulses, and
ambitions. Far from being obscure, the
‘play reiterates its intention and meaning
at every point. In fact, it is too nakedly
clear to be a sound work of art.
Kilroy, typical of the “natural” young
American ‘of little education, is pre-
sented more or less out of time, though -
the language is sharply contemporary,
and out of space, though the atmosphere
is the sultry one of Latin American
“bohemia” with its ambiguous tone of
1 ie aricofored lights, strange intoxicants,
hybrid excitements, roguish pursuits,
and appetizing danger. With this there
is a kind of literary afflatus characteristic
of the man who feeds his dreams with
the color of foreign cultures. Kilroy is
bewildered and innocent, seeking a
haven in a world corrupt to the core,
gasping for security and love in places
where he can find nothing but humiliat-
ing adventures. The rich are smug and
cruel; officialdom is heartless and blind;
all, save the heroic poet who is willing
to take action, shrink from the nobler
exploits of the spirit. Kilroy is doomed
to die young because he is honest, ig-
norant, and without guile. His redeem-
ing feature is aspiration—not without
a touch of puritanism—an unconscious
idealism which makes him brother to
other errant knights. who have sinned,
suffered, and still believed in the in-
herent magnificence of life. ‘‘The violets
in the mountain will break the rocks’’—
the dream will conquer crass reality.
Don Quixote bids the boy not to pity
himself, forever to seek the uncharted
paths of the more exalted quests even if
the ultimate destination is never to be
known.
This is the mystique of romanticism,
with a special stress on pity for the
insulted and injured, the persecuted
minorities, the victims ‘and outcasts.
Considering the times we live in, I am
entirely cordial to these sentiments—
particularly since they are no longer
intellectually fashionable. Williams also
hankers for an unfettered theater, a
theater free of the bonds of workaday
naturalism, a theater where the poet in
him can speak more personally and with
a greater degree of self-revelation than
the usual prosy play permits. Thus
“Camino Real” discards the routine
props of logic, exposition, and straight ©
story line. Though there is a certain
juvenile impatience in this, I can em-
brace Williams on this count too. His
crimes have a healthy source.
What is less fortunate is that his play,
instead of being the surrealist phantas-
magoria it intends to be, is far too
literal—in almost every respect far less
poetic than “The Glass Menagerie’ or
“A Streetcar Named Desire.” To say,
“We're all of us guinea pigs in the
laboratory of God,’’ or to have street
cleaners represent death or an airplane
named Fugitiva stand for escape, is far
less imaginative than to have the hapless
Blanche du Bois of “Streetcar” go off
to an insane alae er on the
The Realm of Spirit and
The Realm of Caesar
by Nicolas Berdyaev
The last will and testament of “one
of the greatest philosophers and
prophets of our time,” T7mes (Lon-
don) Supplement, clarifies his over-
all position through a brilliant anal-
ysis of the real nature of freedom,
and as such is both an excellent
summary and introduction to his
thought. $2.50
af your bookseller
HARPER & BROTHERS + New York, N. Y.
Sn
Buy Your Books
through “/Varrow
Nation readers can avail themselves
of our offer to send them any book
at the regular retail price post-free if
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and publisher, if possible.
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THE READERS' SERVICE DIVISION
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I
kindness of strangers. The most success-
ful moments of “Camino Real” are the
sardonic vaudeville of the gipsy-fortune-
teller scene and, even better, the boy-
and-girl love scene—a sort of wrily
sentimental comic-strip ballet of court-
ship—which is almost as specific as the
Gentleman Caller -scene in ‘The Glass
Menagerie.” In other words, Williams,
like Sean O’Casey and many others,
is less suggestive and poignant when
he aims point-blank at his aesthetic,
poetic, or symbolic target than when he
employs the concrete means of a real
situation. Poetry cannot be captured by
direct assault; beauty cannot be won
unless we woo it first through the beast.
As with the play’s poetry, so with
its “‘philosophy.”’ It is too blunt. It does
not matter in art.whether or not one is
a pessimist or an optimist. To say that
life is lovely is no more correct, con-
vincing, moving, or significant than to
say that it is horrid. It is the substance
—not the conclusion—of an argument
that gives it validity. Its /iving matter
—the images, forms, characters, inci-
dents, evocation of experience, life-con-
tent—give a work of art its power,
meaning, and value. If these are rich,
then the work is creative no matter how
white or black the summation of the
whole may be. When Kilroy repeats,
“T am sincere, I am sincere, I am sin-
cere,” he is touching even in the poverty
Researcher Forbes had bleary orbs,
Cramped digits, inflamed pleura;
Until a friend, who feared the end,
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of his speech, but on the ideological
level “Camino Real’ is negligible be-
cause its fabric, for all its fancy pattern-
ing, is ‘‘general issue.”
YET I AM LOATH to be harsh with
it. When people on the first night are
puzzled because the play seems cryptic
to them, I am astonished at the paradox
which makes them believe they under-
stand the much subtler ‘‘Streetcar”—the
theme of which they are hardly ever
able to state; when people at the second
might “love” the play in protest against
what they consider a backward press, I
am distressed that they are not really
seeing or thinking about it so much as
expressing an ill-defined and frustrated
resentment against something.
That “something” is not the press.
The sad fact of our theater is that a
play like “Camino Real’ with all its
faults ought to be produced, listened to,
-
4
criticized with measure and affection,
but that this is difficult when its produc-
tion costs a fortune, when it is forced
to become part of the grand machinery
of investment, real estate, Broadway
>
brokerage and competition for reputa-_
tion. A play like ‘Camino Real” should
be produced—as it might be in France,
for example—with modest means in a
small theater where it would be quietly
seen, enjoyed, and judged for what it
is—a fallible minor work of a young
artist of important talent.
Elia Kazan’s production adds to the
script’s flaws by being conceived in a
major key. It is scenically too heavy; it
is vocally too noisy. It is too punchy,
forthright, and “realistic.” It stampedes
where it should float; it clamors and de-
claims where it should insinuate. It has
much less humor than the text. There
are, none the less, good actors in it—too
many to list here.
Music
B. H. Hagein
HOUGH almost everyone involved
in “The Rake’s Progress” at the
Metropolitan contributed to making it
the distinguished and stimulating oc-
casion it was, the principal contribution
was of course Stravinsky's. In fact the
other contributions could have been re-
garded as an Lommage to the composer
of a score which was like a summation
of his artistic experience and activity. A
score, that is, in which a way of think-
ing and operating developed in the
succession of previous works now pro-
duced a great deal that was familiar—
ranging from the well-known ostinato
figures to the gravely dissonant writing
that one recalled from “Orpheus” and
that now provided the opera’s most
affecting music in its last two scenes.
But for the situations of the earlier
_ scenes Stravinsky had produced a wide
variety of invention that was astonish-
ingly and delightfully new: fanfares,
processional music, arias in sustained
melodic style, even an aria (Baba’s
Wretched me) in an amusingly extrava-
gant florid style. True enough, even in
what was new Stravinsky had followed
his old practice of working with ma-
terials taken from his musjcal experi-
ences—the themes and styles of other
composers and other periods—and of
producing, in effect, personal commen-
taries on those experiences. That is,
considering it appropriate that a play
laid in the eighteenth century be set in
the operatic style of that period, he had
produced arias in a lovely melodic style,
but with the tensions they acquired in
the process of being geared with or-
chestral parts whose acrid dissonance
and rhythmic intricacy kept one -Con-
stantly aware of, and stimulated by, the
presence and activity of the Stravinsky
mind.
Since this was an opera in English,
I didn’t read the libretto by W. H. .—
Auden and Chester Kallman in advance
but depended on the performance for .
knowledge of what the opera was about;
and since it turned out that the words
of the recitatives were intelligible but
most of the words of the arias and en-
sembles were not, I followed the essen-
tials of the action but got almost none
of the philosophical meaning with
which the text enriched this action, and
as little of the literary distinction and
~
: eo My guest at the eee
who had read the libretto didn’t hear
many more of the words than I, and
surprised me by saying they hadn’t been
much more intelligible in the broadcast
pertormance. One reason certainly was
the poor projection of the words by
Hilde Gueden; but I could understand
very few of those that Eugene Conley
projected better, and not all of those
that Mack Harrell projected best of all.
Another reason may have been the way
the words were set by Stravinsky—
which, someone remarked, gave them
the quality of translation-English when
sung.
But one reason unquestionably was
the fact that words in any language
ace difficult to hear in opera—the fact
which makes it pointless to give a for-
eign opera in English ‘‘so that it can be
understood.” What I understood about
“The Rake’s Progress’ was no more
than I would have known about a new
opera in Italian from an advance read-
ing of a summary. And apparently that
was as much as the librettists had ex-
pected me to understand: Mr. Kallman
was reported to have said they had ex-
pected one-half to two-thirds of the
words to be lost, and had hoped certain
key phrases would stand out; and Mr.
Auden said that he was perfectly pleased
to have his words ‘‘the servants of Mr.
Stravinsky’s.music. They have their mo-
ment of glory, the moment in which
they suggest a certain melody; once that
is over . . . they must efface themselves
and cease to care what happens to them’”’
}, .—which implies for me that the listener
top should cease to care what happens
to them, and give his attention to the
| melody they have suggested. Mr. Auden
| was speaking only of “The Rake”; but
i I would say his statement is true fae all
The other contributions to the dis-
| tinction and stimulation of the occasion
were made by the artists involved in
the performing of the work. Mr. Bing.
gave it a cast of his best singers; and
| though regrettable it was not his fault
that Conley and Gueden had less dra~
matic force than Harrell and Blanche
tinguished designer than Horace Armi-
stead for the scenery and costumes
wasn’t available to Mr. Bing; for he did
esi the musical direction to Reiner,
the stage direction to Balanchine, and
allowed them the unusual amount of re-
hearsal time that enabled them to achieve
—even with the title role dramatically
unprojected, and with merely adequate
scenery and costumes—a production |
such as one only rarely experiences in
the opera house. It was a production
with which the Metropolitan paid full
honor to Stravinsky and greatly honored
itself.
For the Celumbia, recording Stravin-
sky was to take over from Reiner; and
it will be interesting to hear the differ-
ences in his performance. For he is the
best conductor of his own music—as he
demonstrated with his performance of
“Jeu de cartes” with the New York
Philharmonic. Cantelli’s performance
had been dazzling and witty; but Stra-
vinsky, playing the piece more slowly,
made its detail stand out more clearly,
sharply, and powerfully—which is to
say more effectively.
Art Notes
CAMERON BOOTH, resident artist at
the University of Minnesota, terms his
paintings “concretions.” His motifs,
stemming from nature, are translated
into concrete graphic terms. They are
rich in color and subtle in form.—
Bertha Schaefer to April 11.
BEATA GRAY shows a group of Man-
hattan scenes done in a linear style that
finds its roots in cubism.—Creative to
April 11.
TSCHACBASOV, whose former -works
were psychological probings in paint, is
now concerned with the organization of
multiple images. All the paintings in
this show are profiles executed within
a rigid mathematical formula—Heller
to April 11.
DAVID and SYLVIA LUND, the first
a painter, the second a sculptor, show
together for the first time. The casein
paintings are done in low-keyed colors,
and the sculptures are strong and well
designed.—Peter Cooper to April 15.
LOUIS FERST ADT has abandoned his
previous classical style and turned to
pointillism. This group of oils describ-
ing ordinary life emphasizes color and
symbol.—Copain to April 12.
IRWIN TOUSTER, Brooklyn cartoon-
ist, potter, and painter, shows oil paint-
ings of landscapes and figures in land-
scapes.—Davis to April 11.
NAT RAMER, instead of continuing
with his low-keyed paintings, now uses
bright, clear colors to comment on hu-
man activity, chiefly in portraits and
genre paintings.—Helen Goodman to
April 11.
NATHAN DOLINSKY has been seen
in group shows for many years. A
mature artist, he has painted this series
of landscapes in warm, low-keyed tones.
—Kottler to April 14.
JAMES N. ROSENBERG, romantic
realist, who has been prominent on the
American art scene for four decades,
shows a number of Adirondack and
Israel landscapes. Some are in clear
pastel colors, but in those that reflect
his preoccupation with the changing
seasons,. he uses somber browns and
grays to underline the drama of his
subjects.—Fezg/.
PAINTINGS
NATHAN DOLINSKY
April 1 through 14
LYNN KOTTLER GALLERY
33 WEST 58th STREET, NEW YORK
CAM ERON
BOOTH
thru April 18
Bertha Schaefer « 32 E. 57, N. Y.
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RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN’S
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Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
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Letters
FM in Boston
Dear Sirs: Mr. Haggin has not quite
done justice in his excellent discussion
of broadcast music to the situation in
Boston. The Lowell Institute FM _ sta-
tion, WGBH, is only one of four FM
stations which broadcast good music
here in Boston. WXHR plays music
continuously from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.,
music of the highest range and quality,
including extended Bach and Mozart
cycles. WBUR and WERS, the statiogs
of Boston College and Emerson College
respectively, broadcast not only music
but recorded BBC plays. The situation
is such that in one night a listener may
have to choose between Bach’s “Mat-
thew Passion,’ Moliére’s “Tartuffe,”’
and Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII.” In
fact, so happy is the situation that one
almost fears to discuss it lest it change.
Is this not perhaps the ideal solution,
a commercial radio on the AM band,
with its honorific “big’’ broadcasts of
opera and symphony, and an increasing
chain of privately sponsored “cultural”
FM stations? This would allow. the
corporations to demonstrate their big-
heartedness, while the discriminating
public can go elsewhere for fulness and
variety. The universities must take the
initiative,
Cambridge, Mass.
R. W. FLINT
The Doomed Valley
Dear Sirs: Edgar Perry brought to the
attention of your readers a very timely
and important matter when he discussed
The Doomed Valley in your issue of
February 7. It must be that the tense
drive for commercial opportunity is
blinding us to the need for the long
view. Overgrazing is common even in
more northerly, better-watered regions.
In the arid regions we have not had the
intellectual hardihood to realize that the
land cannot carry as many animals as
other areas. We will not face reality.
A few years ago Dr. Walter Cottam
of the University of Utah at Salt Lake
City published a pamphlet entitled “Is
Utah Sahara Bound ?”’ This work reveals
what we have done to the land in that
state during the past century.
Mr. Perry has done an excellent job
of reporting on an important problem,
and you are to be complimented for
publishing it. OLAUS J. MURIE
Moose, Wyo.
_
10
11
12
Crossword Puzzle No. 510
BY FRANK W. ee
BL Sa ee
ACROSS
Choose what used to be essential for
light Boye matter for light read-
ing. (8,
More pi adequately covered in the
first term in educational institutions.
(7)
This sort of oil man’s likely to be
found in the near east. (7)
Equivalent to a sort of pane in the
neck? (6)
Couldn’t Weber’s darling daughter
even go this, making an encroach-
ment? (8)
Relating to heat. (7)
Parents, perhaps, are in the middle
of the city. (5)
Names rates in time for school. (5)
This is a capital cleaning agent! (7)
Repudiates it is said broken prom-
ises. (8)
This islander sounds like an idiot.
6
Diverge in a different way. (7)
Cross breed of cats? (7)
Looking for an opening? (6, 8)
DOWN .
The gas pipe is broken and without’
a thing to improve the fire. (4, 5)
This tea isn’t strong at all, if the
answer’s material, (7)
Unexpected good fortune, but the
cradle won’t rock if it does. (9)
Morse’s is not primarily one of
ethics. (4)
Mediterranean who might be an
echo in pain. (10)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
6 Island in Zanzibar protectorate, seen
in ship embarkation. (5)
7 In France, one who has a fixed in-
come somewhat suggests that it’s
comparatively tear-ful. (7)
8 See 20 down.
13 Is the first mate’s hitch over when
one is made? (5, 5)
15 News cut? (It’s likely to be found
around the top of the page.) (5, 4)
16 You might not recognize this “Woz-
zeck,” so here’s a clue—he’s a sort
of land-grabber, but no doctor.( 5, 4)
18 In the same business as 16. Tell the
name of one of his prod: (i)
20 and 8 down. Proving musical comedy
is an integral part of America.
(23145 15-4)
21 If you go to them in Florida, you
might be better; in most places you’d
be worse. (4)
22 5151500—full of life. (5)
24 A nurse evidently has to be sort of
an amateur radio operator. (4)
eM e
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 509
ACROSS :—1, 6. 18 and 24 down PUTTING °
THE CART cE THE HORSE; 10
RADICAL; 12 CORNICES; 13 BELEM; 15
ELECT; 17 AMBERGRIS; 19, 11, 29
PART; 21 DRAKE; 23 EB
;_27 DESPAIR;
CELEBRATES.
DOWN :—2 TADPOLE; 3 INCAN; 4 GOLD
COAST; 5 HAFTS; 7 ANNULAR; 8 TASK-
MASTER; 9 TIMBERED; 14 HEATHEN-
DOM; 16 TREE TOAD; 20 ENLISTS; 22 AN-
CIENT; 25 TOWER; 26. IDES.
EC A
25 TOWHEAD; 30
“ground rules."’ Address
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Dr. Butler on Sacco-Vanzetti
Dear Sirs: A few days before the execu-
tion of Sacco and Vanzetti I telephoned
or telegraphed to Dr. Nicholas Murray
Butler at his country residence in South-
ampton, Long Island, suggesting that
he associate himself with William
Green, president of the American Fed-.
eration of Labor, in asking Governor
Fuller to commute the death sentence of
Sacco and Vanzetti: On August 20,
1927, Dr. Butler telegraphed Governor
Fuller as follows:
On behalf of large body of sober Amer-
ican opinion which, while wholly unmoved
by the unreasonable and violent demon-
strations, is nevertheless gravely disturbed
by the published record of the Sacco-
Vanzetti case, I earnestly urge commuta-
tion of death sentence to life imprison-
ment. Many of us would gladly associate
ourselves with the impressive message
sent you by*William Green, president of
the American Federation of Labor.
I do not think-this telegram has ever
been made public, and I send it to you
for publication in The Nation.
CHARLES C, BURLINGHAM
New York
Italy Misrepresented?
Dear Sirs: With reference to the letter
by Maury Maverick on the case of a
Sicilian separatist named Pasquale Scior-
tino, in The Nation of February 7, may
I point out, purely in the interests of
accuracy, that the death penalty does
not exist in Italy. Furthermore, no one
is condemned to life imprisonment,
or anything remotely resembling it, for
subversive activity against the present
Italian government.
Mr. Maverick’s assertion that Pasquale
Sciortino, if deported to Italy, “is sure
to be killed or imprisoned for life by
the Italian government’ might have
been correct ten or twenty years ago, but
it is a misrepresentation of Italy today.
New York DARINA SILONE
Teachers for Freedom
Dear Sirs: You are to be commended
for publishing in your February 28
issue Melvin H. Bernstein’s analysis
of the abominable situation in which
the teaching profession now finds itself.
The tide will be turned back when
more teachers stand up to be counted
on the side of freedom of the mind. It
is high time we 90 and 95 per cent
Americans “‘stirred ourselves in the sun
of the American promise’ and rose to
defend our constitutional freedoms.
Los Angeles, Cal. LESTER H. HAYES
PeES ORT Ss
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WRITERS’
CONFERENCE
HOLIDAY IN CANADA, June 7-14, 1953.
Attend LAURENTIAN WRITERS’ CON.
FERENCE at luxurious SUN VALLEY
LODGE, Trout Lake, Province Quebec. In-
formation: E. Louise Cushing, 808 Buchanan
Street, Montreal 9, Canada.
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Will 3-D save Hollywood — and the rest of us from TV? But of
course there are all kinds of 3-D, some of which require something
more than ordinary 20/20 vision to enjoy, and
others which require 20 grand (or more) just to
project. Arch Oboler will initiate you into the -
mysteries of 3-D in an early issue of The ni
Sy
to do the job. After he finished Bwana Devil, ES CO
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first full-length feature in 3-D, he managed to
get $1,750,000 for his rights. We’re getting his thoughts, needless to say,
for considerably less—and so, of course, will you.
A tip for Senator McCarthy: Why not abolish the Supreme Court
and substitute a Subcommittee on Constitutional Questions of the Sen-
ate Judiciary Committee? The Senator could
become Supreme Subcommitteeman. The sug-
gestion of course is made only half in jest, as
those of you will learn who read Philip Wit-
tenberg’s forthcoming piece in The Nation on
how our Congressional Committees are en-
croaching upon the functions of the courts.
Mr. Wittenberg, an attorney of international
repute, is author of “Dangerous Words” and is now lecturing at Co-
lumbia University. His article will appear soon.
We on The Nation are trying to put outa magazine for everyone, egg-
heads most emphatically included. Politics, movies, books, arts, music
—yes, and fiction, too, in time. We are trying to do in the magazine
field what Arch Oboler did in the movies—present life in the third
dimension, solid and meaningful. The more you read The Nation, the
more you'll like it. |
-, > oP Yea 8s »
yr yd
EUROPE EYES McCARTHY by ALEX COMFORT |
AP 13°52
-
THE | i
: SO RSRLINGAM ES i |
f pURLIC | 1BRA y Mt
q ringame, VS =
‘ Le ‘i
| April 11, 1953
| 20¢
~lLoward h
m Peaée:
Z |
| | |
Hunting Booby Traps |
An Edhtorial : i
Diplomacy’s Hour
J. Alvarez del Vayo |
Moscow-Peking Axis Alexander Werth |
sede $25 Billion Bonanza Bruce Cation
| a Winthrop W. Aldrich Egon Poboryles
Around
the
U.S.A.
Professors Prepare
for Action
Chicago
THE thirty-ninth annual meeting of the
American Association of University Pro-
fessors, held here on March 27 and 28,
strengthened the basic policy of the as-
sociation by passing a resolution con-
demning the dismissal of faculty mem-
bers who invoke the Fifth Amendment
to avoid answering the questions of
legislative committees,
At a first-night dinner thegdelegates
applauded a scathing attack on Con-
gressional probes and university admin-
istrators who advocate “welcoming”
them by Alan Barth, editorial writer for
the Washington Post and author of
“The Loyalty of Free Men.” Barth
- urged partisans of academic freedom to
take the offensive in the fight for intel-
lectual independence. At the business
session the next morning the delegates
heard the report of the committee on
academic freedom and tenure.
The final session in the afternoon
started harmoniously enough with the
resolutions committee making its report.
On its recommendation several resolu-
tions passed in previous years were re-
affirmed and in some cases strengthened.
One of these—adopted in 1947—de-
- clared that professional competence and
integrity should be the tests of fitness of
a member of the academic profession
and that a, teacher who is guilty of a
legally defined subversive act should be
dismissed, provided his guilt is estab-
lished by due process of law. Last year’s
resolution on the subject and the one
ptesented this year by the committee de-
clared that a teacher who misuses his
classes for propaganda purposes should
be dismissed if guilt is established by
due process, but this provision was fe-
moved by an amendment offered from
RIEL ee se ae i ee %
the floor. Supporters of the amendment
said “propaganda” was a vague term
and expressed-fear that routine teaching
of controversial doctrines might be in-
cluded under it by some administrations.
Also reaffirmed without basic changes
were resolutions condemning the use of
legislative investigations to smear. indi-
viduals for past or present lawful politi-
cal activities or personal associations,
condemning censorship of textbooks by
groups or individuals outside the pro-—
fession, urging fewer governmental re-
strictions on American scholars going
abroad and foreign ones coming to this
country, criticizing unethical practices in
intercollegiate athletics, and advocating
, primary control of athletic programs by
academic faculties.
A new resolution passed by the meet-
ing indorsed a statement by the Prince-
tin University chapter opposing political
investigations of universities and de-
plored “the failure of many of our edu-
cational, religious, and political leaders
to define the true nature of this growing
threat to our intellectual and_ spiritual
heritage or to protest against it.”
e A long debate was
touched off when the committee recom-
mended passage of a resolution stating
that invoking the Fifth Amendment did
not “in and of itself’ justify dismissal
of a faculty member if his stand was
accepted as valid by the investigating
body. The resolution added that this’
was not to be considered an indorsement
of invoking the amendment,
complex legal and ethical questions
are involved.” An attempt to amend
the resolution by striking out the words
“in and of itself” was defeated by a
narrow margin.
Then a small group headed by the
Northwestern and Ohio State delega-
tions proposed an amendment to defer
action on the resolution and send it to
the Council, the governing body of the
A. A. U. P., for further consideration.
These opponents of immediate action
claimed that the right to refuse to an-
swer questions under the Fifth Amend-
ment had not been clearly established,
and that by supporting it the A. A. U. P.
“since
might provoke passage by state legisla-
tures of additional “anti-subversive”
bills aimed at colleges. Backers of the
resolution argued that immediate action
was necessary, thirty-seven college teach-
ers having already been dismissed for
amen
to block action was eae ie vote
of about three to one.
e It became clear at the
final session that many chapters were
not satisfied with the record of the -
national office and its staff, headed
by Ralph E. Himstead, general secre-
tary, in defending dismissed teachers
and otherwise implementing the pro-
gram of the organization. After the re-
port of the resolutions committee, the
dissatisfaction burst forth in a variety
of suggestions and complaints. Most of
the speakers assured Himstead that they
were not criticizing him personally or
the members of his staff but were mo-
tivated by a sincere desire to strengthen
the association.
Many of the complaints came from
campuses which had experienced dis-
missals involving academic freedom.
The delegates said that they were, not
kept informed about how the national
office was handling these cases and that
a local chapter found it hard to get the
facts it needed for its own activity in be-
half of dismissed teachers. The lack of
internal democracy and vertical coordi-
nation was cited repeatedly.
In rebuttal Himstead charged that the
local chapters were often lax in support-
ing their members in dismissal cases and
were negligent in keeping the national
office informed of their own activities.
As the heated session ground on into —
the dinner hour, verbal exchanges be-
tween the floor and the platform be-
came increasingly caustic. In the end the —
rank-and-file delegates carried the day
and forced the appointment of three.
special committees. One is to examine
the A. A. U. P. Bulletin with a view to
making it a more effective instrument of
communication among the local chap-
ters and between them and the national
office. Another will study the structure
of the national office to see how it can
be modernized and its efficiency in-
creased. A third will recommend ways
of implementing a “vigorous nation-
wide program of public enlightenment
on the nature and utility of academic
freedom,” possibly including sponsor-
ship of radio and television forums and
cooperation with other organizations
in waging the domestic war of ideas.
ALAN WHITNEY
[Alan Whitney is political editor of —
the Chicago Northside Newspapers.)
i
Es
nom
“Volume 176, Number 15
fo ele
‘ i ; Paar | ea é
"axe! ry Y
ro ;
‘New York, Saturday, April 11, 1953
The Shape of Things
The Case of the Fifteen
Of all the moves emanating from Moscow, Bucharest,
and points East, none has been more startling’than the
release of the fifteen Russian doctors who had been ar-
rested on charges of killing and plotting to kill Soviet
officials. To an outsider looking in, this abrupt reversal
appeared as contrived as the original arrests. For with
the freeing of the doctors and the announcement by the
Ministry of Internal Affairs that the accusations against
them had been false, the whole Jewish-Zionist conspiracy
story collapsed.
If the doctors are not guilty, presumably the anti-
Soviet plots attributed to the “‘Joint’’ and the Zionist
movement, with which the doctors were linked, are also
non-existent. And if this is what the Soviet authorities
are announcing by the release of the fifteen, their action
becomes as important a political move as were the
charges and arrests. It implies a repudiation of the whole
anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic policy built upon
them. This would seem to be confirmed by the fact that
the Kremlin accuses those alleged to be responsible for
the false arrests with having aroused “national hostili-
ties,” a’most significant phrase.
If this is so we should welcome the change and nof
» worry too much about the motives which may lie behind
it. Whatever internal political implications it may have,
its meaning in the context of the current peace offensive
would be clear. It would in effect be an assurance that
sympathy or even relations with “‘outside’’ movements
are no longer regarded as evidence of treasonable plot-
ting against the regime. Nothing could be a more con-
vincing token than this of a desire to relax tension.
We shall soon know if such an interpretation is valid.
Israel’s formal statement that it “would welcome the re-
sumption of normal relations” with the Soviet Union
will provide an early test of the real purpose behind the
freeing of the Russian doctors.
Collision in Wall Street
Last week a Wall Street doctrine collided with a Wall
_ Street axiom, producing a sad sense of frustration among
orthodox financial commentators. The doctrine is that
> Ss 5
~ -~
Ee
Vation
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
government spending and business interests are mutually
incompatible, from which it follows that a cut in the de-
fense program should induce greater prosperity. The
axiom is that the verdict of the stock market represents
a consensus of business opinion.
Obviously something was wrong, therefore, when the
market broke sharply on prospects of a Korean armistice
and incautious brokers started to talk about “a peace
scare.” For if the above-mentioned doctrine is valid, then
peace, which might mean less spending and lower taxes, -
must prove a blessing to business. Yet if the axiom is
correct, the doctrine appears to be challenged by business ©
Opinion since stock-market action showed a serious lack
of confidence about the continuance of prosperity.
The Wall Street Journal of March 31 spotted this
dichotomy and tackled it bravely. Denouncing as “‘idi-
otic’ the idea “that prosperity is made by government
spending and that if peace stops the war-spending the
prosperity will” collapse,” it pointed out that the stock
market fell just as sharply when the Korean war started:
in both cases there was a “cautious reaction to prospects
of great change.” If the war stops, this authority con-
tinued, there may be a decline in business, but it will be —
coincidence rather than cause and effect. The real reason
for a recession would be overproduction of consumer
goods in spite of the diversion of productive capacity
to arms-making. But is not this just another way of saying
that in ordinary times industry finds buying-power in-
adequate: that if the government ceases to utilize as much
of its surplus capacity as in the recent past, industry sees
no alternative to curtailing operations and cutting down
_ new investment—moves that could quickly start a new
vicious circle of deflation?
The Voice of Appeasement
The danger that divisions in the ranks of educators
will be exploited by those who seek to control American
education is emphasized by the opposing positions re-
cently taken by the American Association of University
Professors (see our inside front cover) and the Associa-
tion of American Universities. The latter represents the
Ivy League—the most richly endowed, and presumably
the most independent, of the private institutions. In a
report released on March 31 it holds that present mem-
ce a
= oes. |S
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 297
Hunting Booby Traps 299
New Deal at the U. N.? 300
ARTICLES
Diplomacy’s Hour
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 301
McCarthyism: The Impact on Europe
by Alex Comfort 302
Restive Britons by Andrew Roth 303
Taxes into Profits:
$25 Billion Bonanza
by Bruce Catton 304
Winthrop W. Aldrich:
Million-Dollar Diplomat
by Egon Pohoryles 306
Moscow-Peking Axis:
New Unity in the Making
by Alexander Werth 308
BOOKS
Maritain’s Guide to Greatness
A Review by S. Lane Faison, Jr. 310
New Books in Brief ; 311
FILMS by Manny Farber 313
RECORDS by B. H. Hagein 314
ART NOTES 315
LETTERS 315
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 511
by Frank W. Lewis ° 316
AROUND THE U.S. A.
Professors Prepare for Action
by Alan Whitney opposite 297
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editortal Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Associates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Masic
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nat‘on, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New York, N.-Y., under the act of March 3, 1879, Advertising
and Circulation Representative for Continental Europe: Publicitas.
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298
bership in the Communist party “extinguishes” tl a
to teach and warns that those who invoke the Fifth —
Amendment must prove their continued fitness to teach.
By dissociating itself from the position taken by the a
A. A. U. P. on these crucial issues, the A. A. U. has
weakened the academic resistance to Congressional pres-
sures by dividing it. Even more significant is its an-
nouncement that universities have a duty to cooperate
with Messrs. Velde and Jenner—a policy described by
Alan Barth at the A. A. U. P. convention as “utterly -
disastrous,” since it cannot be assumed that the investiga- 4
tions will be fair or that the purpose is to find facts rather
than to coerce opinion.
The circumstances connected with the release of the
A. A. U. report are even more disturbing than its con-
tents. It came right on the heels of the A. A. U. P. con-
vention, as though the intention were to undercut the
courageous stand of the professors, Hailed by the reac-
tionary press as the definitive answer to “leftists. and
phony liberals” the report has been mistakenly regarded
by many thousands of readers as an official statement on
behalf of the entire academic community, including the
A. A. U. P. membership. But even if its intentions were
good, the report is a striking illustration of what the
London Economist of March 21 considered an “appease-
ment” tendency on the part of American educators. The
universities, it remarked, “have at best praised the in-
vestigations with faint damns. As some cynics have said,
American university officials have assured the world that
there will be no witch hunts, because they will tolerate
no witches. Whether this policy of yielding anvinch at
every attack in the hope of saving the eventual mile will
succeed in the long run is subject to debate, But if the
time finally comes when a determined stand is necessary,
will the moral courage of American academic people not
be found to have been fatally undermined by . . . a series
of calculated surrenders?”
,
Easter in Madrid
Using Holy Week as a pretext, Dictator Franco
canceled the celebration of the anniversary of his defeat
of the Republic. His real reason, however, was not piety
but his preoccupation with the worsening relations be-
tween the army and the Falange. The army is becoming
more and more irritated with its rival, and the Falangist
leaders, as several of them showed in speeches delivered
on the éve of the anniversary, are unwilling to be rele-
gated to a secondary role.
Some of the army leaders have always hated the
Falange. Others are becoming anti-Falange in the degree
that they are becoming anti-Franco. It is easier for them,
and safer too, to attack the Generalissimo tMrough the
“party than to attack him directly. Many local incidents
-have taken place between the rival bodies, and it was a
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_ measure of prudence to avoid bringing them together,
en masse, for the anniversary ceremonies.
Franco is in a bad mood. The prospect of diminished
international tension has produced a real panic in Ma-
drid. The Spanish radio and press devote themselves
largely to warning the United States not to soften its
policy toward Russia, fearful that any agreement will
postpone indefinitely the signing of the bilateral treaty
exchanging bases for dollars. The Madrid radio at pres-
ent discharges its chief fury at Great Britain and France,
but if the United States withholds dollars, its turn will
come. For that it will suffice to revive the articles in
Arriba, Franco's personal organ, during World War II,
which anticipated. with joy “the day when the arrogant
New York skyscrapers will be smashed to pieces by the
gallant German air force.”
Hunting Booby Traps
BY THIS time deeds have been piled on words at such
a rate that political dopesters here and abroad are having
trouble keeping up with the Russian peace offensive.
Skepticism still survives, especially in Washington—as
witness Mr. Dulles’s remarks at his press conference last
week—but evidence from every Communist headquar-
ters points in a single direction: Moscow is ready to go
to almost fantastic lengths to settle outstanding feuds. If
the truce talks proceed without serious hitch at Panmun-
jom, even the most doubting officials will find it hard—
and politically dangerous—to maintain a stand-offish
attitude.
However Washington is still talking cold war—and
letting the Communist governments appear as peace-
makers. A diplomat at the United Nations remarked the
other day, ‘It looks as if Dwight Eisenhower's campaign
pledge to try to end the Korean war is now going to be
fulfilled—by Mao Tse-tung and Malenkoy.” It would be
heartening if our psychological-warfare chiefs would
cling a little less affectionately to that word warfare.
They devoted themselves so assiduously to cold-war
propaganda that they are practically dumbfounded by
the prospect of peace.
Our State and Defense Departments have been fever-
ishly engaged in hunting booby traps. General Mark
Clark, U. N. Supreme Commander for Korea, in his —
reply to the initial Communist proposal insisted that
when the truce teams met again at Panmunjom the
exchange of sick and wounded captives must be the first
order of business. Only after clarification of that issue,
he said, could the armistice talks be resumed. If General
Clark or his superiors in Washington had read the
Peking statement carefully, they would have noticed that
the Communists had agreed to Clark’s demand before he
made it. In his offer Chinese Premier Chou En-lai said,
April 11, 1953
——— ee.
“We consider that subsequent upon the reasonable settle-
ment of the question of sick and injured prisoners of
war, it is entirely a matter of course that 2 smooth
solution of the whole question of prisoners of war
should be achieved.” :
Washington’s next reaction was to detect something
sinister in the fact that Peking sent its offer to the United
Nations instead of to General Clark. Was this another
trick to use the U. N. as a forum for Red propaganda?
Nobody seems to have remembered that last December
the President of the Assembly, Canada’s Lester Pearson,
had forwarded to Peking India’s celebrated resolution
on war prisoners. To sober diplomats it seemed proper
for Peking to address to Mr. Pearson a message which
went far toward accepting the once-rejected offer.
President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles are exer-
cising an obvious duty in taking precautions against
ambiguities or tricks in the Communist approach. But
we should also be protected against a mentality which is
so immersed in the search for Red shenanigans that it
may risk letting Korean peace elude us.
In their tactics the Communists have taken a leaf from
Dean Acheson’s book. During the week preceding their
big concession on the voluntary repatriation of war
prisoners, the Communist forces had engaged in their
most ambitious offensive in Korea for a long time. By
capturing Old Baldy, one of the gateways to Seoul on
the western sector of the front, they won a marked
local success, It has enabled them, in the best Acheson
tradition, to claim that they are now “negotiating from
strength.”
THE COMMUNIST suggestions, first to exchange sick
and wounded captives and next to exchange war pris-
oners generally on the voluntary principle, meet the
U.N. proposals. In another field the Russians have not
merely spoken but acted by accepting Sweden's Dag
Hammarskjold as successor to Trygve Lie. They have
also sprung a surprise by apparently taking a step toward
the United States position on arms limitation and atomic
control. These are only a few of the links in the chain
of peace overtures from Moscow in the past five weeks.
When we turn to the motives prompting this shift,
we are once more in the mists of surmise. We do not feel
too unhappy about that, for it puts us on the same level
as our intelligence services, which, with immense means
at their disposal to do better, have been bewilderedly_
trying to decipher the Russian tea leaves.
The prevailing explanation is that Malenkov and Co.
want a breathing space abroad that will allow them to.
consolidate their position at home. This may be an over-
simplification. There are certain indications that the new
course of Soviet policy was charted under Stalin. Some
weeks before his death Soviet diplomats in Washington
were telling their non-Communist colleagues and Amer-
299
SS
]
i
i
-
ican journalists that the time was ripe for improving
Russian-American relations. Around the dinner table
they went on to say that President Eisenhower, thanks
to his military repute and to his strength in Congress and
the country, might be better qualified than was the’
Truman-Acheson team to reopen negotiations with
Moscow.
The timing of the Communist political moves may also
have a logic unrelated to the death of Stalin. They have
come a few weeks before the Eisenhower Administra-
tion’s defense budget and foreign-aid bill go to Congress.
Moscow may be right in anticipating that if we have a
Korean armistice and then move into other fields of
negotiation, members of Congress will feel growing
public pressure to slash federal spending, reduce taxes,
and stretch out our rearmament timetable. Moreover, the
truism still holds that the U. S. S. R. and China have
an enormous stake in creating conditions favorable to
_ their peaceful internal development.
What should be the American response? Unfortu-
nately, Washington anticipated its own reply—though
not irrevocably. At an earlier stage of the truce talks the
U. N. and Chinese-North Korean negotiators agreed
that a high-level political conference should be held
within three months after an armistice became effective.
That conference would negotiate the withdrawal of all
foreign forces from Korea, the settlement of the Korean
question, “et cetera.” The U. N. stipulated that “et
cetera” should not be construed as relating to matters
outside Korea.
Washington thus ruled out all discussion of such
relevant Far Eastern issues as the seating of Communist
China in the U. N., recognition of the Peking govern-
ment, and the future of Formosa. Yet wiser persons
know a lasting accommodation on Korea is possible only
as part of a broad East Asian understanding. If we
genuinely want such an understanding, we must be ready
to widen future political discussions to encompass the
whole Far Eastern problem.
New Deal at the U.N.
Other than the pro forma notification of his $10,000-
a-year life pension, there is little in his last few days in
office that Trygve Lie will be able to recall with any great
pleasure. Most of the period was taken up with the
General Assembly debate on the witch hunt among the
American members of the Secretariat. Of the more than
two-score countries participating, nearly 90 per cent were
in one way or another critical of Lie’s handling of the
issue. The only countries besides the United States which
supported him unreservedly appear to have been Cuba,
the Dominican Republic, Panama, and San Salvador.
In the end the Assembly narrowly approved a resolu-
300
a.
r
Ne A
a © Pas Ps
ee Ae &
tion, cosponsored by the Americans and most of the ther ~
major Western powers, which expressed faith that ‘the i
Secretary General would abide by the employment prin-
ciples set forth in the United Nations Charter and Staff
Regulations. But even this could afford Mr. Lie little
satisfaction. The delegates already knew, when they
voted, that the Secretary General in whom they were
expressing faith would not be Mr. Lie, Moreover, it is
habitual with diplomats—particularly Western ones—to
vote more moderately than they think, Some of Mr.
Lie’s sharpest critics supported the resolution, including
France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
BUT IT would be a mistake to think that the Assembly
considered Mr. Lie to be the sole villain. Mr. Lie did
only what the Americans wanted him to do. When M.
Hoppenot of France opposed the dismissal of interna-
tional servants on the vague grounds of “disloyalty” to
their country, or on the ground that they were “likely”
to engage in subversive activities, or because of acts or
associations prior to their service with the U. N., he was
attacking a formula designed not by Mr. Lie but by the
Americans, And when Mr. von Balluseck of the Nether-
lands denied that Secretariat members should be dis-
missed automatically when they used their constitutional
privilege against self-incrimination in official inquiries,
he was attacking a concept invented by the Americans,
not by Mr. Lie. And when Mr. Jebb of Great Britain
ridiculed the whole idea of the U. N. as a “security area”
—‘“member governments do not, as we know, intrust
their vital secrets to the Secretariat” —he was ridiculing
not Mr. Lie, who on the record agrees, but the Americans.
Of course, nobody attacked the United States explicitly.
On the contrary, speaker after speaker made the point
that the standards laid down for the conduct of its citizens
by any country were purely a domestic matter of no con-
cern to the United Nations. The issue is not whether the
United States has the right to demand that all its citizens
employed by the U. N. have blue eyes; the issue is
whether the United Nations, an international organiza-
tion, must succumb to a blue-eyed mania, or any other _
mania, which happens to attack Washington.
The debate, as well as Mr, Lie’s removal, gives cause
- for hope that a new regime may be in store for the long-
suffering Secretariat. Much will depend upon the attitude
of Dag Hammarskjold, the new Secretary General. One
of the most cogent speeches of the entire debate was
delivered by his colleague, the Swedish delegate, who
argued that only the United Nations could properly set
the standards for its own employees. The Nation urges
that Mr. Hammarskjold make it.a first order of business
to reaffirm the argument of his fellow-countryman and
thus to reassure the Secretariat—and the world—that the
witch-hunters have been chased away from the East
‘River.
a
s
|
|
Diplomacy’s
United Nations
MAKE no mistake about it: Russia is
engaged in a diplomatic operation of
positive content and great dimensions;
in popular terms, Russia means business.
Until this fact is fully assimilated,
Western observers, and governments
too, will inevitably fall into errors of
judgment. Even the formulation of new
policies, which cannot long be delayed,
will be based upon a faulty appreciation
of Soviet intentions, with the danger of
a major split among the Western allies
and diplomatic defeat for those resist-
‘ing negotiation.
The Soviet government is moving to-
ward a comprehensive settlement of
outstanding issues. Hardly had the last
development in that direction been re-
corded—the cordial meeting between
Foreign Minister Molotov and United
States Chargé d’Affaires Jacob Beam—
than diplomats in Moscow were predict-
ing new Soviet moves designed to re-
open and settle long-deadlocked issues.
Having decided to end the present
status quo,” Russia is acting with its cus-
_tomary drive and determination. It is
around tHis central fact that United
States policy will have to be shaped.
That thi has not yet been realized is
evident here, particularly among Ameri-
cans. European delegates and corre-
spondents are much more aware of the
meaning of the Russian and Chinese
moves and prepared to act accordingly.
The Asians are still more strongly con-
~ vinced—and elated. In the last few days
* I have heard several of these comment
with disapproval on the skepticism with
. which some American correspondents
have been reporting the conciliatory
Communist decisions and acts registered
in the last ten days.
Of course a quick readjustment on the
part» of the Americans is difficult in
view of the premises on which the "cam-
paign of psychological warfare has been
based. The psychological war was de-
signed to keep the Russians off balance,
wondering what would be the next
ie a
.
Hour
Western move and how the plans for
strengthening the West and preparing
for the “roll-back’’ of Soviet power
would develop. The Russians, by the
very structure of their regime, are able
to change their course almost overnight.
By taking the initiative and multiplying
their gestures of friendship, coupled
c=.
»” |
SS )
Y 4
Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov
with concrete proposals not at one point
but at many, Moscow has put the West
in the position of guesser.
Never was more evident the damage’
brought about by preaching the. rigid
doctrine that it was impossible to nego-
tiate with Moscow. Never has there
been clearer proof of the mistake of
not having what the French call a
politique de rechange, a policy flexible
enough to provide an alternative for the
moment when Moscow began to play the
diplomatic cards it has always held.
At first, fear that the skeptical atti-
tude adopted by the United States
might stall a settlement tempered the
joy with which the Unjted Nations re-
ceived the proposal of Chou En-lai. It
was therefore with a feeling of relief
that the delegates greeted President
Eisenhower’s statement that any offer _
should be taken at its face value until it
was proved not to be genuine. But the
almost contrary remarks of Secretary
Dulles only twenty-four hours later
again created an atmosphere of doubt.
Delegates asked, “Which are we to
believe?”
Mr. Dulles’s pronouncement showed
him desperately trying to limit and
Alvarez del Vayo
localize the peace, while the obvious in-
tention of the Russians is to enlarge it.
Mr. Dulles would like, as a maximum, a
truce in Korea; he wants nothing that
would threaten the alliance with Chiang
Kai-shek, or the plans for Indo-China,
or the rearming of Japan. And beyond
Asia are the negotiations with Franco,
the military alliance in the Middle East,
the full rearmament of Germany, and
everything he has envisaged as part of
the liberation policy.
But this time it is impossible to ex-
pect these considerations to control the
United Nations. Many delegates still re-
™
member that peace in Korea could have ©
been achieved two years ago—when the
U.N. forces reached the Thirty-eighth
Parallel—had the warning of Sir Bene-
gal Rau been heeded. This time they are
not going to be misled.
Originally most of the delegates were
against complicating the negotiations in
Panmunjom with a debate in the As-
sembly. But since the Dulles pronounce.
ment the number of those who want a
general discussion has increased. For-
mally the issue has been before the
Assembly from the moment Peking
communicated its proposals to President
Lester Pearson. If a debate takes place,
one can expect the Russians to avoid
giving any support to the position of
those who maintain that “nothing has
basically changed.” For example, Molo-
tov, while stressing the importance of
having Communist China and North
Korea participate in any discussion of
Korea in the U. N., did not make it a
condition.
The election of Dag Hammarskjold
of Sweden as Secretary General came at
the right time. A new man in office,
unanimously elected and without obli-
gations to anyone, has a unique oppor-
tunity, as well as a duty, to take advan-
tage of the situation and exercise the
powers of mediation inherent in the
post of Secretary General. It is the mo-
ment for the United Nations to regain
its leadership in world affairs.
301
\
a
a Se
McCARTHYISM
The Impact on Europe . . by Alec Comfort
{This article and the one following
by Andrew Roth make it abundantly
clear that the problem of McCarthyism
has burst out of this country’s bounda-
ries and become an important interna-
tional issue. }
London
REPORTS of the great American witch
hunt, like reports of all the goings-on
in Mescow, reach us in Western Europe
at second hand. We depend for infor-
mation about both upon the type of
biased hearsay which passes, in a cold
war, under the title of news. The rela-
tively greater accessibility of America
and Americana compared with Russia
and Izvestia does not always operate in
favor of an unbiased picture. If Ogonék
were to start howling for an atomic war
against New York—which, for the rec-
ord, it never has done—most of us
could read it only in suspect translation,
whereas Collier's, to the regret of some
of us, speaks our language.
In attempting to understand the
forces which have taken control of
American politics, dissertations on the
mentality of some of the leading figures
in the drama, like psychoanalytical spec-
ulation about Hitler, are beside the
point; the real problems are sociological.
It is unimportant that Senator McCarthy
is a spiteful and delinquent mental pa-
tient; what is important is the condi-
tions that allow a mental patient to
blossom and flourish in a civilized so-
ciety to the confusion of the sane. Eng-
lish social scientists would be rash to
theorize at long range. We can, how-
ever, consider as. objectively as possible
the direct consequences of McCarthyism
on the thinking of Europeans. These
consequences seem to me to be among
the really decisive factors shaping our
future history.
A few weeks ago Jean-Paul Sartre at-
ALEX COMFORT, author of “The
Power House’ and other novels, is also
one of Britain's foremost political
pamphleteers.
302 -
tended the Russian-sponsored World
Peace Congress in Vienna. His presence
there struck me at the time as extremely
significant. American propaganda in
Europe assumes that only Arthur Koest-
ler has any idea of the true nature of
communism, and that French, British,
and Italian intellectuals fall easy prey to
colored magazines depicting the Kuibi-
shevy Dam; once they realize the true
facts—the ruthlessness of the Kremlin,
the Siberian camps, the suppression of
free inquiry—they will run for shelter
behind NATO. I put this view brutally
because it is Sartre has
spoken for himself here in Europe in
his brilliant paper debate with Camus.
Contrary to State Department opinion,
the politically conscious European knows
his Communists. He knows his anti-
Communists. He saw Spain, he saw
Munich, he saw the Resistance. He has
lived and argued with Communists. *
As a result of what he knows, he,
rather than the professional I-was-a-
Red, and certainly rather than the mili-
tary windbag, understands the value of
the Western tradition of free inquiry
and political moderation. This under-
standing is shared by the bulk of non-
intellectual European opinion, though
not to the point of articulation, America
a delusion.
and Russia have one thing in common:
~ they have both, at one time or another,
commanded a vast reserve of public
sympathy and support, and they have
both dissipated it by their mistakes. It
has been said that the War of Inde-
pendence was not won by the Colonists
but lost by King George. America to-
day owes what support it receives in
Europe, outside a small circle of Cabi-
net ministers of the clerical right and of
refugees from the East who have lost
everything, to the mistakes and excesses
of the Communists. I have heard this
put explicitly time and again by men in
no way anti-American or pro-Commu-
nist in any intelligible sense of those
words. “Well, at least in America I
would be free to say what I am saying,
whereas in Russia I would not’’—that is
the feather which turns the balance. Be-
yond that, the savagery with which the
Korean war has been conducted has de-
molished, for most of Europe, apy argu-
ment based on relative humanity. Eu-
rope knows that Americans are humane
and decent people. So, within the frame-
work of a different cultural tradition, ©
are Russians. It is not the humanity of
the individual, any more than the psy-
chopathology of Senator McCarthy
which is the final argument; it is
whether or not the practice, as opposed
to the theory, of one side shows any
less sign of being controlled by mental-
ly deranged or brutalized individuals
than that of the other.
The upshot of this is that the Euro-
pean public, by and large, considers the
present American government as con-
temptuous of human life as are the
Eastern regimes, though in a different
way; much more tolerable than they are
from the viewpoint of individual free-
dom of expression, though inferior to
the standard of tolerance existing in
non-Communist, non-monarcho-Falan-
gist Europe generally; less coherent,
ideologically and socially, than the Com-
munists; and from the standpoint of
war far more accident-prone.
The Natio
i
~~
a
nan a
' eZ
on.
ra
| — A year sar ago i if anyone had rushed into
| a West European cafe, except in Berlin, ©
and shouted, “They've started it! The
balloon’s gone up!” the “they” which
most people would have supplied, men-
tally, would have been the “they” ad-
vertised by NATO and the press—the
aggressive-minded Communists. Today
it would be assumed to mean Eisen-
hower and Dulles. That may be shock-
ing, but I believe it is true. This total
lack of confidence, which extends
through very diverse groups, is prepar-
ing a staggering débacle for American
diplomacy in Europe. Its continuity is
broken at times only becausé ,on the
issue of justice and civil liberties the
Communists are demonstrably and in-
supportably the worse.
It is these occasional stirrings that
McCarthy is busy suppressing. Europe
is worried not because the witch hunt
and the Eastern purges are ‘‘kif-kif,” one
as bad as the other—which they are
manifestly not—but because it knows
what they are symptoms of. Both Euro-
peans and Americans have in the past
fallen into the error of assuming that if
the United States loses its tradition of
liberty.and succumbs to the fantastic, Jit
will do so in the German, the Russian,
the Italian, the Spanish, or the Napole-
onic manner. It will not; it will do-it in
the American manner. America will
never have a Hitler, but it may none the
less become a land where liberals and
scientists are silenced, and where the
effective direction of policy is divided
among General Motors, the madhouse,
and some destructive military men.
Most Americans would be capable of
great sacrifice and courage to prevent
, such a process if they recognized it.
‘ What scares us here is the degree of
anaesthesia which already seems to
. exist, and the tendency to equate in-
- tellectual tyranny with physical force. A
’ tyranny is not necessarily a society in
which anyone who thinks is hit on the
: head. It can be a society in which the
pressure of public custom and opinion
prevents thinking at all. The American
professor who does not like to quote
Laski and the Russian professor who
owns up to anti-Pavlovian errors in
quoting Freud are not afraid of being
hit over the head. They are afraid of
becoming an exposed out-group, subject
to .economic pressure, public disap-
proval, and any display of aggression
April 11, 1953
4
ale nex sae
that may be at faa “They are less wor-
ried about ending in Siberia or Sing
Sing than about incurring the hatred
and contempt of their friends and
families.
EUROPE IS NOT TODAY whole-
heartedly on either side. More than any-
thing else it wamts to stay alive and pre-
serve as many of its institutions as pos-
sible. The advent to power of Dulles and
the liberators has shaken it profoundly.
It suspects that the strategy of liberation
may involve the provoking of “aggres-
sion.” Its ultimate revolt is almost cer-
tain. If once it becomes convinced that
the direction of affairs has been seized
by the mental ward, that the Voice of
McCarthy rules the air, it may reclaim
its freedom of action. (“America will
pull out” is for many a promise rather
than a threat.)
But the loss to liberalism may still
be considerable. For the social psycholo-
gist the defeat of McCarthyism is the
keystone not of the “defense of the
free world,’ as some would assert, but
of the far more vital survival of the
eclectic, humane, and scientific attitude
as a foil to ideological mysticism. In a
world split between Marxism and an
America isolated behind its own Padded
Curtain, the cause of reason would be in .
a precarious state. Nobody wants to see
a fascist, outcast America. This has not
yet happened. Americans can prevent it.
But they will need the vigor of the most
rebellious moments of their history.
RESTIVE BRITONS
London
AS THE TV dramatization of ‘The
Troubled Air,” Irwin Shaw’s taut novel
on hysteria in American radio, drew
near its dramatic close, an American
radio announcer was heard saying that
the McCarran act compelled even Prime
Minister Churchill to be examined on
his arrival in the United States. The
play’s last scene was pure irony—a view
of the Statue of Liberty.
This exciting play on witch-hunting
in America was presented twice in one
week on Britain’s national TV network
and was seen by as many as five million
people. A few weeks earlier the B. B. C.
had broadcast ““The Troublemakers,” an
even more violent attack on hysteria,
this time as displayed on an American
university campus. The successive pres-
entation of two plays dealing with the
same theme was almost certainly not
accidental. The B, B. C. is not formally
an official network—under its charter it
has considerable independence—but in
practice it is semi-official. That in these
broadcasts it was indeed mirroring the
Cabinet’s fear for American political
ANDREW ROTH is a contributing
editor of The Nation.
by Andrew Roth
sanity was made clear by the Home
Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, in
an interview with American newsmen.
In a seemingly endless cold war, Sir
David said, it is essential to retain all
the liberties that form the warp and
woof of a free way of life and particu-
larly to preserve that freedom of contro-
versy which is so vital to democracy.
The Congervative government, he con-
tinued, believed that a member of the
Communist Party is entitled to hold a
government or private post provided
that his work does not involve secrets
relating to the nation’s security. The
Home Secretary declared further that he
would continue the Labor government’s-
policy of permitting the entry of foreign
Communists coming to attend open
Communist meetings, but would refuse
entry to those who come to use Britain
as a sounding board under the auspices
of Communist-front organizations.
This forthright statement made two
things clear: that there is no difference
of opinion between the Conservatives
and Labor about the importance of pre-
serving Britain’s civil liberties; and that
the Conservatives ate now as worried
about the witch hunt in the United
States as the left wing of the Labor
303
eR
Party has been for some time. In the
Conservative view the situation has be-
come serious if decisions on vital inter-
national questions, such as talking with
Malenkov,
hower Administration only after it con-
siders. what the lunatic McCarthy-Mc-
Carran fringe will have to say.
The attack on the appointment of
Charles Bohlen as ambassador to Russia
has silenced almost every British de-
fender of the American obsession with
can be made by the Eisen-
security. I say ‘almost’ because Rebecca
West, who has specialized on traitors,
is trying to convince the readers of the
Sunday that the witch
completely justified by the scope of the
Times hunt is
Communist conspiracy in Washington.
Few here except the Communists deny
that the United States has to take special
precautions in a period like the present;
the British security services also tap
telephones, as the Home
has admitted. The
the British and the American technique
Secretary
difference between
is that the results of such investigations
not “‘leaked”’
newspapers or to M. P.’s and are used
here are to right-wing
only for their primary purpose—security
—not to smear political enemies.
The British are naturally loath to
criticize American methods after being
caught flat-footed in the cases of Fuchs,
MacLean, Burgess, and Pontecorvo. But
in general they feel that American in-
vestigators spend too much of their time
attacking views much like those held by
the almost half of the population that
voted Labor in the last election. British
security officials do not think that sym-
pathy for the Spanish Republic in the
1930's automatically connotes disloyalty
today, or that student radicalism does.
Churchill’s friend, Sir Brendan Bracken,
wrote recently in the Financial, Times:
“Things have now reached a pass in
the United States when to have made
a mild speech twenty years ago at a
college debating society, saying that per-
haps there was a grain of truth in the
doctrines of Marx and Lenin, is quite
enough to blot a man’s career.”
“America has two Secretaries of
State,” the Observer quoted Dean Ache-
son as saying during his term of office,
“Senator McCarthy and myself.” On
ade “Ta the ae two months it has
sometimes appeared that Mr. Dulles
might also be forced to share his high
position’ with Senator McCarthy.
“How long will America stand for
this?” asked the News Chronicle colum-
nist Francis Williams, former press
spokesman of Labor Prime Minister
Clement Attlee, on March 26. Wil-
liams’s views frequently reflect those of
“the Attlee-Morrison leadership of the
Labor Party, which has long been less
critical of the United States than the
left-wingers. Mr. Williams wrote:
The climate of opinion which makes it
possible for the McCarthys of American
life to remain powerful public figures is
not America’s concern only. The moral
attitudes they depend upon and exploit
matter not only to America but to the
whole free world. And those of us who
hold as our strongest article of interna-
tional faith the need for the closest bonds
of fidelity between Britain, the Common-
wealth, and the United States have, I be-
lieve, an obligation to tell our friends in
America just how much damage those
attitudes are doing to the cause of free-
dom everywhere... -
TAXES INTO PROFITS sy
$25 Billion Bonanza .
Washington
IF TENDER consideration for the big
taxpayer is a guiding principle under
the present Administration—and if it
isn’t; what is?—it may be about time to
look at some of the effects of the rapid-
tax-amortization program which went
into operation as a result of the Korean
emergency. Ostensibly the program was
set up to give industry the necessary
incentives to expand productive capacity.
Actually, as a Congressional committee
once remarked, it has been “the biggest
bonanza that ever came down the gov-
ernment pike.”
American industry has been reequip-
ping itself with upward of $25 billion
BRUCE CATTON is a contributing
editor of The Nation. .
304
worth of new plant and machinery, more
than two-thirds of which is being written
off through accelerated tax amortization.
The increase in American productive ca-
pacity is immense. The only catch is that
so much of it has been done at public
expense. Exact definition of “‘at public
expense” will have to wait until we
know what is going to happen to cor-
porate tax rates. If the emergency ends
within a few years and tax rates drop
‘ sharply, there has been an outright sub-
sidy. If the emergency continues and
tax rates stay up, there has at least been
a prodigious interest-free loan,
The theory of the rapid-tax-amortiza-
tion program is simple. In a defense
emergency the nation needs a sharp in-
crease in military production. Much of
the plant that will provfde this in-
by Bruce Catton
crease will be of very little use after the
emergency ends. The industrialist is in-
duced to expand anyway by a certificate
which permits him in five years to write
off, for income-tax purposes, the cost
of that part of his new plant and equip;
ment which will be of little or no use
after the emergency.
The troubles arise under the applica-
tion of the theory. A powder factory. or
a shell-loading plant, obviously, is not
going to earn many profits once defense
production drops. But in an expanding
economy like ours a steel mill or an
aluminum plant’ or an_ electric-power
plant can go right on producing and
selling its product. At the end of five
years the beneficiary of a tax-amortiza-
tion certificate will have written off a
large part of his new investment. In
ine ie 0)
; :
- > os Z
> a -
C
hey, anes aa ee i ae
effect, he will have received a large
amount of public aid in reequipping
his plant for peace-time production.
In basic industries like steel and
aluminum, the amortization rate has
been very high—an average of 85 “per
cent, for instance, in the case of alum-
inum. Steel did nearly as well. Industry
as a whole averaged from 60 to 75 per
cent. Interestingly enough, the electric
utilities got only about 40 per cent,
owing to the fact that their applications
were processed in Oscar Chapman’s De-
partment of the Interior, which took a
rather conservative view of the situation.
To a large extent, of course, all this
is water over the dam, for the peak of
the program is past. But the whole
operation has put industry in a new
position and has raised problems which
will be with us for a long time.
FIRST OF ALL, the competitive advan-
tage which big business normally enjoys
over small business has been strikingly
increased. Economists in the Small De-
fense Plants Administration point out
that in the basic industries involved,
small firms normally provide roughly
35 per cent of the employment. To re-
tain its old competitive position,
therefore, small business should have
received about 35 per cent of the tax-
amortization certificates—in total dollar
value. Actually, a year-end tabulation
made by the S. D. P. A. shows that small
business got about 10 per cent.
The figure varies greatly, of course,
from industry to industry. It becomes
more instructive when the number of
certificates granted is compared with
the number asked for. Over all, the
S. D. P. A. analysts point out, small busi-
ness accounted for 10 per cent of the
value of certificates granted and 23 per
cent of the applications denied.
In eighteen out of twenty major in-
dustry groupings in manufacturing,
‘small business received substantially less
than its fair share. But in at least
eight of these groupings, small business
firms filed enough applications so that
it could have received its full 35 per
cent share. In textiles small business has
22 per cent of the employment and
got 5 per cent of the value of certificates
issued. In primary metals—aluminum,
copper, steel, zinc, etc—small business
ptovides 18 per cent of the employment ~
and got only 8 per cent.
April 11, 1953
Se
ha, ot a a
tay a
+ om ves an
How much all this means to big
business in dollars and cents will depend
to a certain extent on future govern-
ment policies. A firm producing mili-
tary goods under government contract
comes eventually before the Renegotia-
tion Board, which examines the firm’s
costs and is supposed to roll its profits
back, if necessary, to a reasonable level.
The Renegotiation Board normally fig-
ures as cost anything which the Bureau
of Internal Revenue recognizes as cost.
But the heart of the accelerated-amor-
tization program is the proviso that a
corporation may depreciate at an accel-
erated rate plants and machinery ac-
quired for the defense effort. The rapid
write-off allowed by the corporation’s
certificate thus becomes a legitimate cost.
If this principle holds good in all
the forthcoming renegotiation proceed-
ings, a corporation which built a new
factory and amortized the cost over
five years—that is, which wrote off dur-
ing that period an amount equal to 80 or
85 per cent of the total cost of the plant,
and deducted the sum from taxable in-
come—would also be able to include
the figure as an item of cost in produc-
ing goods for government contract. It
would thus benefit in two ways—
through tax savings, and through higher
cash receipts from the contracting
agency. The improvement in the cor-
poration’s competitive position, vis-a-vis
a producer who also held a government
contract but did not get a tax-amortiza-
tion certificate, would be dazzling.
THE ULTIMATE EFFECT of the pro-
gram will also depend on the level of
taxes from 1955 to 1958, when the
certificates already issued will “mature.”
If business taxes continue high, the gov-
ernment will get a substantial windfall
in its collections as corporations reach
the end of the rapid write-off and begin
paying taxes without even the benefit
of normal depreciation allowances. Be-
cause of this factor, it is often argued
that the whole program is not really a
hand-out at all—that in the long run the
corporation will pay just as much in
taxes as it would have paid if it had
received no amortization privilege.
Concerning this point, two things
need to be said. First, even if the point
is accepted, the fag does remain that
for the five-year period involved, the
corporation in effect has enjoyed a tax-
free loan from the government. Second,
barring a shooting war, no one in Wash-
ington has any notion that corporate
taxes are going to remain anywhere near
their present high level for very many
more years. If there is any virtue at all
in campaign promises—and, more im-
portant, in the inner motivations of the
powerful men who caused those prom-
ises to be made—taxes will come down
sharply. When and if they do, the cor-
poration will be in the position of hay-
ing escaped normal tax levies until the
high-rate period was over.
OF ESPECIAL INTEREST is the situa-
tion as it affects the public utilities. A
‘profoundly important element in rate-
making is to be found in the amortiza-
tion privileges gwhich the utilities have
been granted. The case here is very
much like the question just raised in
connection with contract renegotiation:
can the corporation affected claim that
the money saved by rapid tax amortiza-
tion is properly an element of cost? The
utilities are arguing that what they have
done, actually, is to set up a surplus for
deferred income taxes. So far, fourteen
of the fifteen state regulatory commis-
sions which have passed on the matter
have agreed. The question is now before
the Federal Power Commission.
Analysts of the Electric Consumers’
Information Committee recently did
some figuring on the $1,600,000,000 in
tax-amortization certificates so far re-
ceived by the utilities and came up with
some interesting results. A utility which
received, say, a million-dollar five-year
certificate can amortize its new plant at
20 per cent a year as compared to 4
per cent without a certificate. This would
mean a tax saving of $83,200 a year—
or, over five years, of $416,000 in all.
Call this sum tax savings, surplus. for
deferred taxes, interest-free loan, or
whatever, it represents money which has
been collected from consumers and re-
tained for federal-income-tax purposes.
The committee then points out that if
this $416,000 had been borrowed in the -
ordinary way, 6 per cent interest would
have been paid on it. At the end of
five years, then, the utility has in effect
saved $488,000, not $416,000. Also, at
the end of five years, the utility resumes
paying taxes on its new plant, but in
amounts less than the annual interest on
the $488,000 would have represented.
305
Thus, argues the committee, the whole
thing adds up to a $416,000 interest-
free loan—not for five years, but for
twenty-five years, the assumed life of the
new plant. Even assuming that tax rates
do not go down, all that the utility does,
in substance, is to repay the principal
of the loan in annual instalments.
The basic question, of course, is
simply this: who ought eventually to get
the benefits of the tax deferral—stock-
holders, or taxpayers and consumers?
As a final factor it remains to be em-
phasized that the amortization program
bears very little real relation to the
actual needs of our mobilization plan.
In theory, the issuance of tax-amortiza-
tion certificates is supposed to be tied
to expansion goals set for commodities
Actually, these
goals have been extremely fuzzy. They
are rarely based on the level of the
nation’s production needs, because total-
mobilization requirements data- simply
are not available. In some fields goals
have been set on the basis of full mobili-
or production areas.
= se
cations in others, on ¢ > basis is of
mobilization. In many cases gover
experts were quite unable to agree on
current supply figures. One government
economist recently commented that the
pressure to set an expansion goal nor-
mally comes from the size of the tax-
amortization program in that particular
field rather than from comprehensive
research into critical needs.
It’s a strange picture, with enormous
values involved. It will be interesting to
see what is finally done about it.
WINTHROP W. ALDRICH
Million-Dollar
LESS than a month after taking up his
post in London, Winthrop W. Aldrich,
the new United States ambassador to the
Court of St. James’s, was back in this
country, unobtrusively accompanying the
Eden-Butler mission. In return for con-
tinued American aid the Britons are
reported to have discussed the question
of “liberalizing world trade,” more
specifically, easing the currency restric-
tions by which both the Labor and the
Conservative government has tried to
maintain the British standard of living
since the end of the war. The proposal
sounds much like a program advocated
by Aldrich since 1945.
In August of that year, before the
American Chamber of Commerce in
London, Aldrich urged the ending
of governmental controls as the only
means of reestablishing world trade on
a healthy basis and preventing socialism.
In October, 1945, he elaborated his
views to the New York State Chamber
of Commerce:
We must not resign ourselves to a
fatalistic belief that economic controls are
a mecessary feature of modern societies.
Economic arrangements between nations
EGON POHORYLES is a free-lance
journalist in New York whose spectal
interest is American foreign economic
policy in the post-war period.
306
Diplomat
depend upon man-made policy. They are
not the result of certain assumed external
forces over which we have no influence.
Let us struggle to achieve the type of
world we think will best serve the interests
of mankind and not take the defeatist
attitude that totalitarian controls are in-
evitable.
A bulky, somber-looking man (‘I
never smile south of Canal Street’), Al-
drich is the son of Senator Nelson W.
Aldrich of Rhode Island who entered
Congress in 1881 worth $50,000 and ©
died in 1915 leaving an estate of $30,-
000,000. As president of the Chase
National Bank during the depression he
headed, together with Charles E. Mitch-
ell of the National City Bank, a commit-
tee of bankers to whom New York City
appealed in November, 1932, for $25,-
000,000 to meet winter unemployment-
relief needs. The bankers refused, insist-
ing that the city first cut salaries, Aldrich
was then being paid $175,000 a year by
Chase, which made him, according to
the Senate Banking Committee, the
highest paid bank official in the country.
The city capitulated to the bankers’ de-
mands a month later,
ALDRICH’S interest in the unemployed
had apparently been aroused. In a speech
to the Commonwealth Club of San
Francisco in 1934, he declared that the
problem of unemployment and relief
would probably persist over a long
by Egon Poboryles
period, and one must not be “‘tolerant of
waste or inefficiency or of wrong
theories in the handling of it.” He advo-
cated abolition of the work-relief pro-
grams as too costly and their replace-
ment by a dole on the British model.
“T submit,” he said, “that if we in this
country concentrate on direct heme re-
lief and eliminate work relief as far as
possible . . . one of the most disturbing
factors operating today against the re-
vival of private enterprise would be
removed.” He suggested the establish-
ment of a new agency, freed of social
workers, to administer relief programs.
The depressed farmer also received
Aldrich’s attention. In 1933, predicting
a long depression, he advised the Senate
Finance Committee as follows:
In connection with farm-mortgage re-
lief, I would make every effort to deal
with intelligent discrimination with indi-
vidual cases, seeking to bring debtors ~
and creditors into agreement with one
another. . . . We must protect the com-
mercial morality of the country in the
interésts of the future giving and taking
of credit.
He denied that debtor farmers as a
group needed mortgage relief.
Aldrich joined the ranks of - those
who, in his own words, are “charged
with responsibility for finance and for
other phases of the economic life of
the country” as a lawyer for the Rocke-
The Nation | = J ,
‘
|
i
Fellers
PCil
Joh
D. Rock lier, Jc, in 1901. In
- 1929, when John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
became disturbed by the connection be-
tween Colonel Robert W. Stewart, chair-
# man of the Standard Oil Company of
Indiana, and a Senate committee investi-
gating the oil industry, Aldrich mar-
shaled the Rockefeilez forces at a stock-
holders’ meeting which ousted Stewart.
After that, the Rockefellers summoned
Aldrich from the law to head the Equi-
table Trust Company. In 1930, when the
Chase National Bank merged with Equi-
table and another concern to become the
largest private bank of the day—with
resources in excess of $2,800,000,000—
Aldrich became president of Chase as
representative of the Rockefeller inter-
' ests. Three years later, Albert H. Wig-
gins, a Morgan man, was forced out as
Chase’s chairman of the board, and
Aldrich took over.
THE CONFLICT between the Rocke-
feller and Morgan interests, which con-
tinued until after the 1936 elections, was
evident in the relations of the two groups
to the Roosevelt Administration. The
previous Republican administrations had
always called on the Morgans in a finan-
cial crisis, but Roosevelt and Congress
turned to Aldrich for advice on mone-
tary policy, foreign trade, and unem-
ployment.
In 1933, immediately after the bank
holiday, Aldrich called for the complete
separation of deposit and investment
banking, to the extent of forbidding
private bankers to be directors of de-
posit banks. The program struck right
at the position of J. B. Morgan and
+ Company, whose members were direc-
tors of some of the largest commercial
banks. At conferences with Roosevelt
-and other Administration leaders. Al-
. drich helped to draft the Securities acts
of 1933 and 1934.
In July, 1936, the Federal Reserve
"System announced that it was raising
reserve requirements of member banks
by 50 per cent to guard against “possible
injurious credit expansion.” The New
York Times commented:
In its action the board followed a curse
that had been urged for nine months by
certain bankers and economists, notably
Winthrop W. Aldrich. . ... It disregarded
the urgings of other bankers, notably S.
Parker Gilbert of J. P. Morgan and Com-
pany, who had insisted that there was no
April 11, 1953
‘undue expansion af code ey and that
to raise member-bank reserve require-
ments at this time might be to jeopardize
recovery.
By 1938 the nationai income had
dropped $7,000,000,000, and it began
to climb only after the injection of new
federal expenditures,
ALDRICH’S INFLUENCE remained
great under Truman. He backed the
Marshall Plan enthusiastically and in
1949 was able to inform Chase stock-
holders that the bank was leading all
others in financing operations under the
Economic Cooperation Administration.
Although high expenses are incurred
in handling this business [he reported],
our participation in the E. C. A. program
is important and significant for several
reasons. It is significant as an index of
Chase standing in the foreign field, be-
cause the banking business involved orig-
inated in foreign banks and foreign goy-
ernmental agencies. It is important as
part of the American program to assist
in the rehabilitation of European and
other economies. It is important also in
its beneficial effects in creating markets
for American products, It is further im-
portant in that it is helping to keep inter-
national trade within the framework of
commercial banking channels.
As chairman of President Truman’s
Committee on Financing Foreign Trade,
Aldrich described himself in 1950 as
“enthusiastically interested” in the Point
Winthrop W. Aldrich
Four program. Set up “‘in precisely the
right way,” he said, it might bring a
“good flow’ ‘of private investment
abroad. Aldrich had first suggested
setting up a Point Four program at a
White House meeting with Truman in
July, 1946. Truman unveiled it during
his inaugural address in 1949,
4 Satta Oe APD.
~ Even when he has not succeeded ta
getting his own way, Aldrich has made
the best of the situation. He opposed the
Bretton Woods agreement of 1944
which proposed the setting up of the
International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development. When the Inter-
national Bank came into existence in
December, 1945, John J. McCloy be-
came its first president. When McCloy
resigned to go to Germany as United
States High Commissioner, he was suc-
ceeded by Eugene R. Black, a senior
vice-president at Chase. With Aldrich at
London, McCloy has become chairman
of Chase.
Through Chase’s foreign connections
—at Havana, Cristobal, Panama City,
Mexico City, London, Paris, Rome, Ber-
lin, Shanghai, Hongkong, Tientsin, plus
the sixty-four foreign offices of its
wholly-owned subsidiary American Ex-
press Company—Aldrich has been not
without influence abroad. In the year
before Hitler’s rise to power, 37 per
cent of Chase’s foreign commitments
were in Germany, $74,663,327 out of
a total United States financial stake in
Germany of $2,120,000,000. Aldrich
saw Hitler soon after he seized power,
but the subject of their conversation has
never been revealed; Aldrich only said
that he had talked with the Chancellor
for “some time.” Others who have
found it expedient to have chats with
Aldrich in more recent years are De
Gasperi, Churchill, Salazar, and Franco.
Chase pulled Franco out of a very
serious hole in 1949 by lending him
$30,000,000. The loan, Aldrich assured
his stockholders, was adequately secured.
By June, 1934, despite his influence
with the Roosevelt Administration, Al-
drich had applied for readmission to the
National Republican Club. In the 1936
campaign he helped write the Repub-
lican platform. In 1944 he was treasurer
of the Republican Finance Committee.
In 1952 he was chairman of the United
Republican Finance Committee of New
York State and, according to such widely
divergent sources as Pravda and West-
brook Pegler, chiefly responsible for
getting General Eisenhower nominated
over Senator Taft.
Aldrich had had previous experience
in capturing nominations. In the 1950.
gubernatorial race in New York, when
Lieutenant Governor Joe R. Hanley re-
fused to step aside and allow Dewey
307.
ee eee
to be “drafted” as the Republican candi-
date, Aldrich called a meeting at his
office of several New York bankers and
Frank E. Gannett, head of the newspaper
chain and a Hanley backer. MraGannett,
according to the New York Times of
August 31, 1950, was “urged to with-
draw his support of Mr. Hanley. He
was told by Mr. Aldrich and the others
that the Hanley candidacy could not
count on financial support, after nomina-
tion, from the metropolitan area.”
When Eisenhower named Aldrich to
be ambassador to Great Britain, the Sen-
ate confirmed the appointment by voice
vote, with only Senator Wayne Morse
speaking against it. Morse said that Al-
drich personified “the American dollar
sign and dollar diplomacy’ and would
be taken as a symbol “‘of the exploita-
tions of the people of the backward
areas of the world.” In reply New
York’s liberal Democratic Senator Leh-
man praised Aldrich for integrity and
public service, and Republican Senator
Ives asked: “Have we in the government
come to a condition where we can ap-
point to public service only those who
are substantially paupers?”
The main problem before the-United
States was analyzed by Aldrich in a
speech last November:
It is rapidly becoming clear that we
cannot decisively win even the cold war
on the basis of superiority in productive
capacity and military power alone... .
Our economic system, large and powerful.
as it is, cannot indefinitely sustain the
drain of an endless arms race and con-
tinued grants-in-aid to our allies.
Aldrich urged a new, long-range
foreign policy, combining maximum
military strength with “a dynamic eco-
nomic strategy so bold and so vigorous
that it will more than match the ruthless
totalitarian expansion of communism.”
The cornerstone of his economic strategy
is a flow of American investments
abroad, and he has begun the task of
creating the conditions that will make
the flow possible. As defined by him in
1949, the conditions are (1) military
oy ol a ee eee
security through implementation of ‘the
Atlantic Pact; (2) “political stability” —
through the elimination of the “threat
of communism’; (3) economic stabil-
ity; and (4) foreign governments which
encourage American investments. 7
Aldrich bade farewell to the Chase .
last Christmas at a.concert ‘given by the
employees’ choral society. “It is a sad
thing,” he said, “to leave after twenty-
three years, and I would not do it if I
did not feel I could serve my country.” |
Then as the chorus intoned, ‘Hark, the
Herald Angels Sing” (“.. . peace on
earth and mercy mild. . .””), Winthrop
W. Aldrich, chairman and director of
the Chase National Bank and the Chase
Safe Deposit Company, director of the
American Telephone and Telegraph
Company, the Westinghouse Electric
Corporation, the International Paper
Company, the Discount Corporation of
New York, the Metropolitan Life Insur-
ance Company, and the New York
Central Railroad, squared his shoulders
and answered his country’s call.
MOSCOW-PEKING AXIS
New Unity in the Making . . by Alexander Werth
Paris
THE Soviet leaders are no sentimental-
ists. Everything they say, everything
they do, is determined by hard-headed
realistic considerations. There is no im-
provising. But that does not mean that
the Soviet people are hard-headed. They
are often emotional and capable of de-
veloping a genuine mystique in the sense
that Péguy gave to the word; the stimu-
Jation of such a mystique by a propa-
ganda drive has on many occasions sup-
plied the Kremlin with a powerful
weapon. One only has to remember the
enthusiasm that existed in Russia, es-
pecially among the young, at the time
of the early five-year plans or the last-
ditch mentality of the Stalingrad period.
Looking through the Soviet press of
ALEXANDER WERTH is The Na-
tion’s Paris correspondent.
308
recent months, I have been struck by the
extraordinary prominence and amount
of space given to China. Korea, in
comparison, is treated as a sideshow;
on Vietnam there is almost nothing
(the Soviet line on Vietnam has been
that the French ought to try to come
to terms with Vietminh and not to
internationalize the war); and Japan is
of interest chiefly as “America’s main
aggressive base in Asia.”
This Soviet preoccupation with things
Chinese was in no way diminished by
Stalin’s death. If anything, Malenkov
appears to be more Orient-minded than
his predecessor. Of all the foreign dig-
nitaries at Stalin’s funeral, Chou En-lai
was given the most publicity in the
Soviet press, and both Moscow. and
Peking have since sought to impress
upon the world that their mutual friend-
ship remains unshaken by the change
\
in the Soviet regime. It is noteworthy
that Chou En-lai’s latest bid for peace
in Korea, representing important con-
cessions to the West, was announced
shortly after his return from a prolonged
visit to Moscow.
While it is never definitely stated~in
the Soviet press—or by the Chinese
leaders, for that matter—that if China
is attacked by America, or Chiang, the
armed forces of the Soviet Union will
immediately come to its defense, such
support is undoubtedly implied in the
_constant identification of China and the
Soviet Union by Russian political
writers today. This is an important point,
for the plans of certain American gen-
erals are based on the assumption that
Russia can be counted on to stay out.
For months it has been drummed into
the Russians that the inclusion of China
in the Communist bloc was their greatest
The NATION _
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April 11,1953
ictor ins comp pari a, Pol “A
ovakia, and East Germany are
a but small stuff. In China history has been
_ marching on in seven-league boots; the
human qualities and the national yearn-
ings of the Chinese people have created
better conditions for a vast revolution-
ary movement than exists anywhere else.
An ever-recurring theme of Soviet
propaganda is that the success of the
Chinese Revolution is already so great,
after only three years, that America is
“frightened” and would like to destroy
China before it is too late. Since this, it
is suggested, would be intolerable to
Russia as well as China, Russian non-
intervention is out of the question:
A RECENT SPEECH by Foreign Min-
ister Chou En-lai which aroused very
little interest in the West was reproduced
on eleven columns of Pravda on Feb-
ruary 7 and 8. Chou En-lai began:
In three years we had to create con-
ditions making it possible to start the
industrialization of our country and in-
suring a constant movement toward so-
cialism. . An unprecedented unity of
our people has been achieved. Over two
million bandits have been destroyed—a
terrible blow to the remnants of the
counter-revolutionary forces. Over an
area with a rural population of more than
400,000,000 we have carried out our land
reform. The firms owned by bureaucratic
capital have been nationalized, and a
great mass movement among the people
has successfully stamped out China’s
“five evils’—bribery, tax evasion, etc.
Some 65 pr cent of our peasantry have
already joined cooperatives and other
mutual-aid organizations. There are 4,000
producer cooperatives in the country,
2,000 state farms, 10 experimental collec-
tive farms, and 2,600 artisan producer
_ cooperatives. Consumer cooperatives have
* 141,000,000 members.
He then gave a detailed- report of
. trade-union activities, youth organiza-
tions, :
* cieties, and so on and remarked that the
Chinese-Soviet friendship so-
political consciousness of the Chinese
‘people had risen to unprecedented
levels. And all this, he said, had been
done while “hundreds of thousands of
our best sons and daughters have been
in the volunteer forces in Korea, where,
~ together with the Korean army, they
have pushed the Americans. back to the
Thirty-eighth Parallel.” The moral effect
of this struggle against American im-
_ perialism, he continued, was to “‘stimu-
late the immense work undertaken in-
~e in
a heal tee i+.» ee
rie av
ee Shine, aiebaathen the nation’s
international position, and create even
greater anti-war feeling a the
world.”
It seems obvious that the Korean war
acted as a tremendous spur to nationalist
activity and that the Chinese govern-
ment made the most of it in its drive
for higher output in all fields. The war,
according to Chou En-lai, has also aided
the “cleanliness campaign,” which has
become a “‘patriotic nation-wide move-
ment,” especially after the start of the
“bacteriological war’’—a curious admis-
sion that the “bacterial bombs’’ served
a major Chinese domestic purpose.
- Quoting both Stalin and Mao, Chou
En-lai stressed that Russia’s aid was
given in the “common interest,’ that
there was no question of one country
being the “‘satellite’ of the other.
Nearly three-quarters of China’s trade,
he said, was now with the Soviet bloc;
China did not fear blockades or em-
bargoes—'‘the others will be the losers.”
Was this a reference to Hongkong?
A particularly interesting passage in
Chou’s speech dealt with the new Sino-
Mongolian cultural and economic agree-
ment. Together with other references to
joint economic planning and develop-
ment, it tends to confirm what Owen
Lattimore wrote in The Nation of
December 6:
Russia has now only one line of rail
communication with China, through Man-
churia. When that is backed by another
line through Mongolia, and by a third,
still deeper in the heart of the continent,
through Central Asia, the whole economic
structure of China will be given a right-
angled turn away from the coast, the
seaports, and international oceanic trade
and toward Siberia, Central Asia, and
eventual integration into an industrialized
Eurasia.
That this program is already being
carried out was confirmed, if obliquely,
by Izvestia on February 13, when it said
that in addition to the Chandow-Chung-
kin and Tienchuy-Langchow railways,
“two other major new lines, both of
very great importance, are now being
built.””
MOST SOVIET CITIZENS, as Stalin
virtually said to Matsuoka in 1941,
feel more at ease, more at home,
with ‘Asians’ than with Western
Europeans, or even with Czechs and
Poles. In fact, in addition to the build-
Chou En-lai
up of political solidarity with the
Chinese government, everything is being
done to stimulate a feeling of human
solidarity with the Chinese people.
There is a constant exchange of Russian
and Chinese students, a constant flow
of delegations in both directions.
Izvestia recently published four arti-
cles about China by Sergei Obrastov, the
brilliant director of the Moscow Puppet
Theater and a writer of great charm and
spontaneity. I will quote one passage:
The Yangtze rolls on for 3,000 miles,
and many a cargo has it carried on its
mighty flood. Yet there is one stretch of
350 miles which has caused China great
sorrow. In 1930 alone 22,000 people were
drowned and 10,000,000 left homeless.
. But in April, 1952, a whole army of
builders came here, and in 75 days they
did what had not been done in thousands
of years. They built a dyke 200 miles
long, two enormous dams, and a reservoir
400 square miles in extent. Five million
peasants can now peacefully till their
fields; the Yangtze is no longer their
enemy.
The Russian reader is inevitably
carried away by sympathy for these
Chinese who seem so much like his ‘own
countrymen in their genius for collective
action. In all the stories there is a
clear call to think how weak and back-
ward Russia was thirty-five years ago
and to imagine what Russia and China _
together can do in another thirty-five
years. But along with the optimism that
these vast historical vistas must breed,
there must also be a fear that the United
States cannot afford to let all this de-
velop according-to plan.
The planners of a great industrial
Eurasia are therefore understandably re-
luctant on any account to postpone the
building of the Mongolian and Sinkiang
railways for even thirty years.
309
SS
nn
BOOKS |
Maritain’s Guide to Greatness
A Review by S$. Lane Faison, Jr
CREATIVE INTUITION IN ART
AND POETRY. By Jacques Maritain.
Bollingen Series XXV-1. Pantheon
Books. $6.50.
HOMAS AQUINAS continues to
provide Jacques Maritain with a
measure for appraising the present and
for supplementing the wisdom of the
ancients, notably Plato. In this long and
carefully reasoned book, developed from
the A. W. Mellon Lectures which he
gave at the National Gallery of Art a
year ago, Maritain discourses upon cre-
ative intuition .as the mark of genius
in art, and uses it as a guide to great-
ness in poetry and painting, especially
in the period between Baudelaire and
the contemporary scene.
Maritain’s affirmation may be roughly
paraphrased, for the most part in his
own words. Art is nothing less than a
perfection of the soul. It is a virtue, not
a moral virtue, but a virtue of the prac-
tical intellect. As such, it endows the
artisan with a certain perfection of the
spirit. Unlike prudence, which is also a
virtue of the practical intellect, art is
concerned with the good of the work,
whereas prudence is concerned with the
good of the man. Art, not concerned
with the good of the man, pertains to a
sphere separate from, and independent
of, the sphere of morality. It breaks into
human life and human affairs “‘like a
moon prince or a mermaid into a cus-
toms office or a congregation; it will
always make trouble and arouse suspi-
cion.”” But art exists in a human being
—the artist; and once a man is through,
his art is through also. Thus art that
feeds merely upon itself is doomed to
decay. The intellect (or reason) which
plays the principal part in the fine arts
S. LANE FAISON,, ]R., The Nation’s
art critic, is chairman of the Art Depart-
ment at Williams College and_presi-
dent of the College Art Association of
America.
310
is not conceptual, discursive, logical
reason, nor even working reason. It is
intuitive reason, in the obscure and high
regions which are near the center of the
soul. As a virtue of the intellect, art
demands to communicate with the entire
the intellect.
climate is therefore intelligence and
knowledge. Worship of ignorance and
rudeness by artists is a sign of inner
weakness. Aquinas's epistemology, his
discussion of the formation of intellec-
tual knowledge, all taking place in
man’s soul, is upheld by Maritain as
still valid, particularly in its application
to creative activity. He finds it an indis-
pensable antidote to Plato’s concept of
a Muse detached and apart from indi-
vidual human beings.
universe of Its normal
MARITAIN belongs to the generation
of the Cubists. Unlike many philosophers
and theologians of his own age, he ac-
cepts with enthusiasm the Cubists’ con-
tribution. He numbers Braque and
Picasso—Cubist . phases—among the
great. In a footnote of incisive brilliance
he deplores the attitude of Hans
Sedlmayr, a Viennese art historian re-
cently called to the chair at Munich
University, who has attacked the de-
humanization of our age of culture in a
widely discussed book (“Verlust der
Mitte,” 1948). “There is no more mis-
leading and unsound genus,” Maritain
affirms, “than ideological systematiza-
- tion of human history intent on disre-
garding the essentials of art, and its in-
trinsic laws of development, for the sake
of a so-called cultural diagnosis and
prognosis of art as a moral symptom.”
On his own supra-moral ground, how-
ever, Maritain believes that degeneracy
is now with us: “. . . we have also to do
today with a particularly unfortunate,
and illegitimate, progeny of great con-
temporary painters—the School of Deg-
radation, I would say—and with the
avid followers who mistook Picasso’s
cruel hieroglyphs for animal ‘frenzy.
ae ae ots
They have found in his lesson a means”
of releasing the resentments of a boorish
soul and of getting at little cost the
admiration of an idiot public. They
cling furiously to the human figure, but
make it into a putrid foetus or a disin-
tegrated lizard or kangaroo armed with
pincers and topped by a stupid eye or a
fiendish set of teeth.”
Exceptions, unnamed, to the foregoing
denunciation are admittéd to exist. Even
so, I must confess that I probably. be-
long to that idiot public, having found
much artistic value in the work of paint-
ers of the post-Cubist generation.
TO: ANSWER Maritain on his own
ground—and it ought to be done—
would require philosophical and _ theo-
logical training which I cannot provide.
On historical example, however, I reject
the likelihood that any generation of
artists is utterly inferior to the one which
just preceded it. On his own plane of
generalization Maritain is illuminating
and profound, and he is frequently
seized with moments of poetic insight.
But the application of general theory
to particular case is always subject to
the same weakness: the argument no
longer applies, and we witness the
writer’s taste, not his ideas. On an early
page Maritain cites a number of painters
who give him the feeling “that we are
in the presence of an exceptionally great
epoch.” Note that none of these is
younger than the Cubist generation—
Cézanne, Rouault, van Gogh, Henri ~
Rousseau, Braque, Chagall, “or, to cite
less resounding names, Odillon Redon,
Toulouse-Lautrec, Utrillo, La Fresnaye,
Jean Hugo, Marin, or Paul Klee.’”’ To
make such groupings is any man’s priv-
ilege, but to mention Jean Hugo and
Paul Klee in the same breath, and to
place Toulouse-Lautrec below Chagall
is to indicate a deplorable weakness of
critical judgment. In saying this, I am~
at least no more dogmatic than Maritain
himself.
Space prevents the further considera-
tion that I should have wished to make
of these matters. It should be added,
however, that Maritain’s objection to
abstract expressionism is as forthright as
it is courageous and, I think, mistaken.
His ruling principle is that art must
be concerned with Things or it is
doomed. The reply which occurs to me
is perhaps too simple, but I will venture
The NATION
‘
|
|
if
are of space is a
Thing. Out of these and other Things
some of today’s non-objective painters
fashion their own expressive calligraphy,
and construct their own vision. I share
Maritain’s enthusiasms for the art of the
past—meaning, by his own definition’
up to about 1930—and I have profited
| much from reading him; but I find no
.
}
:
.
>
compulsion to believe that the spiritual
bottom has suddenly dropped. out.
In reviewing a book of such magni-
mae
Die tebe eae
ngs, tex res
ey eee aad
tude and complexity, one must sacrifice
synopsis if one is to accomplish anything
else. I regret the necessity of merely
mentioning Maritain’s discussions of
poetry; his generous citation of examples
of philosophy, poetry, and theology to
illuminate his text;. the depth of his
scholarship; the resonance of his prose;
and above all the uncompromising no-
bility of his conception of art. Another
Maritain, born after 1900, might not
have slammed the door so irrevocably on
our brave new world.
New Books in Brief
The Joys of ier bencut
MY HOST. THE WORLD. By George
Santayana. Scribner’s. $3. George Santa-
yana, who died last year in Rome in his
eighty-ninth year, published during his
lifetime thirty volumes. Now his work
has been completed with the publication
of this third volume of his autobiog-
raphy. Most of the book deals with
his years in England and finally with
his old age in Italy. If detachment is
the hall-mark of the true philosopher,
then Santayana was one of the greatest.
If human sympathy and a deep sense of
participation are essential, Santayana
hardly ranks high. He had an admirable
cosmopolitah education, having been
born in the heart of Catholic Old Spain
and reared in the heart of Puritan New
England, at home in the classics and fa-
miliar with the thought of the con-
temporary world. But the contemporary
‘world did not fascinate him. He became
“a sort of hermit, not from fear or hor-
ror of mankind, but by sheer preference
for peace and obscurity.”
* Except for Bertrand Russell and his
older brother, the second Earl Rus-
sell, few persons emerge as living por-
traits out of. these detached and evenly
flowing pages. Though they are written
with a keen sense of beauty and great
lucidity, their very evenness makes them
monotonous. They deal with Santayana
himself, his thoughts and readings, ‘im-
pressions and judgments. He was never
“young,” but on the other hand, in all
his loneliness, he never grew old.
“Nothing is inherently and invincibly
young except spirit. And spirit can enter
Fl 11, 1953.
-
EE A
yas
i Bite oe? |
human beings perhaps better in the
quiet of old age and dwell there more
undisturbed than in the turmoil of ad-
venture.” His pleasure grew out of in-
tercourse with places and things rather
than with persons, and to these pleas-
ures of an old solitary man, steeped in
the whole tradition of the life of reason,
the autobiography bears witness.
Moral Ideals and Marxism
GIANT IN CHAINS. By Barrows Dun-
ham. Little, Brown. $3.75. This lively,
well-written book considers philosophy
“as the theory .. : of deliverance... for
mankind as a whole.” For such a theory
to prove valid, the author argues, it
must provide affirmative answers to five
questions: “Is change real? Is change
controllable? Can we have knowledge?
Can we know when we have it? Can we
know what ought to be done with
knowledge?” Examining the major
philosophical systems, Professor Dun-
ham finds that Hegelianism supports
“order but not change,” while pragma-
tism recognizes “change but not order.”
Only the Marxian view of the universe,
by taking account of the fact that “‘per-
manence and change require each other,”
answers all five questions with a ringing
yea. Thus fortified, Professor Dunham
advances through a long discussion of
the problem of ethics to the conclu-
sion that ‘‘the moral ideal is that organ-
ization of mankind in which the satis-
faction of human needs occurs with
complete efficiency.”
Plenty of non-Marxians will subscribe
to the ideal. The question is: How is
‘
PHILOSOPHICAL
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() THE SOVIET IMPACT ON SOCIETY by Dag-
obert D, Runes, with an introduction by Harry
Elmer Barnes. In this volume the well-known phi-
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by the materialization of Marxist ideology. $3.75
[)_ ESSAY IN POLITICS by Scott Buchanan. This
essay is concerned with the current crisis in the
consent of the governed. $
[) THE SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURE by Herman
Dingle. Essays in the history and philosophy of
science. 3
[|] SOLITUDE AND PRIVACY by Paul Halmos.
Man’s loneliness in society is the central theme
of this work. This loneliness is so much more dif-
ficult to bear as man’s need for fellowship is as
fundamental to him as his survival needs and
sexual needs. $4.75
[] THE ILLUSION OF IMMORTALITY by Corliss
Lamont. With an introduction by John Dewey.
Illustrated. $3.95
[] REFLECTIONS OF A PHYSICIST by P. W.
Bridgman. This work includes most of the non-
technical writings of Dr. Bridgman and the topics
include a discussion of the problems created by
the increasingly important social role science is
coming to play. $5.00
() THE WORLD AS | SEE IT by Albert Einstein,
Contains the essence of Einstein and as such it is
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[) THE NEW PHYSICS: TALKS ON ASPECTS
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(0 THE SPLENDOR THAT WAS EGYPT by Mar-
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[]) A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION by
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{] LETTERS OF ROBERT G. INGERSOLL: Col-
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rich personality of one of the vigorous vital forces
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[| THE NEW DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN HIS-
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[| DICTIONARY OF CIVICS AND GOVERN-
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ernments. $5.00
([] ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ABERRATIONS. Edited
by Edward Podolsky, M.D., State University of
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Alexandra Adler, M.D. This is the first systematic
exposition of human aberrational behavior writ-
ten for the intelligent layman as well as the ex-
pert in interpersonal relationships. $10.00
(1 __ DICTIONARY OF WORLD LITERATURE. New
and Completely Revised Edition. Edited by Joseph
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260 scholars, among them G. A. Borgese, H. S,
Canby, Andre Maurois, Lewis Mumford, I. A,
Richards, Allen Tate, Montague Summers, Allar-
dyce Nicoll, this volume presents the material
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[0 THE THEATRE DICTIONARY. British and
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NAST Rice eee Ns SA ee eee
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Jes nee er os no es ee oe ee a ee ee ee om!
311
this desired organization to be achieved?
Professor Dunham hints that commu-
nism is the answer, and his references
to the Soviet Union, oblique as most of
them are, suggest that he is infected
with William James’s “will to believe.”
In fact, there are times when his phil-
osophical spectacles appear to need ad-
justment for distance. He sees so plainly
“the pressures of organized mythology”
at home, so utterly fails to recognize
them at longer range.
Sharp Light of Fantasy
DHE GOLDEN APPLES” OF THE
SUN. By Ray Bradbury. Doubleday. $3.
Clever,
inely satiric sketches and stories of
entertaining, sometimes genu-
science fiction which have excited the
admiration of Christopher Isherwood
Wilson
By placing his scenes in the realm of
fantasy Mr. Bradbury sometimes throws
a sharp light on aspects of modern life
that conventional fiction hardly touches;
but one wishes the level of all his stories
was up to that of the best ones.
others.
and Angus
among
The Aggressive West
THE WORLD AND THE WEST. By
Arnold Toynbee. Oxford. $2. In this
brief work, originally presented as radio
lectures over B. B. C., Mr. Toynbee re-
minds us that in the centuries-old en-
counter between the World and the
West it is the West that has been the
aggressor. Russia, he points out, has
been invaded from Europe five times in
the last 350 years; Islam, after its defeat
before Vienna, was rolled back and
pulverized; India became the victim of
imperialist conquest; China and Japan
were jolted out of their seclusion.
Superior technology* has been the
West’s weapon, and to meet its chal-
lenge Russia, China, and other coun-
tries are making forced marches to catch
up. As they do so the conflict moves
from a technical to an ideological plane,
with the World turning against the
West the spiritual weapons it has bor-
rowed—the idea of nationalism and the
Western heresy of communism, ‘“‘the
product of uneasy Western consciences.”
What will be the dénouement of this
struggle? One possibility, Mr. Toynbee
suggests hopefully, is the attainment of
the kind of balance that existed in the
Bie.”
PO: We pts
a, a“
bs
second century A. D. between the power.
of Rome and that of the Hellenized
Eastern empires. The peaceful interlude
that followed gave an opportunity for
new religions, preaching the ideal of
fraternity, to conquer the conquerors.
Needless to say, Mr. Toynbee sets
forth this thesis with the lucid erudition
for which he is famous. But one won-
ders if he has not oversimplified by
treating Russia as wholly non-Western:
ye ere te
. . ote
r ‘ ae
iene problems that it m ight be in-
teresting to discuss, Why is it nis
Wilde, who is supposed to have imitated
him, nevertheless gives the impression
that there is less malice than good
humor and pure fun in even his most
cutting remarks, while Whistler seemed
to want to wound? And what,
wonders, does it mean that not only
Whistler and Wilde but also a whole
race of malicious dandified wits do
after all, from an Asiatic point of view. nevertheless have recognizable traits in
Russia has long been moving aggressive-
ly eastward. Moreover, for this re-
Mr.@Toynbee’s mildly cheerful
invalidated by the
thought that what Christianity brought
the Roman world was “not peace but a
sword,”
viewer,
conclusion was
Lands of Poverty
WORLD WITHOUT END. By Emil
Lengyel. John Day. $5. The story of
the Middle East—its geography, people,
history, and politics. The Poorhouse of
the World with an average per capita
income of between $50 and
$100 and a- life expectancy less’ than
half of ours, this is a natural breeding
ground for communism. Oil revenues
amounting to nearly half a billion dol-
lars a year are, so to speak, the deuces
wild that make the outcome of the
game even more unpredictable. A’ use-
ful book for the layman who craves in-
formation about one of the most un-
settled regions of the present world and
wants his facts in simple and readable
language.
annual
Genius Tipped with Venom
THE MAN WHISTLER. By Hesketh
Pearson. Harper. $3.75. Whistler is
almost too good a subject. Retell the
anecdotes, quote the wisecracks, and
there is not room for much more in a
_ shortish biographical essay. At any rate
Mr. Pearson, whose very readable biog-
raphies of Shaw, Wilde, Disraeli, and
others are well known, has not put
much more into this almost too easily
read book. Art criticism is definitely
avoided, and though there are some
rather perfunctory attempts to explain
Whistler’s truculence as the defense
reaction of a man who knew that he
was doomed to be misunderstood, they
do not get very far. Yet there are less”
common? Of the two it was Whistler
whose screaming, posturing extravagance
most strongly suggests one familiar type
of homosexual. Yet so far as the evi-
dence goes or anything Mr. Pearson
suggests he was sexually quite normal
after the bohemian fashion. m
English Panorama
THE GREEN MAN. By Storm Jame-
son. Harper. $3.95. This is one of those
large, wandering panoramic novels,
somewhat reminiscent of Galsworthy,
about the changes in English life during
the years 1930-1950. Accomplished,
traditional in tone, pleasant to read, and
finally rather disappointing as the liter-
ary record of a unique and civilized form
of social revolution, it accomplishes just
about what it set out to do—but not
what might have been done with this
theme.
Gaudy Rascals
THE. LEGENDARY MIZNERS. By
Alva Johnston. Farrar, Straus and
Young. $3.75. Readers of the profiles
of Addison and Wilson Mizner in the
New Yorker will be pleased to know
that these engaging articles have been
brought together and put between
covers. Addison, the more substantial
and less .rascally of the two brothers,
inventor of what was known in the
nineteen twenties as the Bastard-Spanish-
Moorish - Romanesque - Gothic - Ren-
aissance - Bull - Market - Damn - the -
Expense style of architecture, wallowed
at Palm Beach for a time in millionaire
‘clients, some: of them as flamboyantly
mad as himself. Never has the gaudy
tale of the Florida boom and bust been
more amusingly told. Wilson was ‘‘fun-
damentally a confidence man whom cir-
cumstances occasionally induced to go
straight.” Among his more legitimate
The Nation i
one .
rat yg ea ae
dike, running a ated “hotel in
|New York, managing prize fighters, and
serving as treasurer of the Mizner Cor-
| poration which launched Boca Raton.
| What should have been his most -suc-
| cessful coup, his marriage to the widow
of Charles T. Yerkes, the traction mag-
7 nate, seems tp have netted him next to
nothing. Prodigal of quips, he is today
most often remembered for his im-
mortal question “How do they know?”
when told that Coolidge was dead. A
rambling but delightful book.
| Prague Since 1948 .
) ANATOMY OF A SATELLITE. By
}) Dana Adams Schmidt. Little, Brown. $5.
A highly competent account of life in
| Communist Czechoslovakia by a New
| York Times cortespondent who spent
| thirteen months in the country. Perhaps
q the best study yet published on the
‘techniques used by the Communists to
| seize and hold power in a country with
| a profound democratic tradition. One
| will find in this volume not only the
| stories of Benes’s surrender, Masaryk’s
| | death, and the Red putsch of 1948 but
| also an analysis of the methods used to
control education, Russify culture, regi-
ment labor, collectivize agriculture, and
-remilitarize the nation. Though both
Gottwald and Slansky* are now dead,
Mr. Schmidt's detailed study of their
fearsome struggle supplies a provocative
explanation of new currents in the satel-
lite world. Among the many virtues of
this book are the author’s reliance on
Communist rather than hostile émigré
» sources, his word of caution to the West
net to underestimate the economic
achievements of communism, and finally
his warning against loose talk of “‘liber-
ating the enslaved peoples.”
Native Chronicles
_A MIRROR FOR AMERICANS. Vol.
I, Life in the East; Vol. II, The Cotton
Kingdom; Vol. III, The Frontier Moves
| West. Compiled and Edited by Warren
|S. Tryon. Chicago. $5 Each Volume or
| $14.50 the Set Boxed. Long before
_ John Gunther, “inside America” was a
favorite theme, and while many of the
| best-known works of this genre were by
‘ Europeans, there were plenty of Ameri-
| can-travelers with an itch to communi-
*
fa
eat aro ‘ae the
~ cate, Believing that these native chron-
icles have been unduly neglected, Pro-
fessor Tryon has compiled samples so
as to illustrate life and manners in the
United States between 1790 and 1870.
In these volumes we can find South-
ern views on the North, Northern ob-
servations about the South, Eastern com-
ments on the still wild West, and even a
few Western jeers at the effeminate
East. Some of the excerpts are taken
from books by such well-known authors
as Horace Greeley, George Catlin the
painter of Indians, Bayard Taylor, and
Frederick Law Olmsted, an early con-
tributor to The Nation. Others, and.not
the least interesting, are by men and
women long forgotten. Many contempo-
rary illustrations add to the value of this
beautifully produced work.
Report on Israel
ISRAEL, By Norman Bentwich. Mc-
Graw-Hill. $3.75. Israel’s story from
the period of the mandate throigh
1952, told with grace, lucidity, and
considerable objectivity. Mr. Bentwich
discusses the terrain of Israel, the form
of government, the mixed economy
which prevails, the life of minority
groups, and the objectives of the found-
ers. While frankly pro-Israel, he does
not hesitate to poimt out where ac- ~
complishments fail to live up to
promises. He is particularly “emphatic
on the importance of establishing equal
freedom and opportunity for the Arabs
in Israel. But taken as a whole, the
“Vw : 4
‘
picture he paints is one of a dynamic
people, committed to the democratic
way of life and with a creative aspira-
tion, and a good deal of achievement,
in the field of aes
An Amusing Life
THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF
SIR JOHN HAWKINS. MUSICIAN,
MAGISTRATE AND FRIEND OF
JOHNSON. By Percy A. Scholes. Ox-
ford. $7. To the one person in ten to
whom the name Sir John Hawkins
means anything at all it means ‘‘a most
unclubable man’’—as Samuel Johnson
called him. Other contemporaries tagged
him with even more uncomplimentary
phrases, but he did have the singular
bad luck, first, to publish a three-thou-
sand-page history of music almost simul-
taneously with Dr. Burney’s much mote
popular one and then to write a biog-
raphy of Dr. Johnson which came out
only a few years before Boswell’s swept
it off the shelygs. This entertaining life
by the distinguished musicologist has
much the same virtues as the author’s
much longer life of Burney published
a few years ago. Hawkins’s daughter
kept a journal full of odd incidents, and
Dr. Scholes has a wide antiquarian’s
knowledge. of eighteenth century by-
ways. Almost anything—the introduc-
tion of the Lombardy poplar into Eng-
land, for instance—is likely to turn up
and to be presented with humor. There
are handsomely reproduced portraits of
Hawkins and others.
Manny Farber
N UARLIER days Director - Robert
Wise revealed an interesting talent for
working with dispiriting situations, keep-
ing the story of their progress mounting
to a maddening climax. He made a num-
ber of “sleepers” in this vein, so called
because they had somehow turned out
to be believable, skilful feature films,
though made on little more than it now
costs to feed the lions in ‘The Greatest
Show on Earth.” These films are evi-
dence that it is quite possible to make
movies on less money and more skill.
Wise learned movie-making by working
in various jobs on the lot; he edited
some Lewton-produced horror films and
directed “The Set Up.” So it is some-
what disturbing to find that he, like
- some other artists who started out on
good “‘sleepers,”” has progressed to mak-
ing rather pointless “A” pictures.
His new film, “Destination Gobi,” is
such a step in the wrong direction. But
while it is not first class, it is a work-
man-like job of film-making that flows
like sand in an eggtimer and has some
313
funny situations and adequate settings.
It is an adventure story with Richard
Widmark, in a customary frenzied role,
establishing a weather station in the
Gobi Desert. Its best quality is its
rugged visualization of an eight-hun-
dred-mile trek through enemy soldiers
and suspicious Mongols, to the accom-
paniment of thirst, hunger, and all the
usual trappings of a “never say die”
movie. Well composed out of a succes-
sion of panoramic shots and fast action
scenes, the film suffers from Wise’s loss
of contact with realism in acting. The
characters of the weather observers are
bombastic or comic swaggerers, and the
Mongolian horsemen act like Western
movie regulars.
Another director who has overreached
his earlier talents is Alfred Hitchcock.
As a movie pioneer, Hitchcock intro-
duced imaginative sounds, fine character
effects, and fleet economy. He brought
you an everyday world that was as real
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314
as it was ominous (“The 39 Steps’’).
However, Hitchcock’s new melodrama,
“I Confess,” has negated the realism
to settle for the “effects.” His mystery
story is peopled with familiar suspense-
film types—a sadistic detective, a suave
prosecutor, an amoral scoundrel with a
tidy but vapid wife—and laid among
the crooked, elevated streets of Quebec.
It does get a certain dramatic punch
through the sensitive underplaying of
Montgomery Clift as a young priest who,
learning the identity of a murderer in
the confessional booth, plays the re-
mainder of the picture with sad com-
passion and locked lips. With a line
like “We can do nothing,” he spreads
his hands with a quiet weariness that ex-
presses the feeling of people caught in a
rotten jam. For the most part, “I Con-
fess” is a problemless piece of stage-
craft in which the suspense, except for
770 Cs oa mo op
a pt aT ean
+
v= ee
“ay
a quick twist at the end, is just so much
decoration.
In the American spectacle class, fron-
tiers division, “The President's Lady” is
a studiously dull picture about wild
young Andrew Jackson and the trouble
he had with the divorce laws of his
time. It is a triumph of histrionics over
history, starring Charlton, Heston and
Susan Hayward. The only real contribu-
tions were made by an over-particular set
designer, and by Leo Tover, director of
photography.
Howard Hughes’s “Angel Face’’ is a
congested thriller that kills off all its
actors with modern sports cars. Unlike
many of Hughes’s hard-working murder
films, this one is too often verbal instead
of visual, with a lot of time spent in
a dimly lit boudoir where Robert
Mitchum and Jean Simmons mutter
forlornly and wear dressing gowns.
Records
B. H. Haggin
OLUMBIA’S new Modern American
Music Series is a program for record-
ing modern American chamber music
selected by a composers’ committee com-
prising Virgil Thomson as chairman,
Aaron Copland, William Schuman,
Henry Cowell, and Goddard Lieberson,
executive vice-president of Columbia.
Six records have been issued with the
first group of works that the committee
considers representative of “American
music at its most distinguished and
beautiful”: Copland’s Sextet for string
quartet, clarinet, and piano (1937),
originally his Short Symphony (1933),
and “Ellis Kohs’s Chamber Concerto for
viola and string nonet (1949) on ML
4492; Thomson’s Stabat Mater for so-
prano and string quartet (1932) and
“Capitals, Capitals’ for four male
singers and piano (1927), and Lou
Harrison’s Suite for cello and harp and -
Suite No. 2 for string quartet (1948)
on ML. 4491; Schuman’s String Quartet
No. 4 (1950) and Ingolf Dahl’s Con-
certo a tre for clarinet, violin, and cello
(1947) on ML 4493; Douglas Moore’s
Quintet for clarinet and strings (1946),
and Wallingford Riegger’s String Quar-
tet No. 2 (1948) on ML 4494; Walter
Piston’s Sonatina for violin and harpsi-
chord (1945), and John Cage’s String
Quartet (1950) on ML 4495; and
Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 1
(1902-1909) on ML 4490. The works
were recorded under their composers’
supervision by the Juilliard and New
Music Quartets, Schneider and Kirkpat-
rick, Jennie Tourel, and a number of
other excellent musicians.
In most of these works I hear the
ability to fill out time with musical
sounds—if only by setting a rhythmic
figure going and keeping iit rattling
along for'the number of minutes re-
quired by an allegro movement (Cop-
land, Piston, Moore). But I don’t hear
anything I would call beautiful (though
the second movement of the Moore
Quintet is rather pretty), or distin-.
guished, or moving as musical commu-
nication, or impressive even as musical
construction. On the contrary, apart from
the precisely contrived: delicacies of
sonority and melody in the Harrison
Suite for harp and cello, much of the
writing is for me in varying degrees un-
pleasant in sound (Schuman, Dahl,
Riegger, Kohs); some of it conveys no
coherent musical sense to me (Schuman,
The NATION
oduct of extreme eccentricity of mind
2 * (Ives, Cage).
I should add that the Copland and
Thomson pieces disappointed expecta-
_ tions based on my experiences of other
works by these composers. Copland’s
Sextet is spoken of as one of his major
works; but to me its frenetic manipula-
tion of jagged motifs ih the fast move-
ments and its forced, distorted lyricism
in the slow movement are unattractive
and unimpressive. Thomson’s Stabat
* Mater is written in a French vocal style
And his “Capitals, Capitals”
that I don’t care for even in the original.
is like a
preliminary try-out of the method of
setting Gertrude Stein” words that he
used with such delightful results in his
Operas—a .try-out in which the words
and their musical treatment in vocal
recitative and piano comment haven't
enough variety and richness to hold
interest for more than two or three of
the work’s twenty minutes.
Copland’s Sextet belongs to a period .
when he was writing that kind of music.
One of the enjoyable works of the
period that followed, his score for the
Ballet “Rodeo,” has been recorded by
a Ballet Theater orchestra under the
direction of Ballet Theater’s conductor,
Joseph Levine (Capitol); and except for
the opening Buckaroo Holiday, which is
too long and uninteresting without the
dancing, it is a pleasure to hear. The
performance is good. On the same rec-
ord is a raucous performance of Leonard
Bernstein’s brash score for “Fancy Free,”
which also ts too long without the
dancing.
Mozart's Sonatas K.454 and 481 for
piano and violin—works notable for
- their beautiful slow movements—have
- been recorded by Charles Rosen and
_ Reinhold Peters (London); and what
_ makes the performances painful te lis-
ten to is Peters’s violin-playing, which is
* extraordinarily unpleasant in sound and
' pedestrian in phrasing and style. Rosen's
playing» on the other hand, has its
characteristic vitality; but it comes off
the record dull in sound and heavily
percussive. And one hears in the joint
performances nothing of the ensemble
subtleties and perfections that were so
delightful in the Solti-Kulenkampff per-
noe of K.454 which London. issued
pon 78. a fen years ago, and that are
black-and-white
Pee nd
*»
oy oe
carried to sheer incandescence in the
Kraus-Goldberg petformance of K.481
on the Decca LP.
Beethoven’s Quartets Opus 18 Nos. 1
and 2—the first a more engaging early
work than the second—are played very
beautifully by the Paganini Quartet
(RCA Victor); and the recorded sound
of the performances is warm and nat-
ural, and more agreeable to the ear than
the cold, hard sound of the recent Buda-
pest Quartet performances.
Art Notes
JOSEPH GLASCO’s third one-man
show is a collection of strongly expres-
sionist paintings, sculpture, and draw-
ings. His “landscape-heads’’ are a curi-
ous fusion of featureless portraits and
landscapes that are superimposed on
either the head or torso of his subjects.
Rich colors and textures play an impor-
tant role-—Viviano to April 18.
FREDDY HOMBURGER, doctor and
scientist, is having his first one-man
show. He is the doctor who treated
Raoul Dufy, and he has always enjoyed
painting as an avocation. He works in
gouache, and his water colors are scenes
of Mexico, the Maine Coast, Zurich
and Paris ——Carstairs to April 18.
LOUIS EVAN is having his second
one-man show of subtly colored semi-
abstractions based on city scenes.—
Mak. I..to April 3a)
LOUISE BOURGEOIS exhibits twenty
drawings that are
studies for her sculptures. There are
also three life-size figures done in a
narrow, elongated, semi-abstract style.
—Peridot to April 25,
MARK BAUM has exhibited in several
one-man and group shows. His new
oils, done in a stark realistic manner,
portray coal-mining scenes in Pennsyl-
vania.—Salpeter to April 18.
JOHN WHORKF, popular Academician,
is showing a group of water colors—
sporting scenes, marines, and landscapes
of Maine. His colors are bright and
transparent; his style is traditional._—
Milch to April 25.
Letters
Boston Liked “Limelight”
Dear Sirs: In your issue of March 21
William Murray discussed the treatment
of Charlie Chaplin’s “Limelight” by
those who are opposed to its being
shown. I should like to suggest that the
situation is not quite so bad as he por-
trayed it, althqugh it certainly is ap-
palling. Mr. Murray could not be ex-
pected to mention every city where
“Limelight’’ was or was not shown, but
he mentions no city where it had a
really successful run. In Boston, ‘‘Lime-
light” played at only one theater, which
I believe is independent, but it remained
there for some seven or eight weeks,
with houses ranging from good to
packed... .
Brookline, Mass. MARK MICHELSON
The Harrison Affair
Dear Sirs: It was with great interest that
I read Nearly Everybody Swears in
Harrison, which appeared in your Feb-
rulary 21 issue. David Clinton, a Harri-
son commuter, correctly states that
action has been instituted before the
New York State Commissioner of Edu-
cation to compel the rescission of the
oath required. I am the attorney for the
citizens of Harrison who instituted this
proceeding, and we are now awaiting an
oral hearing before the Commissioner
on a date to be fixed by him. Mr.
Clinton is incorrect, however, in his
statement that New York’s Feinberg
law requires all teachers to sign a
loyalty oath or, as I prefer to call it,
a non-disloyalty oath. The law itself
and the regulations issued by the Board
of Regents and the Commissioner
of Education explicitly provide how it
is to be enforced—and nowhere is there
any requirement of an oath by teachers,
or other school employees, or any other
persons. ...
New York PAUL BAUMAN
Soliloquy on Soliloquy
Dear Sirs: Melvin H. Bernstein’s Solil-
oquy (The Nation, February 28) on
the sad plight of college professors
brought no tears to my eyes. During
my own four years of college I saw
too many of the spineless creatures
parading as intellectual “giants. They
droned, they bored, they threatened with --
D’s and F’s those who did not agree,
315
——
ART
PHILADELPHIANS interested in
contemporary art should visit the
ELLEN DONOVAN GALLERY at 216
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tional, vocational, psychological problems.
Fee, $5.00.
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HOW TO READ FACES
Now YOU can be a shrewd judge of
character, discover hidden traits of
people, from face or photo. The
secret is revealed in “How Your
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SAVINGS BONDS
316
it
6
10
Gt
12
14
15
16
18
22
24
25
26
27
Nw UF
>
Crossword Puzzle 7" SM
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
re oo
arr te -
OPC Te rr
ee ee eee
BERERBREE ESE
os P| ae
ACROSS
What does a railroad inspector do?
Obliges. (10)
The area of 18 is not included in
this shoal. (4)
No weapons, hence not dangerous if
you 18 it. (7)
This isn’t how to make an outburst
in spirited vein! (7)
Star performer in the Civil War and
World War II. (7, 7)
Proper in Scotland, but in Germany,
English want to return the latter.
(8)
and 23 down. Spreads part of the
body out in stellar regions, perhaps.
(5, 5
Change ringing on a bell’s names?
6
How to make a snake angry? (Not
exactly hiss, however.) (8)
Responsible for the upkeep of dress
rather than undress uniform. (8, 6)
A bar, for example, near 22. (7)
Not held by the amateur model, the
way one might suggest. (7)
Backbones for a clue? It’s only fair.
(2-2)
Enduring and relative, in a way,
when confined around it. (10)
DOWN
One way to make the first one killed
inconstant. (10)
What belongs to me is in a bad one,
put up for something. (7)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
The Nation, 20 Vesey Street,
3 Land of fire—you might extract ore,
if regulated. (6, 3, 5)
4 Pardon for the unsolitary 20, to get
an answer as well. (7)
Through sound reasoning, they sug-
gest the nose of a horse, rather than
its eyes. (6)
or
7 This sort of crop is a very ordinary
one. (7)
8 Is it a row that makes the score
equal? (4)
9 Is economy in them wise and s. o. p.
in pro patria? (14)
18 The sort of mess to agree about,
even if we don’t agree with the
official one. (10)
17 You might confuse these in the de-
gree of orders. (7)
19 A form of the verb of 27—one might
be 24. (7)
20 Seafood for the solitary mariner?
(7)
21 Notice this place? (You could form
an attachment thus.) (6)
23 See 15 across.
e & e
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE Neo. 510
ACROSS:—1 PICKWICK PAPERS; 9 ER-
MINED; SC
INVADING; ;
TERMS; 19 SHAMPOO; 21 DISAVOWS; 23
CRETAN; 25 GRIEVED; 26 MALTESE; 27
WINDOW SHOPPING.
DOWN:—1 PEEP SIGHT; 2 CAMBRIC; 3
WINDFALLS; 4 CODE; 5 PHOENICIAN;
6 PEMBA; 7 RENTIER; 138 RASS
WIDOW; 15 aaa CLIP; 16 ALBAN
BERG;
I SING; 21 DOGS: ‘92 VIVID; 24 AMAH.
“ground rules.'' Address
New York 7, New York.
The NATION,
PHYSICIANS FORUM
presents
‘BENJAMIN SPOCK, M. D.
In a public lecture
“YOUR CHILD’S NEEDS”
Wednesday, APRIL 22—8:30 P.M.
Auditorium, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
NO TICKETS SOLD AT DOOR
Subscription $1.50 (Tax inel.)
For Tickets Write, Phone:
Physicians Forum, 510 Madison Avenue
MU 8-3290 New York 22
CAREY McWILLIAMS, presented by The
Nassau Forum, in a discussion on “Freedom
and American Culture.” Thursday, April
16, 8:45 P.M., Roslyn Country Club, Club
Drive, Roslyn Heights, N. Y
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they Raatned aloof, ary could not
combine ideality with reality, Are these
the men that the poptfation must rescue
from witch-hunting ?
I can count on my two hands the
professors I knew who would stand up
and fight in the face of opposition.
They were strong men, morally and
mentally. They were fair in their criti-
cism and grading. For this type of man
I will fight to the bitter end.
Were I-a teacher threatened with
such tactics as Mr. Bernstein outlines,
I would say: “To hell with McCarthy
and his fascist witch-hunters!’’ I would
rather starve to death than know that
I was a. coward who had to cry to the
people: “Save me! Save me! The Big
Bad Wolf is coming.”
Houston, Tex. BILL STALNAKER
Sinnott Misquoted
Dear Sirs: 1 was about halfway through
Edmund W. Sinnott’s “Two Ways to
Truth” when the February 21 issue of
The Nalion arrived with its ‘new book
section. I was quite startled by the
statement attributed to Sinnott: ‘The
brotherhood of man will come only if
the fatherhood of God is recognized.
Moral problems will never be solved
unless they are treated as part of the
structure of the universe.” It did not
sound like Mr. Sinnott. However, I con-
tinued to read “Two Ways to Truth”
and today came upon the source of your
reviewer's quotation. Actually it is not
Mr. Sinnott ee but a hypothetical
“Christian moralist.”’
DONNA M, DICKINSON
Los Alamos, N. M.
{Our reviewer can only plead guilty,
and apologize for his carelessness. In
‘casting back through the book for a
sentence or two which would illustrate
what seemed to him a certain weakness
in the final chapters, he failed to notice
the cautionary phrase at the beginning
of the paragraph from which he quoted.
—EDITORS THE NATION. }
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: BOOKS ° MUSIC ° ART
“LVation |
:: April 18, 1953
20¢
Aneurin Bevan
Formula for
| Peae |
| Alan Barth |
| aa
Congress on i
|
_ the Campus j
|
Mr. Dulles’s Balloon — Freda K: irchwey —
| EVERY |
WEEK
- SINCE os:
4865 - Politics Versus Science Bruce Catton
Wheat Will Vote Gordon Roth
Letters
Anna Louise Strong
Discusses Stalin’s “Heir”
Dear Sirs: Much nonsense has been
written about the succession to Stalin.
Yet the basis for a correct analysis exists
in the way Stalin rose to power and in
the present chief problem of the world
Communist bloc.
Nobody can “appoint” an “heir’’ to
a man like Stalin. His concrete posts
have been taken over in accordance
with definite Soviet constitutional pro-
cedures. But nobody yet has taken over
his role as the leader of world commu-
nism. In the long run his true successor
may prove to be Mao Tse-tung or Mao's
deputy, Liu Shao-chi.
How did Stalin rise? I wrote the
first article ever published in America
about him. It was in April, 1924, when
almost no one here, and few in Russia,
had ever heard of him. He rose by his
able handling of organizational ma-
chinery and by his working out of the
ideological basis. for Russia’s future:
“socialism in a single state.” In 1924
he was recognized only by the party
sophisticates; by 1927, after the Stalin-
Trotsky controversy, he had won ‘the
support of the party rank and, file.
Through the Five-Year Plan he earned
the support of the industrial workers;
by 1930, through his intercession in be-
half of the peasants against the excesses
of the collectivization program, he won
the favor of the agricultural population.
Finally, the Soviet constitution of 1936
gave him his position as leader of the
nation. Thus his rise took twelve long
years.
TODAY the Communist world faces
its gravest problem since the Stalin-
Trotsky dispute of 1925-27. The core
of the problem lies in the interrelation- -
ship of the socialist states. So far these
states have been held together by a
common ideology, by bilateral economic
and military pacts, and by the hostile
pressures from the West. But strains
are already apparent. As long as Stalin
was alive, the Communist leaders of
Eastern Europe were held by his pres-
tige not only as the builder of Russia
but as the liberator of their lands.
None of the present leaders of Russia,
Malenkov included, can benefit from
such prestige.
It is on this basis that Western
leaders now hope that some of the
Soviet bloc members will split away.
The Los Angeles Times brutally states:
“The best we can hope for is an internal _
war in the Communist states.’” But the
Communist leaders are not fools; they
will do all in their power to avoid such
a war. Instead, they are seeking to
utilize the emotions generated by Stalin’s
funeral to form a new coalition. What
form this will take cannot be predicted,
but the man who works out its ideo-
logical basis and later its practical ap-
plication will be the world inheritor of
Stalin’s power. In this connection it is
worth noting that the only Communist
writer who has published material on
the theoretical aspects of this problem
is Liu Shao-chi.
VARIOUS suggestive forms already ex-
ist. There is the United Nations; now
the West seeks to build up NATO.
Indeed, these blocs are characteristic of
our times, which call for integration be-
yond national boundaries. Russia need
not be limited, of course, to Western
forms. For instance, the Russians are
accustomed to organizations with several
chairmen. The Soviet Union itself began
that way; it is noteworthy that the
various peace congresses use this tactic.
In my judgment, then, we may soon
see the creation of a joint planning
board for the economic development of
the Soviet bloc. This might be followed
by an international organization limited
to Communist countries. Such a group
would supersede the Cominform, which
admitted Italy and France but excluded
China. We may expect the organization
to have several chairmen, including~a
Chinese, a Russian, and one or more
from Eastern Europe. Eventually one
of the chairmen may win Stalin’s mantle.
Or the heir may already have been
agreed upon when Mao first went to
Moscow and handed over to Stalin the
leadership “of China in return for—
what ?
* Will such a Communist combine mean
war or peace? My guess is that it will
mean, ot a widening of the war, but a
holding action by the Communists with-
in their own territory and its develop-
ment from within.
ANNA LOUISE STRONG |
Montrose, Cal.
o ae
4 “hh Lan
Solving the ‘Problems cy 3 =
Dear Sirs: A couple of sensible men,
Morris Ernst and David Loth, recom-
mended in an article in the March 24
issue of Look that we rehabilitate our
native American Communists instead of
persecuting them. As they point out, a
large proportion of disenchanted party
members would leap at the chance ‘to
escape if it were not for the ruinous
penance that we, the righteous public,
would exact of them. If instead of
punishing ex-Communists ‘with our con-
tempt and hatred, depriving them of
their jobs, and wrecking their family
and community life, we would offer
them our congratulations, respect, and
help, we might see a mass exit from
the Communist Party.
However, this reasonable proposal
raises the question: do we really want
to deflate our Communist menace?”
What, then, could our little wild man,
McCarthy, exert himself against? How
would the bigots among us be able to
ruin the neighbors they fear and envy?
Cambridge, Mass. TED MOYNAHAN
On Moving the U.N.
Dear Sirs: The location of the United
Nations’ Headquarters in a neutral na-
tion—proposed by Jean Berlitz in The
Nation of March 28—was considered
in some detail by the Preparatory Com-
mission back in 1945. Some of ‘the argu-
ments raised in his article cropped up
then. Many of those he invokes are the
’ product of more recent developments.
All in all, however, the decision to
locate in the United States seems to have
been wise. That the loyalty investiga-
tions in this country have impinged
upon the integrity of the world organiza-
tion cannot be denied. But considera-
tions which motivated the 1945 decision
hold as true today as they did then.
While there was a fear of renewed
American isolationism in 1945, there~is
reason for more fear in 1953—albeit a
slightly different fear. It is admittedly
unlikely that the United States would
lapse today into isolationism. At the
same time this ‘country bas shown an
increasing preference for unilateral ac-
tion. Mr. Berlitz’s statement that the
United States would go it alone in
Korea were there no United Nations
underscores that predisposition.
The location of the United Nations
in New York serves as a constant re-
minder to the American government and
people. Its attraction for tourists—some-
thing which Mr. Berlitz would readily
(Continued on Inside Back Cover)
ert
~ Volume 176, Number 16 es
~ New York, Saturday, April 18, 1953
t
i
|
The Shape of Things
Neither Trade Nor Aid?
Evidence accumulates of acute division among Repub-
licans on the tariff question, The internationalist wing
of the party, impressively supported by bankers, big in-
dustrialists, and conservative economists, favors the
| lowering of import barriers. It realizes the absurdity of
depriving foreign countries of the means of earning
i dollars and then subsidizing them so that they may buy
our exportable surplus. But old-fashioned protectionism
is still rife in the G. O. P. and a majority of Republicans
in Congréss probably agree with Senator Taft, who when
asked what he thought of the slogan “trade, not aid,”
| growled that he liked the “not aid”. part.
| Seeking to postpone a rough-and-tumble fight on the
| issue, President Eisenhower, who appears to be a low-
tariff man, has asked Congress to renew the Reciprocal
Trade Agreements Act without change for one year
pending a study of long-range policy. He has also tried
| to soften opposition by nominating for one of the two
vacancies on the Tariff Commission a former Republican
Congressman who is approved by the high-tariff lobby.
This has partially appeased Representative Richard Simp-
son of Pennsylvania, a leading protectionist, who has
graciously made it known that if an equally acceptable
|, mame is put forward for the second vacancy he may
| withdraw his proposal to make Tariff Commission find-
| ings, under the “escape clause” procedure of the Recip-
- rocal Trade Agreements Act, mandatory on the President.
—
Is Labor Unity Any Nearer?
The first discussions of labor unity in almost three
| years—and the eighth series of merger negotiations since
1937—adjourned last week in Washington on a dis-
appointing and inconclusive note. About all the negotia-
tors could agree upon was to appoint a committee to
study the problem of “raiding”~and to meet again in
June. A more hopeful communiqué was anticipated,
since this was the first session at which Messrs. Meany
and Reuther presided as the new presidents of Jabor’s
two major branches. But where was John L, Lewis? And
where were the representatives of the Railroad Brother-
hoods? Can labor agree to unite at sessions from which
‘ Be
Me —*
“Nation
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
representatives of these two strategic unions are ex-
cluded?
Given the dynamic quality of American industry and
the mobility of American workers, the problems of
“raiding” and of jurisdictional disputes cannot be solved
by paper formulas; nor should the prior solution of issues
of this character be made a condition of unification. With
characteristic realism and cynicism, Mr. Lewis has
steadily maintained that they can be solved only in
labor's “traditional” manner—that is, by ignoring them
as long as possible and then working out the best com-
promise possible within the framework of unity. Witness
the fact that the United Mine Workers, during the entire
period of its affiliation with the A. F. of L., was never
formally granted jurisdiction over the coal miners. Mr.
Lewis’s formula remains the best we have seen: unite
first and settle the differences later. It would be refresh-
ing to find the mine and railroad workers represented
at the unity sessions in June.
Year of Decision
The Atomic Energy Commission’s announcement that,
with the approval of President Eisenhower, it would
soon recommend to Congress certain basic changes in
the present Jaw is the first official statement of a policy
that has been in the making for some months. Two
developments are largely responsible for the rapid build-
up of interest in the use of atomic power for industrial
purposes: the dual-purpose reactor at the Hanford plant
(the sale of plutonium to the government would greatly
reduce the price at which atomic power could be made
available to private industry) and the development of
the atomic-powered submarine, which has opened new
vistas for industry, particularly for the private power
interests. In their wake the big utility concerns began to
plan—and plot.
The master-plan was formally revealed at a confer-
ence sponsored by the National Industrial Conference
Board last October as part of a carefully thought-out and
artfully timed public-relations campaign. Behind the
plan to amend the present law is the enormously im-
portant issue of whether the public’s $10,000,000,000
investment in the atomic-energy program is to be con-
served for the benefit of all the people or exploited for
private profit by a chosen few in industry. Though the
Letters
Anna Louise Strong
Discusses Stalin’s ‘“‘Heir”
Dear Sirs: Much nonsense has been
written about the succession to Stalin.
Yet the basis for a correct analysis exists
in the way Stalin rose to power and in
the present chief problem of the world
Communist bloc.
Nobody can “appoint” an “‘heir’’ to
a man like Stalin. His concrete posts
have been taken over in accordance
with definite Soviet constitutional pro-
cedures. But nobody yet has taken over
his role as the leader of world commu-
nism. In the long run his true successor
may prove to be Mao Tse-tung or Mao’s
deputy, Liu Shao-chi.
How did Stalin rise? I wrote the
first article ever published in America
about him. It was in April, 1924, when
almost no one here, and few in Russia,
had ever heard of him. He rose by his
able handling of organizational ma-
chinery and by his working out of the
ideological basis. for Russia’s future:
“socialism in a single state.” In 1924
he was recognized only by the party
sophisticates; by 1927, after the Stalin-
Trotsky controversy, he had won the
support of the party rank and, file.
Through the Five-Year Plan he earned
the support of the industrial workers;
by 1930, through his intercession in be-
half of the peasants against the excesses
of the collectivization program, he won
the favor of the agricultural population.
Finally, the Soviet constitution of 1936
gave him his position as leader of the
nation. Thus his rise took twelve long
years,
TODAY the Communist world faces
its gravest problem since the Stalin-
Trotsky dispute of 1925-27. The core
of the problem lies in the interrelation-
ship of the socialist states. So far these
states have been held together by a
common ideology, by bilateral economic
and military pacts, and by the hostile
pressures from the West. But strains
are already apparent. As long as Stalin
was alive, the Communist leaders of
Eastern Europe were held by his pres-
tige not only as the builder of Russia
but as the liberator of their lands.
None of the present leaders of Russia,
Malenkov included, can benefit from
such prestige.
It is on this basis that Western
leaders now hope that some of the
Soviet bloc members will split away.
The Los Angeles Times brutally states:
‘The best we can hope for is an internal
war in the Communist states.’’ But the
Communist leaders are not fools; they
will do all in their power to avoid such
a war. Instead, they are seeking to
utilize the emotions generated by Stalin’s
funeral to form a new coalition. What
form this will take cannot be predicted,
but the man who works out its ideo-
logical basis and later its practical ap-
plication will be the world inheritor of
Stalin’s power. In this connection it is
worth noting that the only Communist
writer who has published material on
the theoretical aspects of this problem
is Liu Shao-chi.
VARIOUS suggestive forms already ex-
ist. There is the United Nations; now
the West seeks to build up NATO.
Indeed, these blocs are characteristic of
our times, which call for integration be-
yond national boundaries. Russia need
not be limited, of course, to Western
forms. For instance, the Russians are
accustomed to organizations with several
chairmen. The Soviet Union itself began
that way; it is noteworthy that the
various peace congresses use this tactic.
In my judgment, then, we may soon
see the creation of a joint planning
board for the economic development of
the Soviet bloc. This might be followed
by an international organization limited
to Communist countries. Such a group
would supersede the Cominform, which
admitted Italy and France but excluded
China. We may expect the organization
to have several chairmen, including~a
Chinese, a Russian, and one or more
from Eastern Europe. Eventually one
of the chairmen may win Stalin’s mantle.
Or the heir may already have been
agreed upon when Mao first went to
Moscow and handed over to Stalin the
leadership “of China in return for—
what ? :
* Will such a Communist combine mean
war or peace? My guess is that it will
mean, wot a widening of the war, but a
holding action by the Communists with-
in their own territory and its develop-
ment from within.
ANNA LOUISE STRONG
Montrose, Cal.
oot oA See " roo -
Bes. - oe
ah ee
: 2 ae oe oo
Solving the Problem’ oa
Dear Sirs: A couple of sensible men,
Morris Ernst and David Loth, recom-
mended in an article in the March 24
issue of Look that we rehabilitate our
native American Communists instead of
persecuting them, As they point out, a
large proportion of disenchanted party
members would leap at the chance ‘to
escape if it were not for the ruinous
penance that we, the righteous public,
_would exact of them. If instead of
punishing ex-Communists ‘With our con-
tempt and hatred, depriving them of
their jobs, and wrecking their family
and community life, we would offer
them our congratulations, respect, and
help, we might see a mass exit from
the Communist Party.
However, this reasonable proposal
raises the question: do we really want
to deflate our Communist
What, then, could our little wild man,
McCarthy, exert himself against? How
would the bigots among us be able to
ruin the neighbors they fear and envy?
Cambridge, Mass. TED MOYNAHAN
On Moving the U.N.
Dear Sirs: The location of the United
Nations’ Headquarters in a neutral na-
tion—proposed by Jean Berlitz in The
Nation of March 28—was considered
in some detail by the Preparatory Com-
mission back in 1945. Some of the argu-
ments raised in his article crapped up
then. Many of those he invokes are the
’ product of more recent developments.
All in all, however, the decision to
locate in the United States seems to have
been wise. That the loyalty investiga-
tions in this country have impinged
upon the integrity of the world organiza-
tion cannot be denied. But considera-
tions which motivated the 1945 decision
hold as true today as they did then.
While there was a fear of renewed
American isolationism in 1945, there is
reason for more fear in 1953—albeit-a
slightly different fear. It is admittedly
unlikely that the United States would
lapse today into isolationism. At the
same time this country has shown an
increasing preference for unilateral ac-
tion. Mr. Berlitz’s statement that the
United States would go it alone in
Korea were there no United Nations
underscores that predisposition,
The location of the United Nations
in New York serves as a constant re-
minder to the American government and
people. Its attraction for tourists—some-
thing which Mr. Berlitz would readily
(Continued on Inside Back Cover)
menace?”
— -—
be eer ee
ao ee 176, Number 16 ak i
New York, Saturday, April 18, 1953
The Shape of Things
Neither Trade Nor Aid?
Evidence accumulates of acute division among Repub-
licans on the tariff question, The internationalist wing
of the party, impressively supported by bankers, big in-
dustrialists, and conservative economists, favors the
lowering of import barriers. It realizes the absurdity of
depriving foreign countries of the means of earning
dollars and then subsidizing them so that they may buy
our exportable surplus. But old-fashioned protectionism
is still rife in the G. O. P. and a majority of Republicans
in Congréss probably agree with Senator Taft, who when
asked what he thought of the slogan “trade, not aid,”
growled that he liked the “not aid”, part.
Seeking to postpone a rough-and-tumble fight on the
issue, President Eisenhower, who appears to be a low-
tariff man, has asked Congress to renew the Reciprocal
Trade Agreements Act without change for one year
pending a study of long-range policy. He has also tried
to soften opposition by nominating for one of the two
vacancies on the Tariff Commission a former Republican
Congressman who is approved by the high-tariff lobby.
This has partially appeased Representative Richard Simp-
son of Pennsylvania, a leading protectionist, who has
graciously made it known that if an equally acceptable
mame is put forward for the second vacancy he may
withdraw his proposal to make Tariff Commission find-
‘ings, under the “escape clause” procedure of the Recip-
rocal Trade Agreements Act, mandatory on the President.
Is Labor Unity Any Nearer?
The first discussions of labor unity in almost three
.years—and the eighth series of merger negotiations since
1937—adjourned last week in Washington on a dis-
appointing and inconclusive note. About all the negotia-
tors could agree upon was to appoint a committee to
study the problem of “raiding” and to meet again in
June. A more hopeful communiqué was anticipated,
since this was the first session at which Messrs, Meany
and Reuther presided as the new presidents of labor's
two major branches. But where was John L, Lewis? And
where were the representatives of the Railroad Brother-
hoods? Can labor agree to unite at sessions from which
Meee ae.
"Nation
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
representatives of these two strategic unions are ex-
cluded?
Given the dynamic quality of American industry and
the mobility of American workers, the problems of
“raiding” and of jurisdictional disputes cannot be solved
by paper formulas; nor should the prior solution of issues
of this character be made a condition of unification. With
characteristic realism and cynicism, Mr. Lewis has
steadily maintained that they can be solved only in
labor's “traditional” manner—that is, by ignoring them
as long as possible and then working out the best com-
promise possible within the framework of unity. Witness
the fact that the United Mine Workers, during the entire
period of its affiliation with the A. F. of L., was never
formally granted jurisdiction over the coal miners. Mr.
Lewis's formula remains the best we have seen: unite
first and settle the differences later. It would be refresh-
ing to find the mine and railroad workers represented
at the unity sessions in June.
Year of Decision
The Atomic Energy Commission’s announcement that,
with the approval of President Eisenhower, it would
soon recommend to Congress certain basic changes in
the present law is the first official statement of a policy
that has been in the making for some months. Two
developments are largely responsible for the rapid build-
up of interest in the use of atomic power for industrial
purposes: the dual-purpose reactor at the Hanford plant
(the sale of plutonium to the government would greatly
reduce the price at which atomic power could be made
available to private industry) and the development of
the atomic-powered submarine, which has opened new
vistas for industry, particularly for the private power
interests. In their wake the big utility concerns began to
plan—and plot.
The mastér-plan was formally revealed at a confer-
ence sponsored by the National Industrial Conference
Board last October as part of a carefully thought-out and
artfully timed public-relations campaign. Behind the
plan to amend the present law is the enormously im-
portant issue of whether the public’s $10,000,000,000
investment in the atomic-energy program is to be con-
served for the benefit of all the people or exploited for
private profit by a chosen few in industry. Though the
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 317
Mr. Dulles’s Balloon 319
ARTICLES ©
Politics ys. Science
The Weeks-Astin Fight
by Bruce Catton 320
Congress on‘the Campus:
A Warning to Universities
by Alan Barth 322
Formula for Peace: A Plea to Americans
by Aneurin Bevan 324
Movie Ultra-Realist:
Zavattini’s Bold Idea
by William Murray 326
Wheat Will Vote:
G. O. P.’s Worry for "54
by. Gordon Roth 327
The Key Questions
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 329
BOOKS
Happiness Versus Power
A Review by Merle Curti 330
New Fiction 331
ART by S. Lane Faison, Jr. 333
MUSIC by B. H. Haggin 334
ART NOTES 335
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 512
by Frank W. Lewis 336
LETTERS Opposite 317
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Directos
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Associates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman T heater
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Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K, Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
ane Nat‘on, published weekly and copyright, 1953, In the U.S. A. by
he Natior Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, *
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879, Advertising
and Circulation Representative for Continental ‘Burope: Publicitas,
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Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index.
318
danger exists that ill- “sen? smendnicnis San =4
rushed through Congress before the public can be in-
formed of what is at stake. “Decades hence,” comments
the Journal of Commerce, “when historians look back
on that strange year 1953, they may well decide that, its
most decisive events did not develop from Korea, from
Moscow, or the United Nations . . . but from the brief
announcement of the Atomic Energy Commission early
in April that it was preparing to recommend conditions
under which private industry might participate directly
in the harnessing of the atom.” To inform its readers on
this crucial issue The Nation has asked Leland Olds,
former member of the Federal Power Commission and
one of the country’s outstanding authorities on national
power policies, to prepare a series of articles dealing with
major aspects of the new struggle for control of atomic
power.
John Hancock: Traduced by His Heirs
The John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company
has notified the Community Church of Boston that it
cannot permit the church to hold its services in the
auditorium of the company’s building any longer, since |
Fulton Lewis, Jr., does not approve of the speakers it
has sponsored. In the thirty years of its existence the
Community church, congregational in polity, non-sec—
tarian in form, has provided one of the best platforms
for liberal social and religious thinking in the nation.
While Boston has perhaps not indorsed every speaker
who has appeared on this platform, no objections have
been raised, nor has the church’s right to lease any quar-
ters it desired ever been questioned before. “It is
strange,” comments the Harvard Crimson, “that a com-
pany so proud of its heritage” —it boasts of John Han-
cock’s ideals in full-page advertisements—“should sud-
denly forget America was weaned and strengthened on
dissent and ideas. It probably wouldn’t take too many
letters to remind the company of the principles of John
Hancock. The lease runs out in May, and can still be
renewed.” Or perhaps the directors will decide to change
the corporate name to the Fulton Lewis, Jr., Mutual Life
Insurance Company. In any case, Mr. Paul Clark is pres-
ident of the company, and the address is 200 Berkeley,
Street, Boston 16.
Dulles vs. Bricker
Merlo J. Pusey’s article, Hog-Tying Our Treaty
Makers, which appeared in our April 4 issue, presented
a lucid analysis of the Bricker amendment and its dan-
gers. As the Senate hearings have-since shown, more is in-
volved than the efficient conduct of our foreign affairs
or the familiar hassle between the legislative and execu-
tive branches. What is invidious is the challenge, implicit
in the amendment, to federal power by the incorrigible
The Nation |
e oar, ae eras a
+ mae a” ;
ee ‘And i it is aa. on this front that
: ee Dulles, in his laudable opposition to the
amendment, has chosen to give ground, Thus when he
promised the amendments’ advocates that he would not
push for ratification of the genocide convention, he was
simply reassuring the Southern bloc that the Negro
problem would never be permitted to reach the United
Nations. His disavowal of support for the women’s-
rights and human-rights conventions was similarly mo-
tivated; both agreements, if implemented, could effect
an invasion of what certain states continue to regard as
their inviolable rights.
But if in certain respects Dulles is putting on a bad
show, he is doing so in a good cause. Nothing could be
more abhorrent to the cause of peace than to subject our
foreign relations—NATO, the mutual-security programs,
the United Nations, the delicate Korea negotiations—to
the vagaries of Congressional politics. As Mr. Pusey
pointed out, there is nothing in our traditional methods.
of handling foreign affairs which infringes on the rights
of the Legislative branch. The Bricker amendment would
add only confusion, inefficiency, and McCarthyism.
Duarte’s Death
For the first time since his seizure of power Perén of
Argentina faces opposition from both the army and the
trade unions. There have been several occasions when
one of these two pillars of his rule became shaky, but
Perén was always able to depend upon the support of
the other. This time army dissatisfaction has gone so far
that observers consider quite plausible the rumored
withdrawal from the Cabinet of the Ministers of the
Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and National Defense.
At the same time disaffection within the pro- -Perén Con-
federation of Labor has been’ shown in demonstrations
and protests by individual unions. The severe meat
shortage, in a country where even the ordinary worker
has always been able to count upon an ample supply of
beef, and the increasing costs of living, are the most
important causes of labor unrest.
Buenos Aires is filled with rumors, of which the most
insistent concerns the death of Juan Duarte, Eva’s brother
and, until his resignation just before he died, the Presi-
dent’s secretary and confidential adviser. Officially
Duarte died of a bullet fired by himself in a gesture of
sublime devotion to Perén and of protest against the
campaign linking the three names—Per6on, Eva, and
Duarte—in financial irregularities. But hearsay points to
murder rather than suicide. Duarte is supposed to have
been the victim of powerful political gangsters, close to
or within the regime, who feared exposure.
Peron is trying hard to reestablish his authority. But
the present situation could well end with the army taking
over from him the powers that he originally took from
the army.
er April 18,1953
sans
ss at ig Sp >
Mr. Dallecs Balloon
WHAT WAS Mr. Dulles up to in his “background”
report to reporters of the sort of settlement the Admin-
istration will try for in Korea, Formosa, and Indo-China?
Was he revealing a serious proposal—representing pol-
icy, even tentative policy? If so, nothing could have been
more reckless and inept. Regardless of the merits of the
plan, its public exposure in advance of diplomatic talks
or of consultations with fellow-members of the U. N.
would surely finish it, as exposure kills a premature in-
fant. An experienced official of a major power engaged
in negotiations with a wary foe simply does not dish out
the terms of a proposed settlement under cover of ano-
nymity—a short-lived anonymity in this case—to a group
of news men. Everything was wrong about it.
So we must assume the Secretary of State was merely
sending up a trial balloon to test the breezes of opinion
from East and West. If this is so, recklessness becomes
sheer irresponsibility. Filled with inflammable gases, the
thing was bound to explode in his face. It took only a
few reactions from the Asia First boys in Congress and
from the official representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and
Syngman Rhee, a few expressions of wonder and wild
surmise from friends in the U. N., and a denial cata-
pulted out of the White House: “The reported Admin-
istration policy on Formosa and Korea is without founda-
tion of fact.”
But as always in such episodes the denial itself was
damaging to all concerned. Newspapers and broadcast-
ing companies refused to be left holding an empty
balloon. Reporters who were present at the briefing loy-
ally talked all around the central fact; those who were
not promptly named. Mr. Dulles as the informant. The
Administration was revealed as untruthful and tricky at
best; hopelessly divided if the Secretary of State had
spoken seriously. And besides, the original content of
the balloon is still in the air spreading suspicions, ques-
tions, and expectations which will plague the negotiators
when they start serious talks after the exchange of dis-
abled prisoners. For the terms, first divulged and then
repudiated, may in fact represent the recent thinking of
the Administration on a Far Eastern settlement. Or they
may not.
Perhaps they had better be summarized here, along
with a few of the questions they raise.
1. Division of the Korean peninsula at its narrowest
part, some ninety miles north of the present line of
battle. (But what about the paragraph in the draft agree-
ment saying that the actual line of contact at the time the
armistice is declared shall be the demarcation line? And,
looking further ahead, what about the unification of
Korea, agreed to by the U. N.?)
2. A United Nations trusteeship for Formosa, with
an independent republic as the ultimate goal. (No re-
319
conquest of the Chinese mainland by the Generalissimo?
And what about the Cairo convention?)
3. A settlement of the war in Indo-China based upon
an agreement that Peking will quit sending arms to Ho
Chi-minh ‘and that France will grant self-rule to Indo-
China. (But who will determine which side will control
the country once the French leave and the fighting ends? )
WHATEVER its origin or purpose, Mr. Dulles’s ma-
neuver may have loosened his hold on his job. Not only
was his prestige dented by the White House denial, but
his plan has been implicitly turned down by an equally
potent Republican leader. Robert A. Taft says he is
against any settlement that divides Korea, Whether he
wants the war to go on until the North is conquered he
prudently does not say. Taft is also reported to be an-
noyed with the White House and with the crossed wires
between there and the State Department. In view, of all
this, John O'Donnell, writing in the New York Dazdly
News, has revived the idea that Governor Dewey may be
scheduled to replace Secretary. Dulles, “not tomorrow
morning or next week but in the foreseeable future.”
One is tempted to believe that anything would be bet-
ter than the backing and filling, zigging and zagging,
that serves as a foreign policy in these days of solemn
decision, Governor Dewey is at least an administrator.
But let’s not jump too fast. On the Far East, Dewey
strongly supports a policy to defeat communist
err lat Ay a
ent "ye ae
Fr Be are IMmae gy
a military alliance of all “free” Asia. Like Taft h
against a division of Korea: he wants it in one piece, —
presumably under Syngman Rhee or his successor. He is
probably less willing to make a political settlement with
the Communist governments than is Dulles. This is a
time when a shifting foreign policy, however dangerous,
may yet be safer than one that is consistently, rigidly
tough.
What is badly needed in Washington is flexibility
combined with a coherent, realistic picture of the world
we intend to bargain for. That there is no such picture
in the minds of the policy makers is evident. The Wash-
ington Post remarked last week: ‘In addition to talking
about a new boundary in Korea, Mr. X [that is, Mr.
Dulles} at the aforesaid meeting is reported to have ex-
pressed a hope that the civil war in Korea and Indo-
China would end and that the civil war between the two .
China’s would go on!” As the Post further pointed out, a
“disengagement in Korea requires an agreement with
the Peking government” —but just how we can reach an
agreement with Mao on Korea while we are still com-
mitted to the larger project of helping Chiang, or all
“free” Asia, overthrow Mao, neither Mr. Dulles nor any
other official—Governor Dewey included—has_ex-
plained. General Van Fleet at least makes sense, though
of a bloody sort. FREDA KIRCHWEY
POLITICS VS. SCIENCE —
The Weeks-Astin Fight . . by Bruce Gatton
-
hese
~ Weeks,
Washington
SOMETIMES you can tell what they
are after by what they say. More often
you have to wait and see what they do.
Once in a while, however, words and
actions together wing straight for the
target, and when that happens you can
really get a line on what is going on
down here. It is likely to make you
want to run for the cyclone cellar.
.Consider, for example, the curious
case of Secretary of Commerce Sinclair
known to his intimates as
“Sinny.”” Mr. Weeks has been complain-
ing about the way in which government
BRUCE CATTON is a contributing
editor of The Nation,
320
red tape can tie the hands of a good
administrator who wants to do the right
thing. “In private industry,” he said
recently in a speech at Palm Beach, “‘an
executive gives an order for an improve-
ment in service and—swish—it is carried
out. But a business executive in the
federal government cannot move as
promptly. He is beset by red tape, con-
flicting authority, legislative commit-
ments, unpaid bills, deficits, and seg-
ments of bureaucracy which frequently
hamper efficient and swift action. So be
patient if the new Administration does
not bring the millennium before mid-
night.”
Shortly afterward Secretary Weeks
collided head-on with a segment of the
bureaucracy known as the National
Bureau of Standards. At the request of
two government agencies concerned with
protection of the public the bureau had
made a number of tests on what are
known as battery additives—chemical
preparations which, added to an auto-
mobile battery, are supposed to provide
rejuvenation and a longer life. It re-
ported that the preparations it had tested
were not worth very much, whereupon
the manufacturer of one of them made
a vigorous protest, asserting that his
business was suffering because of the
unjustified meddling of a stuffy govern-
ment agency. ;
Secretary Weeks listened to the pro-
test, issued an order, and—swish—the
a gas
oP eee
The NATION _
Ca)
ese |. ="
order was exe Bea ear dhe dizedtor
of the ig Dr. Allen V. Astin, a
Republican and a distinguished Amer-
ican scientist. Dr. Astin’s resignation was
offered and accepted, and a new top-
level job was open for the Eisenhower
Administration to fill.
IT MAY SEEM that nothing more is
involved here than a row between a
department head and a subordinate.
Under the surface, however, a full-arm
swing has been taken at one of the
basic concepts of modern government—
the idea that scientific research must be
divorced from political control, that a
government scientific. agency calls its
shots as it sees them, that government
is concerned with protecting the con-
sumer and taxpayer as well as the
ptofits of business men.
The actual value of the particular
battery additive in question is a second-
ary consideration. By this time there are
so many scientific reports fluttering
about—so many claims and counter-
claims about how the additives were
tested, who tested them, and what the
tests really mean—that the layman can
hardly hope to decide who is right and
who is wrong. What is important is
the catastrophic effect of the row on the
Bureau of Standards itself.
For fifty-two years—its entire exist-
ence—the Bureau of Standards has been
free from interference. No Administra-
tion, until now, has played politics with
it. Dr. Astin has been on its staff for
twenty years. In 1940 he began to play
a prominent part in the bureau’s work
in developing the famous proximity
fuse; later he was chief of the Ordnance
Development Division and then asso-
ciatesdirector in charge of the Ordnance
Development, Missile, Electricity, and
Electronics Bureau. He became director
in June, 1952, succeeding Dr. Edward
U. Condon, who resigned to enter
private industry.
THE BUREAU'’S big job is research and
development, and in recent years about
85 per cent of its work has been for
defense. It started the A-bomb research
- and pioneered in guided missiles. About
1 per cent of its time is given to testing
processes and materials. It does not do
this work for private organizations or
citizens but at the request of other
government agencies, and their reliance
April 18, 1953
s
‘aoe Ne 2 ae ta iy
> m ‘
hd
on the scientific accuracy and complete
disinterestedness of its judgments is a
matter of very great importance. In this
work the bureau has no regulatory
powers whatever. It is solely a fact-find-
ing agency, and the truth of its findings
may save millions of dollars to con-
sumers and taxpayers.
Many government agencies which do
have regulatory powers depend on gov-
ernment laboratories for objective tests.
If the Federal Trade Commission; for
example, carrying out the Congressional
mandate to keep advertising claims about
manufactured products relatively factual,
wants to know whether those products
actually do what the manufacturers say
they do, it goes to the Bureau of
Standards to find out. If the Post Office
wants to institute a fraud proceeding,
it relies on tests made by the bureau.
The whole structure of specifications on
which the government bid system rests
is based on the bureau's research.
When Secretary Weeks undertook to
tell the Senate Small Business Committee
why he was removing Dr. Astin, he
complained sharply that the bureau had
“by its very set-up the power to make the
introduction of a new product on the
market very difficult, to prevent a prod-
uct’s being advertised by the Federal
Trade Commission, and to have people
labeled ‘fraud’ and denied the use of the
mails.’” The Secretary went on to say
that this was all very well if the bureau
used its power wisely and objectively,
‘but the trouble was that “they discount
entirely the play of the market place.”
Now it is of course obvious that the
one thing that the Bureau of Standards,
by its very nature, is not supposed to
have anything whatever to do with is
“the play of the market place.’’ Once it
gears its operations to that, it loses its
value. For half a century it has operated _
on the principle that its function is to
look beyond the play of the market
place and provide other government’
agencies with the sober facts. If this
is now to be changed, any attempt to
enforce a fraud order, to end misrepre-
sentation in advertising, or for that
matter to make certain that the concrete
which the government buys for its big
dams and power plants is up to standard
will be met with the simple question:
“Well, are they selling the stuff?” If
they are, the play of the market place
is working, and that presumably is that.
at .
Ever since he took office Mr. Weeks
has been contending that the Eisenhower
Administration’s effort to put its policies
into practice has been hampered by
officials held over from the previous
Administration. He has referred to such
men as “dead wood and poison oak,”
spoken bitterly of “road blocks’. and
“booby traps” left by the Trumanites.
He has assured his listeners that the
situation in Washington is worse than
even the Republicans had supposed and
that there are “Trojan horses” which
must be replaced.
IN VIEW OF all of this talk a glance
at Mr. Weeks’s own bailiwick, the De-
partment of Commerce, may be in order.
The first thing that strikes the eye is
that it is very largely composed not of
policy-making people but of agencies
which have wholly non-political jobs to
do. It includes, for instance, the Patent
Office, the Weather Bureau, the Coast
and Geodetic Survey, the Bureau of
Standards, the Civil Aeronautics Ad-
ministration, the Maritime Administra-
tion, and the Bureau of Public Roads.
Still, you never know where a Trojan
horse, all garlanded with poison oak,
is going to turn up. There was Dr.
Astin, for example—swish; and there
was Thomas H. McDonald, the widely
known ‘‘father of public roads,” who
has recently been replaced as head of
that bureau by a Delaware duPont.
The most important of the depart-
ment’s divisions operating in the politi-
cal sphere is the Bureau of Foreign and
Domestic Commerce, which includes
such agencies as the Office of Business
Economics, the Office of International
Trade, and the Office of Industry and
Commerce. Sundry New Dealers from
the old Foreign Economics Administra-
tion were brought into the Office of
International Trade during Wallace’s
brief tenure as Secretary of Commerce,
but for the most part its employees re-
flect the viewpoint and the appointive
power of the Hoover Administration or
of Jesse Jones. A man interested in
combing Fair Deal time-bombs out of
government departments would prob-
ably think the Department of Commerce
the last place to look.
The blow-up at the Bureau of Stand-
ards was handled with excessive clumsi-
ness and may prove to have been a
costly political blunder.
321
CONGRESS ON THE
A Warning to
THE beginning of defense is the rec-
ognition of danger. In the academic
world today there is a widespread fail-
ure to face and to assess realistically the
forces in American life which are now
mobilized to’ destroy academic freedom.
Specifically, many university professors
and presidents do not recognize the real
threat to themselves and to the society
they serve that is presented by the cur-
rent Congressional investigations of their
institutions.
Not very long ago, for example, the
Association of American Colleges
adopted a resolution declaring that “‘the
colleges should welcome any free and
impartial inquiry’ as a means of pro-
moting popular understanding of the
accomplishments of higher education.
A panel of the American Council on
Education, meeting recently in Wash-
ington, split sharply on whether to
welcome or deplore Congressional inves-
tigations: a minority called upon educa-
tors to join in protest against the
investigations as a threat to academic
freedom; a majority held there was
nothing to fear from such inquiries and
maintained that educators could not
claim “freedom of thought” for them-
selves while denying “freedom of in-
vestigation” td Congress. And finally,
President Lewis W. Jones of Rutgers
University, in a statement designed to
justify his dismissal of two faculty
members for declining to cooperate
with a Congressional investigation,
declared that “public investigation of
the universities is legitimate, and should
be frankly met. It implies no invasion
of academic independence.”
I am convinced that this attitude of
ALAN BARTH is an editorial writer
for the Washington Post and author of
“The Loyalty of Free Men.” This article
is an abridgment of an address he de-
livered before the recent annual meet-
ing of the American Association of
University Professors in Chicago.
322
Universities . .
‘‘welcome’’ toward legislative investiga-
tions of universities is disastrous folly.
It reflects—at least so it seems to me—
a total misconception of the problem.
In the first place, only the most absent-
minded of college professors could sup-
pose that in any serious_sense the inves-
tigations would prove to be “free and
impartial.” The men conducting them
have no intellectual competence for the
undertaking; they neither understand
nor care about the meaning of academic
freedom. In the second place, the man-
ner in which the investigations have
been conducted makes it plain that their
purpose is coercion; their aim is to force
the dismissal of individuals who have
earned the committee’s displeasure.
They menace Academic freedom, there-
fore, in the most direct and destructive
way.
I have heard men defend the policy of
welcoming investigations by quoting
the old adage that a soft answer turneth
away wrath; and this defense has been
buttressed by the argument that the
great philanthropic foundations escaped
censure by just this technique of meet-
ing their Congressional critics with open
arms. But it is a mistake to suppose
that the . philanthropic foundations
emerged from their investigation un-
scathed because they emerged uncen-
sured. At the conclusion of the inves- ©
tigation, it is true, they were given a
pat on the back by their inquisitors.
But it is a question how much they
will have to pay for this pat on the
back in terms of submission. They know
now that if they want to be patted again
when a Congressional committee chooses
to investigate them another time, they
had better not give any more fellow- |
ships to Aaron Copland—or to any mu-
sician whose political opinions may be
tinged with unorthodoxy. They know
now that they had better not make any
grants to colleges that keep “‘question-
able’ teachers on their faculties; a “ques-
tionable” teacher being one whom an
by Alan Barth
investigating committee wants to ques-
tion. They know now that they had
better not appropriate any of their funds
for research into political experimenta-
tion or social innovation.
A Congressional hearing—at any
rate a hearing conducted under the pre-
vailing know-nothing auspices—is a
disadvantageous place in which to fight
the battle for academic freedom. It pro-
vides, to begin with, an atmosphere un-
congenial and unfamiliar to men of
learning—an atmosphere in which the
presentation of a considered and rea-
soned argument is virtually impossible.
The presentation is bound to be inces-
santly interrupted by the explosion of
photographic flash bulbs, by the move-
ment of newspapermen and curious
spectators, by the gavel-pounding of a
chairman determined to exclude ration-
ality from the hearing room, and by
impertinent questions from members of
the committee. ’
IN SUCH A HEARING the discussion
will not concern itself with academic
freedom. It will concern itself, as the
committee chairmen have made quite
clear, not with principles but with per-
sonalities. It will revolve around such
questions as whether Professor A is a
Communist because Louis Budenz says
someone told him Professor A was be-
lieved to be a Communist a quarter of a
century ago. Or whether Professor B is
subversive because he belongs or once
belonged to organizations which have
incurred the disapproval of the Attor-
ney General or the House Committee
on Un-American Activities. Or whether
a particular college is Communist-dom-
inated because it allowed on its campus
a visiting lecturer who denounced the
Un-American Activities Committee. Or
whether a university is Red because
Allen Zoll does not like its textbooks
or some of its teachers.
‘The committee, presumably, will be
able to discover a few present members
The Nation
.
‘
RONEN yt: Peete Tim
‘of the C ommuni st Party on ollege cam-
puses. It may also discover a number
of teachers who joined the party years
ago for respectable reasons, who got
out of it years ago for respectable rea-
sons, and who do not now choose—for
equally respectable reasons—to make
witnessing a career. Some of the profes-
sors in this category will seek the pro-
tection of the Fifth Amendment in
order to avoid possible prosecution or
in order to avoid being required to give
the names of persons who, like them-
selves, joined the party innocently and
got out of it long ago. Some will refuse
to answer questions on abstract grounds
of conscience, p!eading the protection of
the First Amendment, and will find
themselves cited for contempt of Con-
gress.
When a committee of Congress hales
a man before it and asks him if he has
ever been a Communist, it impales him
on one or another of the prongs of a
trident. If the witness answers yes, the
committee is all too likely to insist that
he identify individuals who were in the
party with him—a kind of degradation
which any sensitive man might under-
standably desire to escape. If he an-
swers no, then the committee may hold
over his head the threat of a prosecu-
tion for perjury based upon testimony
that he was a former Communist by one
or another of the committee’s former,
and professedly reformed, Communists.
If he refuses to answer at all, pleading
the constitutional privilege against self-
incrimination, the committee hopes to
have his university discipline him by
dismissal.
I SUBMIT that it is outright folly for
any university to lend itself to this
stratagem. I submit that it is an abdica-
tion of academic independence for any
* university to agree to execute sentences
arbitrarily imposed by a Congressional
committee.
There is much force, I think, to the
statement made by Dr. Barrows Dun-
ham of Temple University, who, with
frank defiance, recently refused to tell
the House Committee on Un-American
Activities anything beyond his “name,
age, and place of birth. The committee,
in response, moved to have him prose-
cuted for contempt of Congress, an
offense of which he may well be guilty.
April 18, 1953
=
f. apres
a. oe ee
But this is a judicial question, involving
nice points of constitutional law, which
Dr. Dunham is entitled to have tried in
a court of law. If convicted there, he
will be subject, of course, to punish-
ment. Temple University, I think,
should not have prejudged him; and it
should not in the absence of compelling
evidence have imputed disloyalty to con-
duct which was apparently based con-
scientiously on principle. Dr. Dunham
stated the principle in these words:
There is no question that Congress has
the right, as it has the power, to investi-
gate for legislative purposes. What I en-
countered last week, however, was not
genuine inquiry but public defamation
intended to extirpate from the colleges
not disloyalty but dissent. I conceive
that no act of mine could have better
displayed my loyalty to this country and
its traditions than the course I followed
last Friday.
Whatever Dr. Dunham’s past may
have been, whatever the merits and mo-
tives of his individual position—and
without more knowledge I have no wish
either to condone or condemn what he
has done—it seems to me that he is
quite right in the essential point he has
made: that the committee has not been
conducting an investigation of univer-
sities but a purge of university pro-
fessors. For my own part, I think that
teachers who plead the privilege against
' self-incrimination are neither admirable
nor astute. But if they are to be automat:
ically disciplined for doing so, the com-
mittees will have developed a formidable
method for determining the membership
of university faculties—something which
might well be determined by the facul-
ties themselves in a free society.
A college which “welcomes” these
investigations is mistaken, in terms of
principle as well as in terms of ex-
pediency. Its attitude violates the essen-
tial principle that institutions of higher
learning ought to be independent of the
government in the same way and for
much the same reasons that the church
wind the press are independent of the
government. They cannot make their
vital contribution to a free society if
they are subject to political control. I
am not questioning the legal authority
of Congress to investigate institutions of
higher learning—or. the church or the
press, despite the constitutional limita-
tions on legislation in these spheres.
But to say that Congress has power to
investigate is not necessarily to say that
this power ought to be exercised. In my
view, it ought resolutely to be eschewed
in regard to universities, at least when
the aim and tendency of the investiga-
tion is coercive.
THE NOTION that the church, the
press, and the universities should serve
the state is essentially a Communist no-
tion. Government control of these insti-
tutions is a distinguishing characteristic
of every totalitarian system. In a free so-
ciety these institutions must be wholly
free—which is to say that their function
is to serve as checks upon the state, as de-
vices for keeping governmental author-
ity within appropriate bounds.
A free society differs from a totali-
tarian society in that its government is
one of limited powers, and limited
jurisdiction. There have always been
important areas of American life which
have been left to private regulation,
higher education among them. The ad-
ministration of state universities has gen-
erally been delegated to boards of
regents, responsible ultimately to state
legislatures but never to the federal
government. The administration of
America’s great privately endowed uni-
versities has always been in the hands
of boards of trustees, self-perpetuating
or elected by the institution’s graduates.
And these have been on the whole
sober, conscientious, and capable gov-
erning bodies, in no need of Congres-
sional supervision.
If universities “welcome” Congres-
sional investigation today, they will end
by embracing Congressional control to-
morrow. If they let a Congressional com-
mittee purge professors now, they will
eventually let it control the curriculum.
The seeds of ultimate surrender are
sown in seemingly trivial and innocent
323
\
concessions. Let us recall the solema
warning on this score uttered so elo-
quently by John Jewkes of the Uni-
versity of Manchester in England more™
than a century ago:
The greatest tyranny has the smallest
beginning. From precedents overlooked,
from remonstrances despised, from
grievances treated with ridicule, from
powerless men oppressed with impunity
and overbearing men tolerated with com-
placence springs the tyrannical usage
which generations of wise and good men
may hereafter perceive and lament and
resist in vain. . . » Hence the necessity
of denouncing with unwearied and even
troublesome perseverance a single act of
oppression. Let it alone and it stands on
record. The country has allowed it, and
when it is at last provoked to a late
indignation, it finds itself gagged with
the record of its own ill compulsion.
The record of the current investiga-
tions into colleges and universities has
been a record of “powerless men op-
pressed with impunity, and overbearing
men tolerated with complacence.”’ It is
a record which we can review only with
a sense of shame. But it is hot too late
to reverse it and to make an effective
defense of intellectual freedom and
academic independence. Let us begin
now to mobilize the great reserves of
devotion and good-will which the uni-
versities possess. Let us carry the battle
outside the rigged hearing rooms of the
ee ee eS ae
:
ayers
on ele tie 4
Congressional committees and appeal
the alumni associations in every city
and town throughout the United States:
Let us appeal to the pride of the Amer- |
ican people in the great, free institu-
tions of learning which they have built
and maintained.
The battle is joined; and no one wha
calls himself a teacher may now be
laggard. Teachers have an obligation
to warn their countrymen of the danger
‘that confronts them and then to close
ranks and fight as resourcefully and
resolutely as they can. They will be fight-
ing for much more than freedom for
themselves. They will be fighting for
the whole of human freedom.
FORMULA FOR PEACE
A Plea to Americans. . by Aneurin Bevan
{ANEURIN BEV AN, leader of British
Labor's left wing, has just returned to
London from a trip through the Far
East. What follows is his first public
statement after his return. The Nation
will shortly publish several articles by
Mr. Bevan dealing with his experiences
in the Orient.] ;
London
THE FACT that the situation in the
Far East has taken a turn for the better
may lead some people into over-opti-
mism. I suggest that we cross our fingers
and see how things will develop. Al-
though the ending of the Korean war
would of itself be a magnificent event,
results could be very serious unless there
followed a positive attempt at pacifica-
tion in the Far East. In other words,
psychologically the situation would be
worse than it is now if the present
policy of military containment and
preparation for an attack on the Chinese
mainland were to continue.
We can understand this better if we
realize that for some time now there
has been a division of opinion within
the Soviet Union. I know that many
people seem to think that argument is
impossible in Moscow, that as a con-
324
sequence of the inspiration which comes
from the writings of Karl Marx, there is
always a sort of spontaneous unanimity
of opinion.. Perhaps one reason why
some people think this way is that we
hear from the Soviet Union only what
they have decided and not the process
by which they reached the decision.
But as a member of a Cabinet for six
years, I am convinced that all Cabinets
must argue, and we can take it for
granted that the Russians are no excep-
tion in this regard. They have been
arguing not merely about their intentions
toward the West but about the West’s
intentions toward them.
What is true of the Russians is also
true of the Chinese. The Chinese leaders
have been having an argument which
goes something like this: If they agree
to a truce in Korea, would America—or
certain. elements in America—regard
that as evidence of Chinese weakness?
And would these Americans regard the
truce as a response to their “get tough”
policy which permits Chiang Kai-shek
to attack the mainland? If as the result
of peace in Korea all that happens is
that the United States continues to arm
Chiang Kai-shek and to encourage him
to attack the mainland, then we will
have driven the Chinese masses into
spiritual isolation and resentment against
the West.
That is the danger. We should thére-
fore regard the present overtures as ex-
ceedingly welcome, but we should try
to persuade opinion in the United States
and here in Britain that a necessary con-
dition for the consolidation of peace in
the Far East is the immediate disbanding
of Chiang Kai-shek’s army on Formosa.
As for Formosa itself, return it to the —
Chinese government to whom it belongs.
Spokesmen for the United States have
stated that Formosa belongs to China;
whatever government is on the mainland
of China should be the government of
Formosa.
But what we want at this stage is to
relieve China of the fear of the resump-
tion of civil war. That is absolutely
essential in order to build_a permanent
bridge between China and the rest of
the world.
When I was in India and Pakistan
and Burma I talked to very large num-
bers of people in all walks of life. I
did not come across anyone who sympa-
thized with American policy. They could
understand why the United Nations had
decided to restrain aggression in Korea.
The NATION | 5
\@ Prem coind shy the fationl which was
foremost in insisting upon collective
security against aggression was_ itself
preparing an act of aggression against
China. They say in the Far East: “What
is America up to? Is this an assertion of
collective peace or is it a preparation for
counter-revolution?” If it is the latter,
then all over the Far East they see an-
other attempt to establish white im-
perialism in every Asian country.
GREAT BRITAIN occupies a very
powerful position in the Far East, even
though we are not as big or as rich as
the United States. We have a moral
leadership such as no nation has ever
possessed before. We exercise this
leadership as a consequence of the fact
that we were the first great imperial
nation in the world voluntarily to abdi-
cate power; that we left India, Pakistan,
Ceylon, and Burma to found independ-
ent governments of their own. There-
fore we are ourselves deeply committed
to see that this independence is not
threatened from any quarter.
Let me ask my American friends—
and despite what is said to the contrary,
I have many American friends—whether
they seriously imagine that we in Britain
are going to involve ourselves in a
third world war in order to put Chiang
Kai-shek back in China? I have come
across no significant enthusiasm for
Chiang Kai-shek anywhere in Great
Britain, from the extreme left to the
extreme xight. If there is on Formosa a
man who has no chance of realizing his
ambitions without a third world war, is
it not in the general interest of mankind
to destroy that man’s power?
It seems to me that we are in a very
hopeful but at the same time highly
dangerous phase. Let us welcome the
overtures that have been made, but let
us not behave as though we believed
those overtures were a consequence of
Chinese Communist weakness. Let us
rather believe that they are evidence of
a desire for peace.
The Chinese revolution is going
through the same sort of development as
the Russian revolution did. I can remem-
ber.taking part in meetings here in Lon-
don more than a quarter-century ago,
when we were fighting for something
different from this yet curiously similar.
We were demanding then that Britain
April 18, 1953
: hodld § give credits to Russia, help the
Russian revolution, help the Russians to
industrialize. In one thing we succeeded:
we did stop Winston ,Churchill from
murdering the Russian revolution. We
did not succeed in stopping him and his
friends from starving the revolution. We
must always remember that one of the
principal causes for most of the faults of
the Communists in Russia stems directly
from the fact that the Russians had to
industrialize with their own resources
and with no assistance from the indus-
trialized West.
The most significant discovery I made
when I was in Southeast Asia a few
weeks ago was that a rapid conversion
from agrarian to modern living stand-
ards, unless aid is received from the
outside, involves dictatorship inside. It
is therefore complete nonsense to talk
democracy to the Far East and to starve
them at the same time.
All this is nothing new. We in Great
Britain went through something of the
same thing. The great industries that
we are so proud of, the great steelworks
that the Indians and Chinese have not
got and which are responsible for our
_own high standard of life, were all built
out of the wages which our grandfathers
went without. Now we pay the Asians
the high compliment of expecting them
to do what it was impossible for us to
do: to industrialize their country, when
they are half-starving, under the aegis of
democratic institutions and without any
of the roughness that accompanies polit-
ical dictatorships.
THAT IS WHY I say to my friends in
America: don’t make the mistake about
the Chinese revolution that we British
made about the Russian revolution!
Even if you give up the idea of destroy-
ing it militarily, don’t try to starve it
_ to death, because all you will accomplish
is to drive the Chinese administration
into the same monolithic excesses that
you witness in the Soviet Union. That
surely is the lesson, isn’t it? That is why
we want not only to carry the present
negotiations to a successful conclusion,
but to“ open the freest possible trade
between China and the rest of the world.
Mr. Acheson said that the People’s
Government of China could not be ree-
ognized because it was _ established
“irregularly,” but I seem to remember
that the United States was itself estab-
Chiang Kai-shek
lished -very irregularly, and with con-
siderable help from outside. When some
of my American friends say that China
ought to give up intervening beyond
its borders, I recall that France inter-
vened in the American war. I seem to
remember that there were more French
soldiers in the last battle of the Amer-
ican Revolution than there were Amet-
icans. Yes, history gives us many ex-
amples of intervention.
What we have to learn in _ this
twentieth century is how to maintain
collective peace in the world and still
enable people to change their govern?
ments. And if no democracy exists by
which the change can be made, what
then? You have no moral case against
violence in such a case. Will anyone tell
me on what moral grounds you can con-
demn violence if you deny people
liberty ?
There rests upon this generation an
obligation to fight for peace, and we
can fight for peace only by insisting that
the lessons of the past be learned. We
must tell our American friends that it
really is not necessary for them to repeat
all the foolishness of Great Britain. We
would gather that they proved wiser
than we were and showed that they can
deal with the Chinese revolution more
sensibly than we dealt with the Russian.
The time has come for us to tell our
government.to tell the American govern-
ment that we in Great Britain are pre-
pared to cooperate with the United’
States in the maintenance and_ pursuit
of peace, but not in the pursuit of war.
And I am confident that, in saying so,
I am expressing the feelings” not only
of the vast majority of the American
people but of the majority of the people
of the world.
325
MOVIE ULTRA-REALIST
Zavattini’s Bold Idea . . by William Murray
NO INDIVIDUAL has contributed
more to the impressive rebirth of the
Italian film industry since the war than
Cesare Zavattini, an eloquent and com-
bative intellectual who has become the
spokesman of the so-called “‘neo-realis-
tic’ school of writers, producers, and
directors. Zavattini has been sole author
of fifteen movie scripts and estimates
that he has contributed or worked on at
least fifty others. His best films were
the result of collaboration with the
director Vittorio De Sica and include
“Shoeshine,” ‘‘The Bicycle Thief,”
““Miracle in Milan,” and the more recent
“Umberto D,” which has yet to be
shown in the United States. All these
De Sica-Zavattini films have been in-
spired by what Zavattini calls ‘‘a hunger
for reality.”
Both he and De Sica consider the
cinema a legitimate art form which
should not concern itself with “the de-
ceptions of entertainment.” ‘Christ
with a movie camera in his hands,”
says Zavattini, concoct
fables, however skilful, but would show
us who we are and why we do what
we do.” That is neo-realism
means to Zavattini, and it explains the
kind of film that he and such men as
Roberto Rossellini ~ (“Open City,”
“Paisan’””), Luigi Zampa (“To Live in
Peace’), and Renato Castellani (“Iwo
Cents Worth of Hope’) have been
making in the seven years since Italians
have been allowed to think and work
as they pleased.
Like most genuine art forms, the
neo-realistic film was not initially the
product of intellectual theorizing. The
first example, Rossellini’s “Open City,”
was the result of the irresistible cre-
ative force running smack into the
immovable economic obstacle. After
twenty-five years of Fascist sterility the
-newly liberated directors and writers
“would not
what
WILLIAM MURRAY, a frequent con-
tributor to The Nation, has spent many
years in Italy.
326
were steaming to express themselves,
but the limitations of Fascist censorship
had been replaced by what seemed to
be a more serious handicap—tlack of
money and equipment. In 1945 few
capitalists were rash enough to want to
invest in film production. The sound
stages of Cinecitta, Italy's major film
studio on the outskirts of Rome, had
been demolished by the retreating Ger-
mans, and the whole area was occupied
by
Even actors, of which a superfluity is
usually available, were not to be had.
But the neo-realists went ahead and
made films There were no
actors: they plucked people off the side-
thousands of homeless refugees.
anyway.
walks and cast them in the leading roles.
There were no sound stages: they
filmed in the streets and in private
homes. There were no costumes: they .
used modern stories about everyday
events. “Open City,” the story of Rome
under the German occupation, was
filmed at a total cost of $18,000, and to
everyone’s surprise was acclaimed as
one of the great movie masterpieces,
which it is.
The Italians realized that they had
done something new and exciting with
the motion-picture camera. Neo-realism
ceased to be an accident and became a
conscious technique. As such it acquired
devoted partisans and made bitter
enemies. Though praised abroad, these
realistic movies did not please the Ital-
ian public. Rossellini once grumbled
that Italians preferred Betty Grable to
his films, and when De Sica was on a
visit here last year he said that he could
not have gone on making pictures had
it not been for their box-office success
in the United States. Today, within the
Italian industry itself, strong pressure is
being brought to bear upon writers, di-
rectors, and producers to recognize, the
importance of commercial success. The
new technique needed. a champion and
got one in Zavattini.
A STOCKY, middle-aged, kindly man,
Zavattini spends most of the day in his
apartment on the outskirts of Rome
pounding at his typewriter or dictating
to his secretary. His latest proposal for
neo-realism is known as the “film
lampo,” or “film flash.’ The “film
Jampo” would carry the early docu-
mentary technique several steps farther
by completely eliminating actors, sets,
and shooting scripts and substituting
real situations for recreated ones. Zavat-
tint would like nothing better than to
turn a battery of cameras loose upon all
of us and record for posterity what we
ure doing with our lives. “We -must
recognize the fact,” he says, ‘‘that neo-
realism has not yet attained its ultimate
development. It has become clear that
after having carried artifice to its utmost
possible plane of reality we must now
dispense entirely with the artificial and
focus our attention upon real, -living
human beings.”
Today if someone wants to make a
film about, say, a strike, a plot is con-
jured up and actors are cast in the
various roles. The “‘film lampo,” how-
ever, will show an actual strike, and
the actors will be those who take part
in it. Zavattini has little patience with
a person who insists that the imaginary
is more interesting than the real. ‘Such
he says, “would plug his
”
a person,
; ‘reaibet be-
came too loud.” Zavattini believes that
almost everything that happens to a
man is interesting. The function of
realism, he says, is to emphasize the
ordinary, not the extraordinary. This
will enable us ‘to understand each
other better and give us an ever more
exact idea of our position within the
fabric of society.”
Several months ago a_ twenty-one-
year-old unwed mother named Caterina
ed Bgeuliosh tried to ein her baby
in an empty lot in Rome. Her case
made newspaper headlines and sug-
gested to Zavattini his first real-life
star. Unfortunately, his producer in-
sisted that the girl was too plain, and
the project collapsed. Now Zavattini is
at work on a new idea which may turn
out to be the first “film lampo.’”” He
and three young documentary directors
are preparing to film, in some thirty
episodes of varying length, events wit-
nessed during a stroll through a large
city. Everything in the film will have
actually happened. The protagonists will
be the people of the city.
Of course Zavattini is fully aware
that there is also a place for poetic
films, like those of Charlie Chaplin,
which are in no sense neo-realistic. He
does not ask that everyone should em-°
brace neo-realism. He simply distrusts
a mass-production movie - industry
whose taboos are as stifling to creative-
ness as any imposed by the Fascist
censors.
WHEAT WILL VOTE
G.O. P’s Worry for ’54
Minneapolis
FARMERS in the upper-Midwest wheat
country will decide whether Congress
stays Republican or goes Democratic in
1954. And how they vote will depend
largely on what they think. about one
man and his policies. That man is Ezra
Taft Benson, the first Republican Sec-
retary of Agriculture in twenty years
and the current whipping boy in the
Eisenhower Cabinet.
In Congress now the balance is ex-
tremely delicate: in the Senate 48 Re-
publicans, 47 Democrats, 1 Independent,
1 Vice-President; in the House at the last
count 221 Republicans,-212 Democrats,
Ft Independent, and 1 vacancy. If Secre-
! tary Benson is right that farmers are
against government aid and price-pro-
tection laws, and are willing, even when
at prices of their products are falling, to
. trust them to the judo tactics of the free
market, then the Republicans will win
in 1954. If he is wrong, the Republicans
* will lose. It is as simple as that, barring
' the unforeseen.
The nation’s farm vote went 60 per
cent for President Eisenhower. But in
the four spring-wheat states of Minne-
sota, North and South Dakota, ~and
Montana farmers went for Eisenhower
GORDON ROTH is editor of the Co-
op Grain Quarterly, organ of the Na-
tional Federation of Grain Cooperatives.
better than two to one. North Dakota
ran neck and neck with Vermont for
top honors by giving him 71 per cent
of its vote. In these four states three
Senators and fifteen Representatives will
be up for reelection in 1954. The Sena-
tors are James E. Murray, Democrat, of
Montana; Hubest H. Humphrey, Demo-
crat, of Minnesota; Karl E. Mundt,
Republican, of South Dakota. Ten of
the Representatives are Republicans and
five are Democrats. What happens
here is likely to happen, too, in the
rest of this great surplus-food-producing
region of the United States.
It may be that the Republican Ad-
ministration will risk farm wrath in
1954 and gamble on strong consumer
support for its “cheap food’ program.
But a slight ebb in rural Republican
strength might become a trend. That
could bring defeat in 1954 and set the
skids under Eisenhower in 1956,
“Most city people wonder what the
fuss in the farm belt is all about. They
believe farmers ate rich. They blame
farmers for high food prices. They con-
demn the “squandering,” as they see it,
of millions of tax dollars to subsidize
farmers. The facts, as compiled by the
Bureau of Agricultural Economics, show
that the per capita farm income went
down from $969 in 1951 to $924 in
1952. Non-farm per capita income for
“the same period rose from $1,744 to
by Gordon Roth
$1,827. Oris V. Welles, head of the
_ bureau, says the signs point to a further
drop of 5 per cent in net farm income
for this year. Harold Roach, head of
Jowa’s Republican Farm Council, says ~
the drop will be 10 or 15 per cent.
Even in the recent “good times’—
and most farmers, like city people, never
had it so good—farming has been a
nip-and-tuck operation for many. Any °
farmer will tell you that the things he
must buy have gone up more than the
things he sells. And something else has
been added in recent years—machinery.
Tractors have replaced horses. Tractors
are not raised but must be bought at
a fixed price. Tractors don’t eat oats and
corn but fuel oil, which must be bought
at a fixed price. Paying $5,000 for a
combine to harvest 60-cent oats is an
easy way to go broke.
Farmers are sensitive to falling prices.
Maybe the years of good living and
ptice supports have made them too soft
for Secretary Benson’s moral-rearma-
ment program. Benson told an audience
in St. Paul last month, from which the
general public was barred, that his
“guiding purpose will be to strengthen
the individual integrity, the freedom,
and the very moral fiber of each citizen.”
In a broadcast he appealed for “nation-
wide repentance to rid this land of
corruption.”
It would do all of us good, including
PPT ee
members of the President’s Cabinet, to
“raise our sights beyond the dollar sign,
beyond material things,’ as Secretary
Benson urged. But what has that to do
with falling farm prices? As one raw-
boned corn-and-cattle farmer pointed
out, “Prices aren’t made in heaven, and
most farmers know it.” Another farmer
said, “I haven’t been farming all these
years for fun.”
Secretary Benson’s suggestion that
farmers raise their sights beyond the
dollar sign may plague Republicans in
1954. It may rival Defense Secretary
Wilson’s quip, “What's good for Gen-
eral Motors is good for the country,” as
a Democratic campaign barb. Such re-
marks will certainly not put farmers in
a forgive-and-forget mood if farm prices
keep sagging. Here are some of the
reasons why they might even cost Re-
publican control of Congress.
1. If Republicans are to keep control
of Congress, they must keep control of
the Middle West. To-do this they must
keep control of the farm vote.
2. Middle Western farmers believe
that President Eisenhower made a
“golden promise’ when he said at Kas-
son, Minnesota: ‘““Here and now, with-
out any if’s or but’s, I say to you that I
stand behind, and the Republican Party
stands behind . . . the . . . amendment
to the basic Farm Act . . . to continue
through 1954 the price supports on
basic commodities at 90 per cent of
parity. . . . I firmly believe that agricul-
ture is entitled to a fair share of the
national income . . . a fair share is not
merely 90 per cent of parity, but full
parity.” This does not jibe with Secre-
tary Benson’s belief ‘that “our agricul-
tural policy should aim to obtain in the
328
ee
market place full parity prices of farm
products.” *
3. Middle Western farmers are better
organized and more demonstrative in
their demands on Congress for price-
support laws than farmers in other parts
of the country. They distrust the free
market as much as they would Wall
Street to get them “fair farm prices.”
Most of them believe that “farm prices
are made in Washington.”
SECRETARY BENSON'S views are op-
posed by the Farmers’ Union in this
area. Here the Farmers’ Union—and its
parity-price program—is backed by
huge and successful cooperatives. These
cooperatives have an amazing vitality
that is due in part to their historical
continuity with the old Equity Coopera-
tive Exchange and the Nonpartisan
League. Two of them—the Farmers’
Union Grain Terminal Association and
the Farmers’ Union Central Exchange
—have a net worth of more than $50,-
000,000 in patronage savings. They
publish their own newspaper and maga-
zines, sponsor network radio programs,
have active field workers, and make
substantial contributions to Farmers’
Union organizations to carry on co-op
educational work.
Farmers in these states have learned
that to get results they must organize,
buttonhole Congressmen, and compel
politicians to outdo each other in de-
livering on their promises. They have
taken lessons in lobbying from the rail-
roads, utilities, and other organized
pressure groups.
Senator Milton Young, Republican,
of North Dakota, knows this. He is a
wheat farmer still and co-author of sev-
eral amendments which have pegged
wheat and corn support-price loans at
90 per cent of parity until 1955. When
Secretary Benson failed to make himself
clear on price supports, Senator Young
went after him with his political bolo
knife. Secretary Benson equivocated.
Senator Young made wild sweeps. Sec-
retary Benson yielded—said the govern-
ment would hold butter prices at 90 per
cent of parity for one more year. That
‘appeased Senator Young a little. But
neither he nor any other Midwestern
Senator, whether a Republican or a
Democrat, has finished with the Secre-
tary of Agriculture.
ms ‘aes
Grain Exchange, gcitadel of “get your =
price in the market place” economics,
pleaded with Secretary Benson to use
his authority to check the fall in farm
prices. He even wanted price-protection
legislation. The Argus Leader of Sioux
Falls, South Dakota, which has never
deviated from its congenital Republican-
ism, was so disturbed last month by re-
minders of the thirties—cash registers
ring less merrily now in many prairie
towns—that it gave this bit of advice
free to President Eisenhower:
The Eisenhower Administration should
do some worrying—and do it quickly—
about the recession in farm income. It is
a cloud on the horizon that is growing
bigger day by day. And it could very
readily produce complications of a serious
nature—sufficiently serious to result in a
sharp setback in the economic indices and
perhaps some substantial Democratic vic-
tories in the election of 1954.
Economic discussions are usually dry
reading, and it is easier to command an
audience with remarks about mink coats,
government corruption, careless spending,
and dissension.
It will be a disturbing error, however,
if the Administration ignores the hand-
writing on the economic wall now grow-
ing more emphatic.
If Secretary Benson understands this,
he will find life more bearable in the
hot months ahead. Parity politics are
not party politics; in the farmers’ battle
to maintain prices party labels- mean
very little. No one questions Benson's
honesty. But his office carries with it the
burden of responsible decision-making,
and for that good judgment as well as
honesty is necessary. Secretary Benson
should remember that questioning the
judgment of government officials is not
a smear on them. It is a legitimate func-
tion of free citizens. .
This farm-price fight should not be_
construed as a manifestation of disap-
proval for President Eisenhower. The
President has so far escaped criticism.
But lesser politicians are feeling the ris-
ing storm of rural discontent. That is
why Republican Congressmen’ are de-
manding that Secretary Benson do noth-
ing which might drive farmers, who
have just been coaxed back into Repub
lican pastures, out into the Democratic
wilderness again. If Secretary Benson
can keep the farmers fenced and fed—
under his present policy—he will have
added something new to the unique
. The . president of the Minneapolis. charm of our two-party system.
ce The NaTIoN
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‘reached by American,
The Key Questions
United Nations
THE most important events of the week
past have occurred outside the United
Nations—the agreement reached at Pan-
munjom on the exchange of sick and
wounded prisoners and the Berlin con-
ference between the three Western
powers and General Chuikov on air
traffic over Germany. But what happened
at the United Nations is also important,
and it would be a misleading understate-
ment to talk of a mere change in tone.
There was, indeed, a change in tone,
and it was visible in the handling by
the Russian speakers of issues that have
hitherto been the most controversial—
disarmament, the germ-warfare charges,
and the Korean war itself. But there
were also changes of substance.
As expected, the most discussed
speech was the one made by Mr. Vishin-
sky on Thursday before the Political
Committee. Many would have wished it
less controversial and regretted that he
spent so much time in pronouncing an
obituary on the Atlantic Pact, the Schu-
man Plan, and the entire foundation of
the Western coalition. Mr. Vishinsky
based his arguments on statements made
by Western statesmen, citing numerous
examples of the pessimistic conclusions
British, and
French experts. But the most important
thing about the speech, in my opinion,
was that it clearly demonstrated Mos-
cow’s intention to press the diplomatic
peace action initiated by numerous
recent conciliatory gestures. It proved
also that the United Nations occupies a
_ key place in the Russian plan. -
‘One passage of Mr. Vishinsky’s -
speech carried a particular significance:
“We must not always insist on the literal
inviolability or unchangeability of pre-
vious resolutions. We do not insist on
that. That cannot be the basis of tnter-
national cooperation, which must be
based on mutual concessions.” This
- would seem to indicate a disposition to-
ward greater elasticity, including possi-
ble changes in the Russian stand on both
the Disarmament Commission, when it
meets again, and the Korean problem.
Mr. Vishinsky devoted a large part
of his speech to proving that there is no
“new Moscow peace policy’ but that
it is Stalin’s own peace policy which is
being developed at the appropriate mo-
ment. This point is important because it
lends more weight to Russian proposals,
present and future. For every trained
diplomatic observer agrees that we are
only at the beginning of Moscow’s plan
to change the international situation. If
the current Russian policy -were ad-
mittedly different from that laid down
by Stalin, it would be easy to conclude
that a change of mind on the part of the
new Soviet leaders or a struggle among
them might again produce a different
picture within a few months.
Another of Mr. Vishinsky’s chief ob-
jectives was to invite a psychological re-
turn to San Francisco—to the birth of
the U. N. and the first Assembly. This
involved an exploration of the original
causes of current international tension
and a revival of the concept of collabo-
ration among the great powers on which
the U. N. and its Charter were based.
It was also a preparation for the next
likely Russian move—a proposal for a
Big Four conference on Germany.
~ Germany. is now finally admitted by
the Western camp to be the supreme
concern of Soviet diplomacy, the real
- issue which may decide peace or war.
A Russian initiative cannot simply, or
safely, be countered by a Western pro-
posal of free elections. If Moscow re-
gards the prevention of German rearma-
ment and of German integration with
the West as essential, the Russians may
themselves ask for elections. They might
even agree to such elections under U. N.
supervision—a procedure they rejected
at the Sixth U. N. Assembly in Paris. To
sacrifice their control over East Germany
might not be regarded as too high a
price to pay, especially since the victors
in free all-German elections would be
-the Socialists, not Dr. Adenauer, and the
4
result would probably be a united, neu-
tralized Germany—no threat either to
the Russians or to anyone else.
It became clear last week that Mos-
cow is assigning a greater role to the
United Nations. It would not surprise
me at all if the Russians were to return
to the U. N. specialized agencies, which
they quit long ago, and through them
enter the vast and promising area of
technical aid. From there they could
do much to rally the support of the
neutral and undeveloped countries, far-
ticularly those of Asia.
All this makes it urgent for every in-
terested observer to think in terms of a
diplomatic situation quite different from
that prevailing today. It would be in-
teresting, for example, if Western polit-
ical and economic experts would sug-
gest answers to the following questions:
1. Germany. What would be the
Western reply to a Russian offer of elec-
tions in the whole of Germany, con-
trolled by the United Nations?
2. Japan. In the event of a Far East-
ern situation profoundly altered by the
ending of the Korean war, should Japan
be permitted to trade with Communist
China? Should Japan be rearmed ?
3. International Trade. If a change in
the international situation were to oblige
the United States to switch from a
predominantly war economy to a pre-
dominantly peace economy, what are the
possible new markets for its production ?
4. Formosa. If peace is made in
Korea, will American policy toward
Chiang Kai-shek be based on the Cairo
agreement of 1943, which accepted For-
mosa as part of China, or, if not, on
what concept will it be based ?
5. Control of Atomic Weapons.
What are the possible alternatives to the
Baruch plan, now considered even by
Mr. Lilienthal as obsolete?
These are but a few of the questions
that will have to be answered in the
course of adjusting the public mind to
the idea of peace rather than inevitable
conflict.
R29.
happiness came to be associated with
government.
If the meaning of the phrase seemed
more or less self-evident to the eight-
Happiness Versus Power
A Review by Merle Curti
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. By
Howard Mumford Jones. Harvard
University Press. $3.50.
VERY school child knows that the
Declaration of Independence as-
serts our natural right to the pursuit
of happiness, even if he has not the
vaguest notion of what a natural right
is or what the Fathers had in mind in
using the word happiness. But school
children are not alone in being vague
about these things. My guess is that a
good many scholars could not tell just
how the words got into the basic docu-
ment. Most academicians, probably
most historians, would be surprised to
learn that the formula appeared in al-
most two-thirds of the state constitutions
adopted between 1776 and the dawn of
the twentieth century. The long list of
court decisions that turned on the mean-
ing of the phrase “pursuit of happiness”
is even less fanailiar. Historians of our
literature, education, recreation, religion,
and popular culture could no doubt
say something more or less sensible
about the meanings attached to the idea
of happiness in these spheres. But it is
likely that they would confess the need
of further study. For the term happiness
seldom appears in the indexes of any of
the scores of monographs and general
writings on American cultural history
that fill my library shelves. This is
somewhat surprising in view of the in-
tensive cultivation of the history and
meaning of American values and ideas
in the past quarter-century.
Some years ago Howard Mumford
Jones of Harvard University asked
himself why Americans had so gen-
erally demanded happy endings in the
books they read and the plays they saw.
MERLE CURTI is Frederick Jackson
Turner professor of history at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin and author of “The
Growth of American Thought,” which
won a Pulitzer award.
330
The question was the more pertinent
since a change in this respect seemed
of late to have set in: the public gave
signs of a readiness to settle for varia-
tions on the theme boy meets girl, boy
and girl live happily ever after. It was
fortunate that Mr. Jones, one of our
most brilliant authorities on American
literature and thought, took in hand the
inquiry into the history of the much-
mouthed but baffling phrase “pursuit of
happiness,” for he possesses just the
scholarly equipment, temper, and wit
to perform the task and to present an
informed, shrewd, and highly readable
report on his findings. The solid yet
graceful book at hand is made up of
lectures given at the University of
Michigan under the sponsorship of the
William W. Cook Foundation. It is a
book to be read and then talked about
—not to be talked about and then per-
haps read.
MR. JONES offers plausible answers to’
the question what streams of thought,
what ethical and philosophical tenden-
cies, created in eighteenth-century
America the phrase “the pursuit of
happiness.” We learn that some
classical writers held that happi-
ness was resignation tempered | by
the cultivation in daily life of nature,
books, the arts, good food, wine, and
congenial friends. This idea of happi-
ness found favor with the eighteenth-
century aristocrats who enjoyed the
means and leisure for gracious living
and . thoughtful contemplation. But
eighteenth-century Americans also in-
herited the Christian tradition, with its
emphasis on the idea that happiness is
to be found in obeying God’s law. Ia
the minds of the Puritan divines there
was nothing at all incompatible between
this and worldly success. In fact, God
blessed economic enterprise, especially
when it @urned out well. Mr. Jones
Iearnedly lets us in on the secret of just
how all these ideas about the pursuit of
eenth century and therefore in no need
of special definition, this was less true
in the nineteenth century. Mr. Jones
could have illustrated the conflicting
views on the subject by taking his
examples from a wide range of belle-
tristic writers. He has chosen three
whose lives spanned the century—
Cooper, Emerson, and William James.
The author of Leatherstocking held that
the advance of rough-and-tumble de-
mocracy, laying low as it did status and
and the inheritance of property, dealt a
deadening blow to happiness. Cooper
found solace in God and in His orderly
and dignified church. Emerson had no
use either for Cooper’s passing élite or
for his God. He found happiness rather
in self-realization within the frame of
spiritual laws. In the latter part of the
century William James, like Cooper
and Emerson, rejected the pursuit of the
dollar as the way to happiness. This he
found rather in the adjustment of inner
experience to the outer world. James
made it clear that this adjustment was
easy enough for those endowed with a
happy-go-lucky temperament and hard
for those to whom the world was a
painful business. But for those who
faltered not in the struggle the exhilara-
tion of sustained effort brought the re-
ward of happiness. Had Mr. Jones been
writing a longer book he could no doubt
have pointed up the essential American
qualities in all these formulas for hap-
piness by comparing and contrasting
Cooper, Emerson, and James with their
opposite ‘numbers in the Old World.
This would, indeed, have been illum-
inating. And I think that Mr. Jones
would agree that, given more space, it
would have been well to emphasize the
relation of science and technology to
thought about the pursuit of happiness.
In our own day few give more than
the barest lip-service to Cooper's notion
that happiness is to be found only ia
an order that recognizes status. (The
idea is, however, simmering in the writ-
ings of those who are trying to elab-
orate a neo-conservatism.) More seem
to find an appeal in Cooper’s decision
to fall back on a traditional God—but
no one can say of how many this is true.
There are also, certainly, those who find
The NATION
se ali iN tune with universal
truth and law, as many cults testify. But
it is a big question whether any great
number of Americans really reject the
idea, shared by Cooper, Emerson, and
James, that business success is closely
related to happiness. On the other hand,
the Jamesian stress on adjustment as a
never-ending process lies at the basis of
much that is done today in the name of
counseling, guidance, scientific manage-
| ment, mental hygiene, and the whole
psychiatric approach to life’s problems.
The chapter in which this theme is de-
veloped is too rich and riotous for me
to cite even one example: you will have
to read it. You will know, while you
do, what happiness is, I suspect.
IT IS RIGHTLY SUGGESTED by Mr.
Jones that it may be well to take a more
critical look at the prevalent vogue of
the adjustment formula. I think he might
himself have gone much farther than he
did in this respect. For grateful though
Americans should be for all that is
theirs, and justifiably indifferent to the
note of frustration and anxiety that col-
ors so much of our notable recent lit-
erature, they might also be concerned
over the implications for happiness of
the retreat of private judgment before
an ever more demanding state. In one’
of the most original and erudite parts
_ of his book Mr. Jones discusses the
court opinions that have tried to define
the area in which the individual is per-
mitted to pursue happiness free from
the restrictions of the state, and the area
POL EI
.Reverie of Frustration
THE OUTSIDER. By Richard Wright.
‘Harper. $3.95. Richard Wright and
‘Henry Miller are among the few writers
of stature who emerged from the transi-
tional period of the 1940's, when the
older generation went sour. For that
reason the failure of Wright’s new nevel
is deplorable; it betrays our hopes as
well as his. The story, despite some ex-
cellent scenes of realism in Wright’s
old manner, is symbolistic in structure.
— Quite like Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible
*
=
“in which the state justifiably restricts
that pursuit in the interest of collective
happiness. Many of the cases discussed
were contradictory and ambiguous: in
some states at certain times the courts
set aside legislation that interfered with
the pursuit of happiness through im-
bibing intoxicating liquors, that re-
quired a masseuse to pass an examina-
tion in hair-doing before being permit-
ted to give facials, and that forbade
men to make contracts to work as long
and under such conditions as they
chose. On the other hand, in the inter-
est of social well-being and happiness
courts have also interfered with the in-
dividual pursuit of happiness through
smoking opium, burning natural gas
by day and by night, and buying a copy
of “What Every Young Girl Should
Know.”
It is obvious that happiness requires
both individual freedom and individual |
restriction. The mounting tide of the
latter, however necessary, has been ac-
companied by the waning of a great
many traditional American protest and
reform movements—notably the peace
movement—and by a corresponding
emphasis on individual adjustment. It
would indeed be ironical if some fu-
ture historian of the pursuit of happi-
ness should record that at the very time
widespread material well-being _ tri-
umphed, the demands of conformity in
a world power struggle jeopardized the
traditional American emphasis both on
improving the social environment by
change and on self-expression in the
sphere of the mind.
New Fiction
Man,” it presents the predicament of the
Negro intellectual, separated from his
race, disenchanted with communism and
perhaps all political salvations, attempt-
ing to evaluate the meaning of an ex-
istence that is completely in the void.
There are remarkable passages in the
narrative. The analysis of the “‘sensu-
ality of power” in the Communist
mentality is devastating. Rejecting
Ellison’s meliorism, Wright's “hungry
mind” explores the farthest extremes of
desperation and surveys almost every
unpleasant aspect of the emancipated
Just off the press!
GIANT
BUSINESS:
THREAT TO DEMOCRACY
the autobiography of an insider by
T. K. QUINN
formerly Vice President of General Elec-
tric and Chairman, G. H. Finance Co.
SENATOR
JOHN SPARKMAN
SAYS:
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which are generally overlooked
by writers on American econ-
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large business.”
“Here is the inside story of
American Big Business by
an insider, told with candor,
warmth, and humor.”
THE NATION
“A lucid, impelling and power-
ful story on the evils of giant-
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ADDRESS.
Negro’s social status; or lack of status.
But these intellectual sorties—a kind of
incessant, compulsive reverie of frustra-
tion—gain their brilliance at the expense
of the narrative itself, during which the
hero becomes an abstract monster, and
even murder is only the occasion for
another bout of introspection. Perhaps
Wright can profit from the career of
Jack London, who traversed much the
same literary path from illegitimacy to
paranoia. In any case the book is bad,
but only as a work of genuine talent
can be bad, and nevertheless full of
interest.
New Books
of immediate significance
WORLD
WITHOUT END:
The Middle East
By EMIL LENGYEL
author of The Danube,
Turkey, etc.
“The story of the Middle East—
its geography, people, history and
politics.... A useful book for the
layman who craves information
about one of the most unsettled
regions of the present world and
wants his facts in simple and read-,
able language.” —The Nation.
$5.00
THE END OF A
REVOLUTION
By FRITZ STERNBERG
“Dr. Fritz Sternberg, well-known
writer on political and economic
themes, tells the story of how the
Russian revolution of November,
1917, was aborted and how the
promise of liberation was denied.
... A very impressive and concise
little book.”——PAUL JORDAN-
SMITH, Los Angeles Times.
$3.00
At all bookstores
THE JOHN DAY COMPANY
Sales Office: 210 Madison Avenue, N. Y. 16
332
Youthfal Horrors
NINE STORIES. By J. D. Salinger.
Little, Brown. $3. Accomplished and
effective stories which range from the
macabre to the psychopathic by the
author of “Catcher in the Rye,” includ-
ing the much-discussed New Yorker tale
of the child prodigy who pushes his
sister, we think, into the empty swim-
ming pool, Mr. Salinger is a fiction
writer of great brilliance; the danger is ~
that he will become one of definite and
ultimately disappointing limitations. Just
as Saroyan has succumbed to the
glamour of a happy childhood, it is
possible to be infatuated by the charms
of juvenile diseases at the expense of a
larger and more complex area of human
suffering. This is sickness of mind in a
very small world for a writer of large
gifts.
Hollywood Actor
PRINCE BART. By Jay Richard Ken-
nedy. Farrar, Straus and Young. $3.95.
A sensational and much-publicized
Hollywood novel that is nevertheless
excellent reading of its kind and shows
the keen discernment and technical vir-
tuosity of its author, a talented first
novelist. Mr. Kennedy explores areas of
animal vitality and subhuman or super-
human cunning that neither “The Last
Tycoon” nor ‘The Day of the Locust’
quite reached, and does it very well. The
protagonist is a famous actor who has
suffered a heart attack; the account of
his daily life is grotesque and tragic. It
is only when the story reaches back
into the past, and moves from the area
of lust and calculation to that of depth
psychology, that the narrative falters-
and takes on something of the slippery
make-believe of the world it describes.
French Love Story
COUNT D’ORGEL. By Raymond
Radiguet. Grove Press. $3. In a transla-
tion by Violet Schiff which frequently
traduces the light flow of the original,
Radiguet’s study of Paris high life in _
the twenties has at last been brought out
for American readers. The story is, in
the purest sense, a love story, in which
the young protagonist, Francois de la
Séryeuse, loves but does not possess the
wife of a close friend. Mahaut, Countess
d’Orgel, a tenderly exotic yet believable
there was no time to prepare [her} de-
fence.” Yet to this double yearning there
was no consummation, for Fran¢ois,
recognizing the superficiality and caustic
artifice of his friend, at bottom under-
stands and condones it as characteristic
of the frantic period in which they live.
Hence he does not despise him and
cannot betray him.
Jean Cocteau, in a short preface giving
just homage to Radiguet’s precocious ,
talent, quotes the following prescient
passage from the author's notes
—Radiguet died at twenty-one: ‘What
family does not possess its infant
prodigy? Certainly remarkable. children
exist, just as there are. remarkable
men. They are rarely the same ones.
Age is nothing. It is Rimbaud’s work
and not the age at which he wrote it
that astounds me.” To those already
familiar with Radiguet, whose _best-
known book is, of course, “The Devil
in the Flesh,” this delightful yet heart-
breaking little story will come as a wel-
come addition.
Does It Make Sense?
THE LAUGHING MATTER. By
William Saroyan. Doubleday. $3.50.
Frankly, this is a puzzlement., The story
concerns an Armenian family of four,
including the son Red and, believe it or
not, little Eva, aged four, nicknamed
Sexy, because “sexy means beautiful.”
Mama (Swan) becomes pregnant — by
another fellow; the father, an English
professor, beats her up and flees from
the house amid the most profound wis-
dom from the mouths of little Red and
Sexy, beside whom Henry James’s chil-
dren are backward. From then on the
narrative becomes a mish-mash of ~vio-
lence, anguish, love, hate, forgiveness,
symbolic speeches about I know not
what. Mama Swan dies from an over-
dose of sleeping pills; hubby goes mad
and shoots his brother (by .accident?);
the lover, identified, commits suicide.
The children are left to stumble through
the halls of the Library of Congress,
one supposes; or the graduate school
at Princeton, in quest of Einstein. Does
this make sense to you? It shouldn’t,
but it is really no laughing matter.
Saroyan, a nice writer in his right mind,
should be ashamed of himself.
es
—*
ae oes
fy O%
Om
,
r 2
——_—_———— a
S. Lane Faison, Jr.
HE retrospective exhibition of
Georges Rouault, which has arrived
at the Museum of Modern Art from
Cleveland, was reviewed in this column
on the basis of its appearance last Jan-
uary in what I was repeatedly warned
not to call the Midwest. Different set-
tings and new juxtapositions inevitably
challenge one’s earlier reactions, but I
do not wish to alter except in details the
comment already made. The ampler
spacing which the Museum of Modern
Act affords this show is much more
sympathetic to Rouault’s big-scale ef-
fects, and the reticent grays of the
walls are infinitely preferable to Cleve-
land’s bright yellow. But the works of
Rouault are so powerful that they merely
need to be shown; in quantity, however,
they seem less repetitious when less
closely packed. One additional Clown,
from a private collection in Springfield,
has joined the sober company. Its cone
and crescent of white hat and ruff
dominate the very dark blue-green of
the costume and the deep browns of the
face and background. I still find «the
very recent works rather chalky and
occasionally insipid, and I still think the
masterpiece of the show is the huge
Clown lent by Edward G. Robinson.
Three other fine Rouaults have been
shown for the past month on the ground
floor of the museum among forty paint-
ings lent by this same collector. In a
genial foreword Mr. Robinson has ad-
mitted that crime sometimes does pay.
As a collector, he has fared well but not
always brilliantly, if I may be allowed to |
express a tactless opinion. There are a
good many items which are chiefly inter-
estihg because a certain painter painted
them. But there are two great master-
* pieces, both early works: Cézanne’s
- Black Clock—which symbolically tells
no time—and Matisse’s La Desserte
of 1897, his first major work, preceding
by ten years the Bonheur de Vivre,
which the Barnes Foundation. makes so
little available to an interested public.
There is a wonderful late Corot figure
piece, and there is Van Gogh’s Pére
Tanguy, painted toward the end of his
- sojourn in Paris, marking perhaps the
first return of the power of his Dutch
period after his difficult struggle to as-
similate the ways of impressionism.
Three Pissarros and three Renoirs illus-
trate the cogency of Paul Klee’s remark:
“So, in their time, the Impressionists—
our opposites of yesterday—had every
right to dwell within the matted under-
growth of everyday vision.” I do not
recall ever having seen a more buoyant
or fresher Sisley than the Pont Saint
Cloud, but the Monet, Willows, is a frail
example without much sensation of
either the matting or the undergrowth.
Gauguin, whom Henri Focillon once
called a Peruvian bourgeois, tried
awfully hard to be different from the
everyday Impressionists. In Horsemen
on the Beach, a very late work, he has
achieved color harmonies of unparalleled
lushness, but the horsemen are out of
Degas all the same, and their silhouettes
are bad Degas, utterly undistinguished
when observed on their own account.
Opposite this much-overrated canvas
hangs a military trumpeter on a muscle-
bound mount; the picture is labeled
Géricault, who, if he ‘painted it, is
best not remembered by it. But the
Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril Dancing,
is for the ages; and two Boudins,
though minor efforts, are ravishing.
ROBERT MOTHERWELL, in a show
at the Kootz Gallery, includes a number
of collages, for which he uses ordinary
wrapping paper, the brown color of
which will presumably remain fairly -
constant. Working it into curved shapes
infiltrated with pale gray-blue areas, he
conjures up reminiscences of sandbars
and coastlines. This kind of delicacy is
a little unexpected from Motherwell,
whom I link with Gottlieb and some
others as carrying, or able to carry,
mural painting well beyond the point
where Léger left off rather too long
ago. I do not like these collages of
Motherwell’s, perhaps for the same
reason that I find his small studies for
big compositions tight and suffocated.
He works best with a few forms on a
large canvas, as in La Danse, where
three black curvilinear shapes weave a
Abasia
Ablutomania
Abulia
Acalculia
Acataphasia
Aggression
Alcoholism
Amnesia
Anal eroticism
Anancasm
Anti-Semitic
attitudes
Anxiety, dental
Aphasia and
linquistfics
Autism, infantile
Auto-punishment
Benzedrine,
addiction
Bestiality
Body image
disturbances
Boredom
Brontophobla
Cacodaemonomania
Chloral delirium
Choreomania
Clairvoyance
Claustrophobia
Cocaine, addiction
Crime, neurotic
Criminality
Depression
Devil worship
Dream murders
Dysprosody
Ecouteur
Ecstasy, artificial
Erotographomania
Exhibitionism
Family tension
Fellatio
Fetishism
Folie a deux
Frigidity
Frottage
Gambling
*Gammacism
Gelasmus
Gustatory sweating
Gynephobia
Hair-plucking
Hallucinations
Haptodysphoria
Fras THIS HANDY ee ee
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Encyclopedia of
ABERRATIONS
APSYCHIATRIC HANDBOOK
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With a Foreword by
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New York University College
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This is the first systematic exposition
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OVER HALF A MILLION WORDS
Hashish, addiction
Head banging
Heroin, addiction
Heterolalia
Homosexuality
Hysteria
Iconolagny
Illusions
inferiority feelings
Intellectual
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Kainotophobia
Kakorrhaphiophobla
Kleptomania
Language frustration
Laughter, fits of
Lesbianism
Logorrhea
Lying
Malingering
Masochism
Menstrual anomalies
Mescaline
intoxication
Murderer, mind of
Mutism
Mysophobla
Narcolepsy
Necrophilia
Negativism
Nudism
Nymphomania
Ochlophobia
Onanism
Opium, addiction
Pavor nocturnus
Pessimism
Pethidine, addiction
Phobias
Pornography
Psychosis
Puberty, aberrational
Sadism
Schizophrenia
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Zoophilism
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333
rhythm of terrific impact on a field of
blazing red-orange bound by a deep bor-
der of khaki. The title suggested Ma-
tisse, and I have heard Motherwell
criticized in intelligent quarters for
merely warming up what Matisse did
long ago and better. I do not agree with
any such estimate. One way of express-
ing my feeling would be to say that
Motherwell’s rhythms and chords of
color, though doubtless based on Ma-
tisse in some final analysis, are power-
fully contemporary, whereas Matisse
belongs, even today, to. his own Art
Nouveau generation, which also in-
cluded Toulouse-Lautrec and Edward
Munch, not to mention Aubrey Beards-
ley. (For this approach to Matisse I am
indebted to an unpublished study by
Frank Trapp, which strongly diverges
from Alfred Barr's estimate.) Several
seasons ago the Museum of Modern: Art
organized a show called Three Modern
Styles: Art Nouveau, Cubism, and Free
Form. Each was presented as a reaction
from the preceding style, and in the
natural course of events the third was to
some extent a return to the first. To in-
terpret Motherwell as neo-Matisse seems
to me as erroneous as to interpret Dela-
croix, who moved away from the neo-
classicism of David, as mneo-rococo,
though of course there are important
points of resemblance between Dela-
croix and Fragonard.
TWO OTHER LEADERS of the newer
American painting, Willem Dekooning
and Bradley Walker Tomlin, have
been exhibiting in the adjoining Sidney
Janis and Betty Parsons _ galleries.
. {Dekooning’s show ended April 11.}
Nothing could more clearly indicate the
perils of ism-coining than the wide
divergence of these two so-called Ab-
stract Expressionists. Dekooning was
never altogether abstract (Black Friday,
The Excavation, The Attic), and the
present show offers six large canvases
all titled The Woman. If I had ‘seen
these paintings before reviewing Jacques
Maritain’s new book in last week’s Na-
tion, 1 should have remarked that they
illustrate perfectly Maritain’s unfortu-
nate attack on today’s deformations of
the human figure..I should also have
remarked -that his attack applies also
to the early water colors of prostitutes
by Georges Rouault, whom Maritain
rates at the summit of modern art.
Actually, Dekooning’s females are less
334
terrifying in the context of 1953 than
Rouault’s probably were around 1905-
08, and they are no more worked over
than many Cézannes. The violence of
Dekooning’s earlier work is still there,
and so is the discipline: note how the
grays and silvers inclose the new range
of color and how the blacks set them
off with something of Rouault’s sense of
contrast and accent. In addition to the
six big canvases, there is a series of small
studies. While these are chiefly interest-
ing as examples of work in progress, the
same can be said for many of Cézanne’s
water colors on the theme of The
Bathers, which lead up to two major
canvases, one at Philadelphia and the
supreme achievement of them all at the
Barnes Foundation—if photographs can
be trusted.
From Dekooning’s electric violence to
Tomlin’s measured elegance is a big
shift in emotional gears. Tomlin’s re-
cent work is not essentially different
from what he has been doing in the
past four or five years, and as this vein
is a richly productive one, we should
rejoice in its continuation. On the
whole, however, the tone is more tenu-
ous than before and the color relations
are increasingly subtle. At the Museum
‘of Modern Art show of fifteen Amer-
icans, Tomlin seemed to me to play
Music
B. H. Haggin
HE New York City Opera’s produc-
tion of Rossini’s ‘La Cenerentola”
proved to be one of its finest achieve-
ments, which deserved its triumph with
the audience at the first performance.
The company has been—and continues
to be—undiscriminating in its adven-
turousness; but this time it chose a work
that deserved the effort expended. on
it: “La Cenerentola” is filled with su-
perb and delightful writing in Rossini’s
lyric, comic, and florid bravura styles—
the last in particular often taking one’s
breath away with its controlled extrava-
gance. Also, the company has repeatedly
undertaken works that one thought be-
yond its resources and powers; and this
one required styles of singing that one
didn’t expect the members of the New
Tomlin has a secret affinity. We are cer-
can be thought possible, of a large-scale
mid-century Demuth. From me this is
high praise indeed. Within the limits
that Tomlin, like every good artist, sets
himself, he has a considerable range.
While all the pictures are completely
non-objective, their poetic impact is
very strong and very concrete. The first
picture to the right of the entrance
(Number 1) may be compared to the
experience of looking at Japanese cherry
blossoms against a gray sky, or even to
the interior of Bavarian eighteenth-cen-
tury churches of the style I like to call
“barococo.”’ But like Pollock, Gottlieb,
Dekooning, and Motherwell, Tomlin is —
at his best in large canvases where the
play of his forms has a wider scope. I
do not think of him’ so much as an
architectural muralist because of the
overwhelming importance of texture and
the nearly unbelievable refinement’ of
color harmonies. Anyone who would
pass this off as decoration alone should
be prepared to make the same estimate
of Watteau, for whom I suspect that
tainly not in an Age of Degradation, as
Maritain would have it, when the pre-
vailing idiom is varied enough to allow
a Dekooning and a Tomlin to coexist.
\
York City Opera to be capable of. But
the company usually has come through
successfully in the past; and this time
again Frances Bible astonished one with
a bravura style that gained in security
and impressiveness in the course of the
performance; Richard Wentworth aston-
ished one as much with his buffo style;
and George Gaynes’s buffo style was
perhaps the greatest surprise of all to
those who knew him as the romantic
male lead in “Wonderful Town.” Sur-
prising too, if Riccardo Manning was
the Italian tenor he seemed to be, was
the musicality and taste that operated in
his phrasing of lyric and florid music.
Having said this I must add that one
thing in the singing of Bible and some
of the other Americans—Laurel Hurley,
th pronunciation 0 of Italian,
7 : principally their sharp American t's; and
i 3 I find it difficult to believe that these
tt
OR Sar I ye are
singers couldn’t with sufficient work and
care achieve as good pronunciation as
Wentworth’s. Also I must add that
under Rosenstock’s direction the orches-
tra didn’t surprise one in the way the
singers did—with the style, the sharp-
ness and tension, that its playing would
have had if Cantelli or De Sabata had
conducted.
In addition the singers acted well—
above all Gaynes, whose Dandini aston-
ished one further with the make-up and
all the other detail of a superbly worked
out stylized characterization. And in this
one saw the excellent stage direction of
Otto Erhardt. Corny scenery and direc-
tion have been the weakness of most of
the company’s productions; and one felt
a little uneasy at the first sight of the
scenery of Rouben Ter-Arutunian based
on an old English toy-theater adaptation
of the 1830 production at Covent Gar-
den. But what would have been unbear-
ably cute with some of the direction the
_ company has offered in the past proved
quite charming as the background for
the unaggressively amusing details of
action in which Erhardt made the essen-
tial lines of character and story explicit.
His. work was a model of what opera
direction should be: assuming the
audience’s inability to understand the
Italian words and its knowledge only of
what it had read in the program—e.g.,
that Dandini impersonates Prince Ra-
miro, and eventually reveals his» true
identity to Don Magnifico—Erhardt
made this explicit, with restraint as re-
- markable as his sense for comedy, in
: details that caused the audience to burst
into laughter at Dandino’s first entrance
and kept it laughing all the way through
his duet with Don Magnifico. And it is
', therefore hard to understand the inter-
polation of a spoof of ballet that is
completely out of context in the produc-
tion and a shocking lapse of taste and
intelligence.
In the Metropolitan Opera “Don
Giovanni” that I attended George Lon-
don sang beautifully, looked dazzlingly
handsome and elegant, and acted with
his force of presence and projection—
which would seem to add up to a hun-
dred per cent; but without the make- “up
that conceals his youthful appearance in
_ other roles his Don Giovanni simply
BETH CREEVEY HAMM,
ye cc ald! enough to be credible as the
libertine with 1003 conquests in Spain
alone. In the first act Eugene Conley
sang Dalla sua pace with flawless beauty
of tone and sustained phrasing, and
Roberta Peters surprised me—after her
singing in ‘Rigoletto’ last year—with
a lovely performance of Batti, batti; but
Regina Resnik’s tremulous stridency in
high notes, Margaret Harshaw’s com-
bination of tremolo and acid, and Sal-
vatore Baccaloni’s buzz-saw-like hoarse-
ness amounted to sheer assault and
battery on the ears. It was astounding
therefore, and appalling, to observe
what happened at the solo curtain-calls:
the perfunctory applause for Conley, the
storms of applause and yells not only
for London but for Harshaw, for Resnik,
for Baccaloni. I observed recently that
the-Metropolitan should offer the public
only the good singing that would teach
it to recognize bad; instead the Metro-
politan has presented good and bad
equally as the best in the world, until
the public by now doesn’t always rec-
ognize the good and even prefers the
bad.
_-For the record I must add that in the
second act Conley got a little breathless
in one of the long florid passages of
I] mio tesoro; and that on the other
hand Resnik and Harshaw reappeared
miraculously freed of their tremolos—
the result being to leave Harshaw’s
voice merely rough and harsh, but to
reveal Resnik’s as quite lovely when it
is under control. I should add also that
Reiner produced a beautiful orchestral
framework for the singing, but that the
dramatic framework attributed to Her-
bert Graf is one of those most urgently
in need of replacement at the Metro-
politan.
Art Notes
WALLACE PUTNAM'S paintings pre-
sent cows, landscapes, and seascapes of
a far from wild and woolly West. He
uses a pictorial shorthand that inscribes
the essence of scenes in clear flat colors.
—Passedoit to April 25.
former
president of the National Association
of Women Artists and an active ex-
hibitor, shows water colors of scenes in
Colorado and Connecticut. The colors
are warm, the style illustrative, and
much attention is paid to contrasting
forms of flowers and rocks.—Argent
to May 2.
ARMIN LANDECK is represented in
this retrospective exhibition of twenty-
five years of printmaking by etchings
and engravings of lonely streets and
buildings lit by street lights. They are
fine atmospheric prints in a style akin
to Hopper.—Kennedy to April 30.
LAWRENCE KUPFERMAN, one-time
surrealist, has taken Biblical themes for
his new paintings. These are richly
colored abstractions which suggest the
universality of their stated subjects.—
Levitt to April 30,
SNORRE ANDERSEN is a Norwegian
painter having his first show in the
United States. These landscapes of New
England .express moods of nostalgia or
loneliness.—Serigraph to April 27.
W. R. LEIGH, last member of the trio
of painters of the Old West which
included Remington and Russell, is
showing a representative selection of a
half-century of his work. His paintings
portray cowboys, Indians, bronco-bust;
ing, and all the picturesque subject
matter of the last frontier—Grand
Central to May 2
ALFRED DRAKE
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Crossword Puzzle No. 512
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
ACROSS
1 Aside from helpers, the president is
entitled to a few. (5)
4 In the old days, many a vessel this;
and some this with many a vessel.
(9)
9 This is one lacing that certainly isn’t
ill-suited. (9)
10 Tarkington’s magnificent family is
left childless. (5)
11 Where Lady Macbeth immediately
placed imprecations? (2, 3, 4)
12 A couple of notes for money of ac-
count in Italy. (5)
18 Various styles of baggage handled
by the railroad? (5, 5)
17 One couldn’t say Shelley or Keats
was like a man in court. (10)
21 Does he admit to having something?
5
22 Is ring poise acquired by a change
of dressing gowns? (9)
23 Stradivari’s teacher, named by proc-
lamation. (5)
24. Were Elgar’s variations so mysteri-
ous? (9)
25 Sort of dreads to see the name on
the outside, perhaps. (9)
26 A rather plain sort of fur. (5)
DOWN
1 One of the things that makes the
fieet so fast? (6)
2 Indieate the sort of need to take
such things as 12 away? (6)
8 It holds things together more on the
slant, perhaps! (6)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
ica ae a
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EBtEaERhRih:
PT ye)
aa eRa me
ae, SS
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| | | ee
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4 One would expect spoiled children
with those who don’t spare the rod
re those who aren’t wide-awake.
5 Divided whatis immeasurably great
about 4, to barely mention an exam-
ple. (5, 10)
Water which suggests the transfer
of its barrier? (5, 3)
A glib line is bad enough, but even
more dangerous in print! (8)
This sort of room used to be asso-
ciated with Carroll’s party. (8)
14 Convenient eating establishment
article, typified by Olympia. (8)
15 Stops to make a sort of synonym for
one who 4-across too often. (8)
16 Charge off, but not all at once! (The
British would make this look like
quite a joint.) (8)
18 This might make me lean over on
my teeth, perhaps. (6)
19 Leave a little change for the chief
—it’s perfectly all right. (6)
20 Refuse to go where you. might find
wood and tin. (6)
ee
_ SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 511
ACROSS :—1 CONSTRAINS; 6 SPIT; 10
ARMLESS; 11 oe 12 GHNERAL
SHERMAN; 14 EEN; nd 23
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E id APRIL 18, 1953 y Printed in the U. S. A. by SreinBerRG Press, ING., Morgan & Johnson Aves., Brooklyn 6, N. Y¥.
tae
@ Whither Russia after Stalin?
e Is there no alternative to atomic war with Russia
which will slaughter millions ...and settle nothing?
With an Introduction by Prof. Henry Pratt Fairchild, N. Y. University
Among the Vital Chapters
in This Timely Book—
The Soviet Constitution
Soviet Ethnic Democracy
Soviet Russia and Religion
Contrasts between Soviet Social-
ism and Fascism
Soviet Foreign Policy
Co-Existence or Co-Destruction?
THE AUTHOR
Distinguished author,
lecturer and teacher of
philosophy at Columbia
University, Dr. Lamont
has spent 20 years
studying and observing Soviet so-
ciety, including two trips to the
U.S.S.R.
SOVIET RUSSIA—
HEAVEN OR HELL?
“The book attempts to steer a
middle course between the view
that Soviet Russia is an inferno
of evil and the view that it al-
ready has brought into being a
paradise beyond all criticism.”
» —Newburyport, Mass., News
SHOWS OTHER SIDE
‘An extreme contrast to the pic-
ture of Soviet Russia drawn by
members of our own government
and our press and radio.’’
—Bay City, Mich., Times
INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY
“His reputation for Intellectual
Integrity ought to be enough to
earn him a hearing.”
—Charlotte, N. C., News
@ Malenkov says: “There is not one disputed
or undecided question that cannot be decided
by peaceful means.”
e Should we believe this...
or must we suspect a Soviet trick?
SOTO
by CORLISS LAMONT
HIS major new work by the author of The
Peoples of the Soviet Union and Humanism
as a Philosophy is a searching study of Soviet
Russia and its all-important relations with our
country. It helps to make clear the motivation of
otherwise baffling actions of the Soviet Govern-
ment in the U.N., Europe, the Far East and
inside Russia.
In this thoroughly readable volume of 452
fact-packed pages, Dr. Lamont gives a compre-
hensive, undistorted picture of and a soberly
objective evaluation of Soviet affairs, foreign
and domestic.
He shows not only the desirability (which al-
most everybody admits) but also the feasibility
of lasting peace, far-reaching disarmament, and
normal trade between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R.
grounded in the mutual self-interest of the two
nations.
Super-duper “patriots” who seek only sweep-
ing condemnation of the Soviet Union won’t
like this book. Neither will leftists who view the
U.S.S.R. as a Utopia of supermen. But everyone
interested in a practical program to prevent
World War III will want to-read, and help put
into action, Corliss Lamont’s monumental con-
tribution to the cause of peace.
452 pages... $5.00
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRAR
Publishers
15 EAST 40th STREET, Desk N, NEW YORK 16, N. Y.
CONTRIBUTES TO PEACE
“A compendium of indispens-
able facts and arguments for all
who work for peace.”
—New World Review
10 MILLION AMERICANS
“If this book were read by ten
million Americans it could have
a profound influence on the
shape of human destiny.”
—Prof. Henry Pratt Fairchild
JINGOISTS U.S.A.
“Good material...on the shock-
Ing jingoistic talk that goes on
in America today.”
—Bruce Bliven, New Republic
GRUDGING TRIBUTE
“If the curious phenomenon
known as Corliss Lamont did not
exist, it would surely be neces-
sary to invent him — if only for
his educational value to the
younger generation.”
—The New Leader
U.S. WAR MONGERS?
“Most shocking and stimulating
Is the sub-chapter ‘Incitements
to War against the U.S.S.R.’
which contains well-documented
evidence of the American atti-
tude—both public and private—
against the Soviet Union.”
—Durham, N. C., Herald
. =
CALM, RATIONAL,
CRITICAL
“A mighty contribution toward
understanding between the
American and Russian peoples
. approaches this subject in
a calm, rationai, and critical
manner, assessing the credits
and debits, the good and the
bad.”
—Economic Notes
COMPREHENSIVE STUDY
This ‘‘new book won't find Its
way Into the best-seller lists but
probably should... .Dr. Lamont
attempts to provide a compre-
hensive study of both the Com-
munist philosophy and its fore-
most present exponent, the So-
viet Union.” ,
—Clarksdale, Miss., Register
ee! eT " st at 4
<A 7 ;
o- ie BOOKS ° THEATER ° FILMS ° RECORDS |
y '
; ae Hs
i PUBLIC LIBRARY i)
| THE i ® Burling ame cal I |
| (q V7 O Va i
CC EE a
20¢ [
Ho W Kar '
i
Dar C We
Push China’
by W. Macmahon Ball '
The Mess in Indo-China Helen Mears ‘
a Mau Mau Terror L. SB. Leakey a
Brel Monsters and Men EL. EL. Witlson
_ SINCE , i
-A Review of T. K. Quinn’s “Big Business” a
1865
Around
the
U2
The Great Crusade
Takes a Header
Topeka, Kan.
AFTER all the Republican screaming
about the ‘Missouri gang” and the ‘‘S
percenters’”” who operated in Washing-
ton under Truman, the Administration
-must have been shocked and humiliated
to have the Republican-controlled Kan-
legislature uncover facts
branded the chairman of the National
Committee an accomplished ‘Kansas 10
Sas which
percenter,” leader of a clique closely -
allied with big utility interests and no-
toriously engaged for the past fifteen
yeats in activities closely resembling
“influence peddling.”
Specifically, Mr. Roberts was censured
for having violated the spirit of a state
anti-lobbying law when without regis-
tering as a lobbyist he engineered a deal
through which the taxpapers bought for
$110,000 a tuberculosis sanatorium
building which the Kansas Attorney
General and many other lawyers declared
was already owned by the state. Mr.
Roberts was paid a fee of $11,000 for
this piece of work.
It is regrettable that the Kansas legis-
lative committee did not go on to show
how Roberts obtained his power and in-
fluence and who induced President
Eisenhower to make him chairman of
the National Committee, with that post's
far-reaching control of patronage. For
some mysterious reason the committee
did not even try to bring out the details
of Mr. Roberts’s work for the Cities
though Mr.
Roberts admitted that the company paid
him $3,750 just to keep an eye on how
the legislators were performing. He
denied that this fee was for lobbying,
but coincident with its payment the
Cities Service Company obtained a long-
Service Gas. Company,
sought objective. For fifteen years the
big utility company had been trying to
get the legislature to empower it to take
over abandoned wells throughout the
state for use as gas-storage facilities. It
was never able to do so until it employed
Mr. Roberts.
Frank Carlson, the junior United
States Senator from Kansas, is generally
credited with having influenced the
President to pick Roberts to direct the
Republican National. Committee. But
undoubtedly other powerful forces were
active in Roberts's behalf. Eisenhower
and the president of the Cities Service
Company are such close friends that the -
latter journeyed all the way to Georgia
just to play a round of golf with Ike
when he took his first rest trip South
after his inauguration. In fact, Roberts's
climb to power in Kansas party politics
had a “‘gas-company aroma’’ from the
beginning.
e The son of the pub-
lisher of a small-town weekly, C. Wes-
ley Roberts entered public service in the
middle thirties as a clerk in a Kansas
port-of-entry station. When Payne H.
Ratner was elected Governor in 1938,
Roberts, who had worked at campaign
headquarters in association with State
Chairman Walter Fees, an oil and gas
man, was given the job of executive sec-
retary to the Governor. Soon after the
election Governor Ratner and his family
took a vacation cruise through the Carib-
bean, and it was established in a United
States Senate investigation conducted by
the late Senator from Kansas, Clyde M.
Reed, that the money for the cruise was
furnished by the Cities Service Gas
Company.
That was the first evidence of a con-
nection between Roberts's political asso-
ciates and the utilities company. More
was to come. Shortly after Ratner took
office, with Roberts as his executive
secretary, the Governor's State Tax Com-
mission lowered the assessed valuation
of the gas company’s properties in
Kansas some two million. dollars.
When Fees retired as Republican state
chairman, Roberts took over the job.
He remained as executive secretary undet
Governor Frank Carlson and served as
campaign manager for Carlson when
the Governor moved on to the United
States Senate. Roberts retired as state
chairman in the fall of 1950 and set
himself up as a “public-relations pou
sel.” It was in that capacity that he en-
gineered the “10 per cent” deal through :
which the taxpayers bought a building
they probably already owned and col-
lected the $3,750 from the Cities
Service Company.
e Although originally a.‘
Taft man, Roberts climbed on the Eisen- *
hower bandwagon early in the campaign,
and along with Senator Carlson traveled
with the candidate on most of the cam-
paign tours. He was credited with such
astute work in the-’52 “crusade for
votes’’ that Senator Carlson had no i
trouble getting him made chairman of
the Republican National Committee. As *
soon as he was installed in his new :
job, he began to make moves which in-
dicated that a new “Kansas gang” might
be in the making to take over where:
the ‘Missouri gang” had left off. Un-
questionably it was at the urging of
Senator Carlson and Roberts—aided by
the real-estate lobby—that Kansas’s
lame-duck Congressman, Albert M.
Cole, was appointed to administer the
Federal Housing and Home Finance
Agency, despite the fact that throughout
his Congressional career Cole had done
everything in his power to cripple this
agency.
At the time he was forced to resign
his National Committee chairmanship
under fire, Roberts, along with Senator
Carlson, was also promoting, with ap-
parent success, the nomination of Jeff
A. Robertson, chairman of the Kansas
Corporation Commission, as one of the
new members of the Federal Power
Commission. Robertston is known
throughout Kansas as the “darling” of
the big utility corporations, especially —
the Bell Telephone Company, to which
his commission has granted several rate
increases. It is said that a number of
other key posts were scheduled to go to
Kansans at the behest of Carlson and .
Roberts.
Now that Roberts is “‘out,’’ we can
hope that the President will use more
care in selecting the men whom he ex-
pects to help restore confidence in the
national government.
-W. G, CLUGSTON
[W. G. Clugston is the author of
“Politics in Kansas,” “Eisenhower for
President?” and other books on public
affairs. | c 2 ee Wy
4
Sain LD ps
eh
ee ee
176, Number 17
The Shape of Things °
Something for Nothing?
There is no question about the relief and hope with
which the world responded to President Eisenhower's
speech last week. His tone was sincere, his solemn pledge
that the United States would join in the search for a just
peace was backed by an impressive commitment to de-
vote a substantial part of “any savings achieved by real
disarmament”’ to the struggle against poverty and need.
The desperate craving everywhere for an end to arms
and to wars cold and hot created a welcome in which
there was little room for doubt or criticism. Even the
Russians played up the “positive” aspects of the speech.
But second thoughts are cropping up. People have had
a chance to reexamine the President's proposals; the
Secretary of State has amplified and commented upon
them. Almost reluctantly, informed observers are begin-
ning to ask how the conditions laid down by Messrs.
Eisenhower and Dulles can possibly provide the basis for
~ a negotiated settlement. In effect what the foreign-policy
chiefs of the American government are saying is that the
Kremlin can have peace if it is ready to abandon forth-
with its domination over Eastern Efrope—that is, dis-
mantle’ its defense system—while accepting as the
_ prerequisite of a peaceful continent, NATO, the Euro-
pean army, and a Germany unified, armed, and inte-
grated in the Western defense system. In the cold light
_ of the morning after, this formula for total victory in the
’ cold war seemed to overshadow the President's more
’ feasible and moderate demands for specific proofs of
Moscow’s desire for conciliation, such as the release of
* World War II prisoners still held by Russia and the
- prompt signing of the Austrian treaty.
Language of the Cold War
Quite as dubious as their plan for peace in Europe’
were the Eisenhower-Dulles conditions for the Far East.
Fortunately they left the exchange of disabled war pris-
_ oners, now going forward successfully at Panmunjom, to
the military men in charge. It would be worse than sad
if these first smooth steps toward a truce were to end in
‘a political quagmire.
_ President Eisenhower called for the conclusion of an
== — a ea i
“/Vatton
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
armistice and the prompt initiation of talks “leading to
the holding of free elections in a united Korea.” This is
fantasy, as the President and his advisers know. It will
take many months and a process of massive rehabilita-
tion, on both sides of the line, before Korea can be
united and free elections held. The Russians could not
work this miracle if they wanted, though they could
cooperate with the United. Nations to help bring it
ultimately to pass.
Nor could the Russians call off what the President de-
scribed as “direct and indirect attacks on Indo-China and
Malaya.” The war in Indo-China, particularly, is first of
all a colonial war, an attempt to crush by military power
a native struggle for independence. That Moscow and
Peking are backing the rebel forces goes without saying;
whether Ho Chi-minh would knuckle under to the
French-Vietnam army on orders from the Kremlin is a
different and very questionable matter.
Mr. Dulles dwelt at length on this nation’s mounting
commitments to the anti-Communist crusade in Asia,
based upon our conviction that “our Eastern friends from
Japan, Korea, and Formosa to Indo-China and Malaya, .
face a single hostile front, to be met by a common pur-
pose and a growing cooperation between the component
parts of freedom.”
This is the language of the cold war, not of diplomacy
and negotiation. Most earnestly we commend to the at-
tention of both the President and his Secretary of State
the article on page 342 by W. Macmahon Ball, a man
whose knowledge and official experience of Far Eastern
affairs tops those of both American leaders. His sugges-
tions bring a welcome note of realism into today’s spec-
ulations.
First Korea, Now Kenya
The conviction of Jomo Kenyatta and five of his chief
lieutenants on a charge of having organized the Mau
Mau secret society in Kenya and his subsequent sentence
to seven years’ hard labor invests L. S. B. Leakey’s article
in this issue with especial interest. Mr. Leakey’s matter-
of-fact account of the vicissitudes of the Kikuyu tribe
throws a most revealing light on the origins of Mau Mau
terror. The failure of the press to give adequate coverage
to the fifty-eight-day trial of Kenyatta—one of the major
political trials of recent years—was in glaring contrast
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 337
The Middle East's Link
with World Peace 340
ARTICLES
Shift to Geneva by J. Alvarez del Vayo 341
Testing China: How Far Dare We Go?
by W. Macmahon Ball 342
Our Newest War:
The Mess in Indo-China
by Helen Mears 344
Mau Mau Terror:
Fear, Freedom—and Magic
by L. S. B. Leakey 345
Negro Teachers:
Martyrs to Integration?
by Oliver C. Cox 347
Failure in Austria:
Poor People Get Poorer
by Charles A. Hoffman 348
BOOKS
Monsters and Men
A Review by H.H. Wilson 350
New Books in Brief 351
THEATER by Harold Clurman 353
FILMS by Manny Farber 354
RECORDS by B. H. Haggin 354
ART NOTES 355
LETTERS 356
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 513
by Frank W. Lewis 356
AROUND THE U. S. A.
The Great Crusade Takes a Header
by W. G. Clugston opposite 337
’
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey
Carey McWilliams
Lillie Shultz
Victor H. Bernstein
J. Alvarez del Vayo
Editor and Publisher
Editorial Directors
Director, Nation Assoctates
Managing Editor
Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
~ Ths Nat*on, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
The Natior Associates, Inc., 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, nN
Entered = second-class matter, Decomber 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising
and Circulation Representative for Continental Europe: Publicitas.
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Three
years $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $1.
Change of Address: Three weeks’ notice is required for change of
address, which cannot be made without the old address as well as the
Information to Libraries: The Nation 1s indexed in Readers’ Guide to
Periodical Literature, Book Review Digest, Index to Labor Articles,
Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index,
338
to the space it has devoted to apace of tl
On occasion, certainly, the terrorists have fied up to
their reputation for senseless violence, as when, at Lart,
an armed gang of 300 or more attacked and murdered
150 defenseless tribesmen—the movement's most hated —
enemies are now the natives who will not conform, Inci- _
dents of this sort, sensationally reported, have obscured
the gravity of the social crisis in Kenya, which may yet .
spread to other parts of Africa. World opinion should be
warned that peace in Korea might well be followed by a
form of mass terror in Kenya that is merely another
name for war—war fought in the dead of night by des-
perate natives armed with spears and shotguns rather
than by-tanks and jet planes operating in the light of day
under the eyes of the newsreel, cameras.
Bonus for the duPonts
The nomination of Judge Stanley N. Barnes of Los
Angeles as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the
vital Anti-Trust Division conforms to the general pattern
of the new Administration's appointments. Judge Barnes
will not extend the horizons of the Anti-Trust Division.
Not only does he lack the special qualifications for this
strategic post, such as some economic training or back-
ground, but he holds ultra-conservative views. It may be
taken for granted that he will look with favor on the
campaign, already well under way, to induce the De-
partment of Justice to drop a dozen or more crucially
important anti-trust prosecutions now pending.
This latest appointment is a major “bonus”: for the
_big-business interests that supported President Eisen-
hower. Politically it is another demonstration that Cali-
fornia patronage is firmly controlled by Governor
Warren and not by Vice-President Nixon or Senators
Knowland and Kuchel. Judge Barnes was appointed to
the Los Angeles Superior Court by Warren and like the
Governor has been active in the affairs of the University
of California alumni association. With his former as-
sistant Warren Olney now in charge of criminal prosecu-
tions in the Department of Justice, and Judge Barnes at
the anti-trust desk, does Governor Warren plan to suc-
ceed Mr. Brownell one of these days?
Rolling Back the New Deal
Another interesting nominee of the new Administra-
tion is that of Ralph D. Demmler as a member of the
Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Demmler,
who is slated to be the new chairman, is a member of the
largest law firm in Pittsburgh—Reed, Smith, Shaw, and
McClay, with which the late Senator David Reed was
associated—a former officer of the Commonwealth Trust
Company, and a friend of Secretary George M. Hum-
phrey, who recommended him for the post. To induce
“Mr. Demmler to accept the appointment, at “a big
The Nat
financial sacrifice, “the President is said to have promised
him a free hand in reorganizing the commission, includ-
ing the privilege of passing on future nominees. The
resignation of Donald C. Cook has already created one
vacancy, and Richard E. McEntire is expected to resign
soon, What is likely to happen to the S. E. C. under the
new dispensation is suggested by the comments of Leslie
Gould, financial editor of the New York Journal-Amer-
ican, who exclusively forecast the appointment of Mr.
Demmler. “The S. E. C. has deteriorated since it started
twenty years ago. It is in need of a reorganization .
there is some question whether this can be done without
winding it up and making a new start.” The S. E. C.
under Mr. Demmler’s chairmanship will, it is obvious,
call for careful and continuous scrutiny.
The Bloody Fifth Act
South Africa’s tragedy is unrolling with all the in-
evitability of Greek epic drama. Frightened by native
reaction to repressive measures, the white minority has
voted for more repression, setting the stage for an —
authoritarian one-party state, banishing the last hope of
peaceful progress based on race cooperation.
In last week’s election Prime Minister Malan’s Na-
tionalist Party increased its popular vote but still failed
to achieve a plurality. However, the Massive over-
representation of the rural areas, where most of its
strength lies, allowed it to double its Parliamentary ma-
jority. The Nationalist government seems to be in an
almost impregnable position, and faced only with a
weak and vacillating opposition, it is likely in the next
four years to take steps that will insure the perpetuation
of its power. Its program includes emasculation of the
Supreme Court, the one remaining bulwark of consti-
tutional liberties, abolition of the franchise for the
“colored” (mixed) population of Cape Province, tighten-
ing of the segregation laws, prohibition of any kind
of native labor organization, and discriminatory measures
against the English-speaking section of the community.
The Nationalist triumph can hardly fail to turn the
native African organizations to desperate courses. With
all legal avenues of protest blocked, with even passive
disobedience punishable by savage floggings and jail
sentences, the moderate leaders who up to. now have
maintained an amazing discipline, are likely to be
thrust aside. No doubt for a time the government's
machine-guns can keep revolution in check, But since
2,500,000 whites cannot indefinitely hold in a condition
of near-slavery four times as many Africans, colored, and
Indians, a bloody fifth act is all too probable.
a
Any Bids for a Museum?
Former President Herbert Hoover wants the federal
government to “get out of the business of generating
and distributing power as soon as possible.’”. Specifically
ril 25, 1953
228 2 ges
he feels that Congress should appropriate no more funds
for projects intended solely for the generation of power
—a dig at the T. V. A.’s program of enlarging steam-
plant capacity—or for multiple-purpose projects unless
provision is made that the power output be .“leased” to
private industry or to cities, states, or state-managed
regional authorities. Such a policy, Mr. Hoover estimates,
would save the government $600,000,000 a year and
halt “creeping socialism.” Charles E. (General Electric)
Wilson made a similar proposal last fall but Mr.
Wilson wanted the government to dispose of the Post
office, as well as to “denationalize” industry by selling
he EVA
The fairly wide condemnation that has greeted both
proposals seems to have missed their real significance.
We doubt that Messrs. Hoover and Wilson believe that
' the people would readily permit the federal government
to liquidate its investment in public-power projects; the
Wall Street-Journal drily comments that Mr. Hoover’s
proposal “may not bear early fruit in legislation.” But
there is real danger that discussion of these suggestions
may divert attention from the tidelands-oil issue and
certain proposals which, if enacted, would permit a
handful of industrial interests to muscle in on the atomic-
energy program. Messrs, Hoover and Wilson are think-
ing of the future, not of the past.
The day before Mr. Hoover unveiled this latest ex-
ample of elder statesmanship, the press reported that
the house in which he lived as a boy in Newberg,
Oregon, would be restored to its original appearance and
preserved as a museum. We trust that no public funds
will be used, and that once the structure is restored it
will be sold to the highest bidder for cash and operated
thereafter for private profit.
Not-So-Free Enterprise
The Administration has repeatedly expressed its devo-
tion to the principles of government economy and com-
petitive free enterprise. Practice, apparently, is another
matter, for both principles were violated when the Army
Engineers, with the approval of Secretary of Defense
Wilson, rejected all bids on two contracts for generators
and transformers to be installed at Chief Joseph Dam
on the Columbia River. Low bids in both cases were
received from a leading British firm which submitted
ptices 11.4 per cent and 16.8 per cent, respectively, less —
than the lowest American offers. In announcing its action
the army merely stated that it “reserves the right to reject
any and all bids.’’ But surely some further explanation
is in order. The refusal of a saving totaling $840,000 is
a curious way of cutting government expenses. The ap-
parent discrimination against a foreign company is a
queer method of illustrating our frequent lectures to”
_ European industry about the importance of making their
economy more competitive.
339
The Middle East’s Link
With World Peace
ON ISRAEL'S fifth anniversary it is evident that its
principal need is’ peace with its neighbors.
Herculean labors, sacrifice, imagination, and austerity
have produced a democratic oasis in the feudal Middle
East. The population of the country has grown 120 pet
cent. In Israel now is the largest portion of the Jewish
survivors of Hitlerism, who, but for Israel,
have found homes and rehabilitation, as well as large
numbers of Oriental Jews, unexpected refugees from
persecution in North Africa and the Middle East. With
the population have grown also agricultural and industrial
could not
production, education, and cultural development.
But what this little democratic outpost still urgently
needs is an international climate of peace and good-will
which will allow it to develop normally, in friendship
with its neighbors, and without getting imbroiled in
the East-West tensions.
This need for international equilibrium and the settle-
ment of the Palestine war has been strikingly demon-
strated by the march of events in 1953, The year’s begin-
ning saw the shocking charge that a group of Jewish
doctors were the instruments of a “‘Zionist-inspired
conspiracy’ against the Soviet state at the behest of the
Western powers. Reptured diplomatic relations between
the Soviet Union and Israel followed.
ON MARCH 5 Stalin died and almost exactly a month
later—on April 4—the charges against the doctors were
withdrawn and they were released by the Soviet authori-
ties. On April 17 the Soviet Minister of Justice warned
that the preaching of racial hatred or scorn in the Soviet
Union would be punished by law, and in the United
Nations Mr. Vishinsky, on April 15, reiterated the gov-
ernment’s withdrawal of the charges against the doctors,
the intention of punishing those responsible for them,
and gave assurances that “the restoration of truth is one
of the fundamental aspects of the U.S. S. R.”
Unhappily, in the interval between accusation and
withdrawal, the seeds sown found fertile soil in the
Arab countries, as was shockingly demonstrated by Arab
statements in the United Nations last week. It was a
campaign animated by two considerations—genuine
hatred of Israel and an astute sense of the trading value
that a flirtation with Russia could produce in possible
returns from the West.
The delegate of Syria openly stated that the stand taken
by the Soviet Union on Zionism and the severance of
relations with Israel “are in our view an indication of a
good understanding by the Soviet Union of the realities
of the situation in the Middle East... . We see nothing
strange in the Soviet attitude except that it was delayed.”
340
_ international reaction to anti-Semitism, despite his sharp
Arab-refugee problem and substantial aid for the de-
Pek 9's
; Fos!
The Arab bloc, borrowing teu from. tt e
tocols of the Elders of Zion,’’ charged that the Zionist
movement represents an “orderly fifth column,” which
has for its purpose the subversion of every government ©
in the interests of the Zionist objective. The Arabs
charged that these groups, when they cannot otherwise
secure their objectives, do not hesitate to turn to murder,
and would even start a war to destroy their opponents.
At the same time, fearful lest the Soviet Union restore
relations with Israel, the delegate of Syria added: “We
have substantial reasons to believe that Zionism today .
is trying hard either to compromise its differences with
the Soviet Union and the countries of the Peoples’
Democracies to secure support and immigration, or to
incite, with all its means, a destructive war against them.”
ISRAEL was compelled out of self-respect to reply to
the Arabs. It was this necessity which precipitated the
new attack of “Zionism” on April 16 by the delegate
of Czechoslovakia, who could not swallow the statement
of Ambassador Eban that “events in Prague and Moscow
have had a dire effect on the political and moral atmos-
phere of the Middle East.” Ignored was Israel’s ex-
pression of satisfaction with Moscow's repudiation of
the “doctors’ plot.” But violent exception was taken to
Eban’s statement: “The central question to be watched
with all vigahance is whether, as we hope, the repudiation
denotes an intention to eliminate all over Eastern Europe
the entire atmosphere which eee Ea panies and followed
the propagation of the original libels.”
The delegate of Czechoslovakia made it clear that, for
the time being at least, the Eastern bloc will not abandon
the political advantages to be gained from pursuing the
anti-Zionist line in the Middle Eastern countries. Read-
ing from a prépared text, he stated that he agreed with
the Arab delegates who had exposed “the imperialistic
threat of Zionism.”
_ Vishinsky’s repudiation of responsibility for Arab
anti-Semitism betrayed continuing Russian sensitivity to”
attack on Israel. But certainly he held out no hope for
early resumption of Russian-Israeli relations.
As long as there is no settlement of the Palestine war, |
the Arab states and the Soviet bloc will take advantage
of every opportunity to use the disturbed situation for
their own interests. Both Israel and the Arab states re-
quire peace. With peace there can be a settlement of the .
velopment of this highly important area. Above all, the
international community needs peace, for the continued
instability of this highly strategic area makes for the
insecurity of all the rest of us, At a moment when the
climate for peace seems to have improved, earnest con-
sideration should be given in the U. N. and elsewhere to
producing the incentive for ending the Palestine war.
United Nations
WITH the second session of the
Seventh Assembly nearing its close and
the delegates relieved by the word that
the United Nations Supreme Command
in Korea has been authorized to accept
the Communist proposal for an early
renewal of truce talks, interest has
shifted to Geneva, where the experts’
meeting on East-West trade has just
begun. This session, which the Russians
are attending, will tell whether it will
be possible within the next few months
to hold a fulkscale conference on the
subject, thus realizing the constant ambi-
tion of Gunnar Myrdal, the able and
imaginative Swedish economist who is
secretary general of the U. N. Economic
Commission for Europe.
Both Western and Eastern Europe
may find in renewed trade between
capitalist and Communist countries a
solution for their present difficulties.
And Western Europe is in a much
stronger position than many Americans
believe. A recent study by a group of
French economic experts, “The Eco-
nomic Power of Europe,” published by
the Institut International d’ Archéocivili-
figures that may surprise American
readers. For example, as regards hydro-
, electric energy, Western Europe has
* 108,400,000,000 kilowatts as compared
with 96,000,000,000 for the United
. States and 23,100,000,000 for the Soviet
Union. Among products suitable for ex-
* port, Western Europe has 36,900,000
tons of cereals, the United States 31,-
600,000; Western Europe’s share of the
output of dairy products is 75,320,000
tons, that of the United States 55,-
321,000, and that of the Soviet Union
43,000,000. It is on the basis of such
figures that Professor Paul Rivet has de-
veloped his concept of a Western Europe
politically independent and economically
“liberated from servitude to the rest of
_ the world in general and the United
_ States in particular.’ But Western
il 25, 1953
cme, &
se
cee fl
zation, contains a series of comparative _
: 700,000, and the Soviet Union 96,-
; J. Alvarez del Vayo
Shift to Geneva
Europe would be Jess anxiously de-
pendent on the dollars that today influ-
ence its politics so decisively if it could
find new sources of imports and new
markets for its exports through trade
with the Communist world.
Take the case of Great Britain. That
country has made a tremendous effort to
reduce its financial and economic de-
pendence on the United States. The
1953-54 budget introduced in Commons
by Chancellor of the Exchequer R. A.
Butler proves how successful the effort
has been. But a larger trade with Russia
and the other Communist countries of
Eastern Europe would not only mean
new markets but also free Britain from
its continuing monetary troubles. The
East does not work with money but with
goods, and in Britain’s present situation
a barter trade of this kind is just what
it needs.
France is equally interested. It was on
the basis of a French motion, approved
by twenty-four of the twenty-five na-
tions represented at the annual session
of the Economic Commission for Europe,
that the Geneva meeting of April 13
took place. France feels the ill effects of
the restricted international trade. In the
next few months it faces a most acute
economic crisis caused by the lack of
foreign markets, an accelerated flight of
gold, increasing unemployment, and an
internal situation fraught with political
and social perils. Allowing for obvious
differences of degree, the same thing
applies to the rest of Western Europe.
The only exception is Switzerland, whose
currency is in excellent condition; the
other countries find their gold and
dollar reserves inadequate to cover in-
dispensable imports. ;
Commerce between East and West is
part of the European economic tradition.
Western Europe has always been accus-
tomed to exchanging its manufactured
products for raw materials and other
necessary goods from the East. It can
still provide Russia and the satellite
countries not only with industrial and
transport equipment and such manufac-
tured goods as artificial yarns, fibers, and
textiles, but also with agricultural prod-
uce, vegetables, fish, and so forth. In ex-
change, Russia and its neighbors can
send to Western Europe grain, timber,
manganese and chromium ores, furs,
asbestos, anthracite, and oil.
At the Moscow economic conference
held last year the desire of certain in-
dustrialists from the West to trade with
the Soviet bloc proved stronger than the
obstacles which various governments
placed in the way of their pilgrimage to
Moscow. And yet that conference had
an obvious propaganda aspect which the
Geneva meeting lacks and which kept
away many potential traders. Also, the
economic situation was then less favor-
able. Today Russia’s conciliatory gestures
toward the West work in favor of the
Myrdal plan. Western European finan-
cial circles view with great concern the
existing situation in which even minor
economic fluctuations in the United
States, such as may result from a lessen-
ing of international tension or from cuts
in aid to Europe, could seriously jolt the
economy of Western Europe.
No miracles should be expected from
the Geneva meeting or from the full-
scale conference that may stem from it.
West-East trade on a large scale cannot
be reestablished overnight. There are in-
fluential business interests in the United
States that oppose trade of any kind
with the Soviet bloc and urge the
kind of embargo which is being applied
to Communist China. But there are also
important American business men who
have a broader. outlook. A step forward
at Geneva followed by a_ successful
plenary conference might contribute
more than any other single thing toward
normalizing international relations and
lessening the danger of war.
{Mr. Del Vayé has left for Europe. His
next article, on the meeting of the
Council of NATO in Paris, will appear
in the issue of May 9.}
341
TESTING CHINA
How Far Dare We Go? . . by W. Macmahon Ball
Melbourne, Australia
WHAT are the things we Westerners
really want in the Far East? And what
are the means at our disposal for getting
them? If the new negotiations in Korea
can open a way to a wider and lasting
settlement, this is the moment for us
to do some hard thinking.
The solid core of Western policy,
stripped of its embellishments and varia-
tions, is the same in the East as in the
West. It has two aims. The first is to
avoid war—not only to end local wars
in Korea and Indo-China but to achieve
a situation that will cut down the risks
of a third world war. The second, in-
separable from the first, is to maintain
and if possible improve our relative
power position against the Communist
world.
It is easy to state these aims but
appallingly hard to know how best to
organize and distribute the material and
moral means at our disposal. Our ma-
terial strength is made up of arms and
fighting forces, with the industrial and
economic resources that sustain them.
Our moral strength is created by the
sense of common interests and good-will
of our friends and those we might win
as friends. Moral and material strength
do not always go together. At times the
increase of our material strength may
reduce our moral strength in a particular
area—when, for example, we station
garrisons in a foreign country that re-
sents their presence—and it is often
hard to decide whether this brings a
net increase or reduction in our total
strength. Nor can we hope to be strong
everywhere in the world at the same
time. In general it will be best to con-
centrate our material forces—our bases
and garrisons—in areas where they
|W. MACMAHON BALL, a contribut-
ing editor of The Nation, is professor of
political science at the University of
Melbourne. At one time he was Austra-
lian minister to Japan.
342
have strong moral support rather than in
those in which widespread hostility to
their presence reduces their actual mili-
tary effectiveness.
It is fatally easy at a moment like the
present, when Communist governments
are making some conciliatory gestures, to
overestimate the ability of military
strength to extract concessions or with-
drawals. Some people are now excitedly
declaring that since it was clearly the ap-
plication of force that made the Commu-
nist leaders see a little reason, if we use
more force they will see more reason.
Some seem to believe that if we now
raise our demands on China, and are
prepared to back them with the threat
of more military aid to Chiang and
perhaps the blockade and bombing of
the mainland, we can overthrow the
Communist regime. This line of think-
ing, or feeling, is a sort of hangover
from the nineteenth century, when visits
from Western gunboats resolved so
many vexatious problems in East Asia.
It is possible, though doubtful, that
Western victory in a third world war
might shake the authority of the Peking
government, but it is as nearly certain as
anything can be in human affairs that
no lesser catastrophe could shake it.
The days when the West could push
the East around have gone forever.
\
Resolute resistance to the aggression
in Korea, efforts to induce Japan to
rearm, increased military aid in Formosa
and Indo-China have perhaps made the
Communists want to extricate themselves
from a position that is becoming more
difficult than they expected. But it does
not follow from this that the applica-
tion of more pressure would make them
ready to make more concessions. If the
Communist countries, like the Western
countries, want to avoid a general war
and at the same time want to avoid any
over-all weakening of their military
position, their policy will naturally show
some flexibility, some readiness to with-
draw in this or that particular area at
a particular time. It would be ridiculous
to conclude from this that they would be
prepared to withdraw from positions
they consider vital. To try to force them
to do so might precipitate the general
war we are so-anxious to avoid. We
should remember the mistake that Hitler
made. When he found that force, or the
threat of force, got him what he wanted
in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and other
places, he thought he had hit on an in-
fallible recipe for expanding the Reich.
_It was almost inevitable that he should
try it in Poland. And then the appeasers,
despite their fears, hit back. Any West-
ern effort to put pressure on China be-
yond a certain line will risk war. This is
the line beyond which the Peking gov-
ernment feels it cannot withdraw with-
out great injury to its prestige and its
territorial security. Let us not delude
ourselves that peace can be brought to »
East Asia by the strong dictating to the
weak; it can only come from negotiation
-among equals.
‘THIS LEADS to a more specific ques-
tion. To what extent do Western mili-
tary bases in East Asia promote our two
aims—peace and strength?
In so far as Western military power
acts as a deterrent to Communist aggres-
sion, it is because of its over-all pre-
The Nation
fp.
ponderance rather than because of its
local distribution. It is doubtful, for
example, whether American military
bases in Japan can_ give those islands
effective protection against an attack
from the mainland. The only effective
protection is the fear in the Kremlin
that if Russian bombs were dropped on
Tokyo, in a very few hours American
bombs would be dropped on Moscow.
It is generally accepted, particularly
after the Korean experience, that the
West has neither the intention nor the
ability to wage land campaigns in Asia.
In a new general war the West’s strategy
in the Pacific would be based on sea and
air power, working from islands and
other distant bases. In these circum-
stances it is doubtful whether bases and
garrisons in Asia increase the West’s
over-all strength. Their presence seems
always to excite racial and nationalist
resentments, even when, as in Japan,
they are maintained by a friendly and
protecting power. When they -represent
a Western effort to buttress a regime
hated and scorned by its own people,
‘they arouse deep and widespread hostil-
ity. The question is whether the military
advantages are not overbalanced by the
political disadvantages. Western armies,
or Eastern armies only kept in being
by Western aid, are not likely to have
any appreciable effect on Asian nation-
alist movements except to strengthen
their more inflexible Communist and
anti-Western elements.
It would seem, therefore, that the
planned withdrawal of Western military
forces from East Asia is a condition of
improved relations between East and
‘ , ®
West. The problem is how to with-
draw them without deserting the prin-
ciple of freedom the West has _pro-
claimed and without weakening its
over-all position. In the two main areas
of conflict—Korea and Indo-China—
the holding of free plebiscites is possibly
the way to stability. To determine when
a plebiscite is really free is always diff-
cult, and exceptionally difficult in East-
ern countries, where so many people are
illiterate and vulnerable to traditional
pressures, but the recent general elec-
tions in India show what can-be done to
give ordinary people something ap-
proaching a free choice. It might be
possible for a United Nations commis-
sion composed of men from neutral
countries, countries like India and
Switzerland and Sweden, to hold plebi-
scites, say, one year after the armistice,
in both Korea and Indo-China. The
purpose of the plebiscites would be to
elect in each country a national assembly
to which the government would be re-
sponsible. Once this national govern-
ment had been established, all foreign
forces would be withdrawn, and mem-
bers of the United Nations would rec-
ognize the government as legitimate.
THERE WOULD, of course, be dangers
in this procedure. The divisions in both
countries may be too deep and bitter
to permit cooperation in a single gov-
ernment. The new governments might
turn out to have Communist majorities,
or might soon come under Communist
control. The real question is whether
it is not even more dangerous to try to
prevent such «an increase in Communist
influence by Western military interven-
tion. Nationalism seems to be more
powerful than communism everywhere
in East Asia. As long as the nationalist
movements feel that the West is the
main and immediate enemy, they will
be forced to lean toward Moscow. We
know that it is the common fear of
Russia and communism that holds so
many Western nations together. Have
we not enough imagination to realize
that it is a similar common fear of the
West that holds so many Communist
nations together? If that fear were to
diminish, Mao Tse-tung would almost
certainly become more concerned to
guard against China’s interests being
subordinated to Russia’s, and Ho Chi-
minh would be more eager to resist any
threat of Chinese domination. If the
West wants to keep China bound to
Russia and other Communist-led na-
tionalist movements in East Asia bound
to China, the best way to insure this is
by military intervention in East Asia.
The West’s military withdrawal from
East Asia would not mean that it was
losing interest in the region. On the
contrary it would open new opportu-
nities for technical and economic co-
operation, for helping the new nations
of East Asia to secure themselves against
domination by either the Communist or
the Western world.
It goes without saying that if peace-
ful settlements are to be negotiated in
East Asia, they must be negotiated with
Communist China, not with the Na-
tionalist regime in Formosa. If Peking is
prepared to support arrangements by
which the people of Korea and Indo-
China freely decide their own future, it
should not be too difficult for both
Communist China and Japan to be re-
ceived into the United Nations. These
steps would not bring perfect harmony
and peace, but they would be efforts to
adjust Western policy to economic and
political realities in East Asia.
Société Anonyme
He drives his lambent car over his jeweled, silken route;
With almost natural teeth, like Balzac’s fabled ass, he feeds
On natural things, ejecting strictly cash. He speeds
Beside his princess and the royal kids. O fruit
Of fair exchange! O peace of movement! He glides among
the wonders of his Rome:
The classic concrete of the banks, the templed culture, the
articulate towess,
Electric cows rampant among electric flowers,
The cool, colonial good taste of the funeral home.
EDWIN MORGAN
OUR NEWEST WAR
The Mess in Indo-China . . by Helen Mears
THE new “positive” American policy
in Indo-China—made official in the joint
American-French communique released
after the visit of Premier René Mayer to
Washington—not only puts the United
Emperor Bao Dai
States into the war in Indo-China. but
represents an anomalous shift from our
previous position. Up to now the United
States has insisted that the war in Korea
is a “local” problem to be settled without
reference to broader issues: Now it de-
clares that the Korean and the Indo-
China war are “interdependent.” What
are the Chinese to make of this? It is
they who have insisted from the begin-
ning that the Korean war was “‘inter-
dependent” with other Far Eastern po-
litical problems, such as Formoss,
China’s representation in the U. N., and
the United States build-up of Chiang
Kai-shek’s military strength. If the
United States continues to maintain that
the Korean war is still “local” as far
as China is concerned but “‘interdepend-
HELEN MEARS is the author of
“Mirror for Americans—Japan’” and of
many magazine articles on the Far East.
344
ent’’ with United States-French policies
in Southeast Asia, the Chinese have no
alternative but to assume that we are
only seeking peace in Korea the better
to wage war elsewhere.
As an answer to the Communist peace
offensive the joint communiqué is
inept. In fact, it seems ready-made to
strengthen Communist propaganda. To
equate the French war in Indo-China
with the U. N. police action in Korea,
on any terms whatever, is to jeopardize
the legal -authority of the action in
Korea or to discredit United States sin-
cerity in relation to the U. N. Up to
now the United States government has
found the legal and moral authority for
its course in Korea in the powers dele-
gated to it by the U. N. As an ally of
the French in Indo-China it has no such
authority. We assert of course that in
Indo-China as in Korea the fighting is”
part of the pattern of “Communist
aggression” and that this justifies our
aid to France. The U. N., however, has
not made any such declaration, nor has
it authorized or approved any military
intervention in Indo-China. In fact, a
look at the record strongly suggests that
if the U. N. should take an official
position it would condemn the French
as it condemned the Dutch in Indonesia.
In our current preoccupation with
Communist aggression we tend to for-
get the important role played by Asian
nationalism during the war. In both
Indonesia and Indo-China, as in Korea,
native nationalists had long resented
foreign rule. The Japanese “liberated”
these countries and set up “independ-
ent” native governments headed by
nationalists. When the Japanese were
defeated and the Dutch and French at-
tempted to regain control, the native
peoples resisted. The Dutch and French
used increasing force, and savage war-
fare resulted.
In Indonesia the U. N. intervened to
the extent of passing resolutions of
censure and sending investigating com-
“missions to the scene, Although the
support. = as
free citizen in an independent country,”
Dutch insisted that Indonesia was purely
an “‘internal’’ affair and not within the
jurisdiction of the U. N., the Security
Council and Assembly decided other-
wise and recorded their disapproval.
Rumors of intervention in Indo-China
kept appearing in the press, but nothing
was done. Comment in general agreed
that if no charges against France were
made in the U.N., it was partly because
the French had the veto in the Security
Council—Holland had no such protec-
tion—and partly because Britain and the
United States opposed such action, The
United States did press the French
to come to terms with the Vietnam na-
tionalists and, according to newspaper
reports, warned France that if some na-
tion should bring a charge against it in
the Security Council, France could not
necessarily count on United States
THE CURRENT French position in
Indo-China seems morally and legally
weak. Politically the situation is complex.
In March 1945, the Japanese, who had
occupied the country, proclaimed the
“complete independence” of Annam and
Cambodia, and Emperor Bao Dai an-
nounced the abrogation of the Franco-
Annamese treaty of 1886. Cambodia and
Laos also made declarations of independ-
ence. Meanwhile Ho Chi-minh had or-
ganized the guerrillas which fought
against both Vichy France and. the
Japanese and worked with the Western
Allies. After the Japanese rout Ho’s
resistance forces formed the ‘‘Vietnam
Republic,” which merged with the “‘in-
dependent” Bai Dai regime. Bao Dai
abdicated as Emperor in order “‘to be a
and Ho became President. In March,
1946, the French made an agreement
with this Vietnam Republic, promising
to give it genuine independence within
the frame of a projected French Union. _
They delayed so long, however, about
= eae
peacipril 25,1953 -
of starting it—and has been more or
less continuous ever since.
To gain some native support against
the Vietnam Republic the French set
up a rival “provisional government” in
June, 1947, thus adding to the tension
and confusion. Later, under urging from
the United States government, which
favored the development of independent
native regimes attached to France in a
union modeled after the British Com-
monwealth, they worked out plans for
three “independent” states to be known
as the Associated States of Indo-China.
In this set-up the French were to control
foreign policy and the army and retain
safeguards for their economic interests.
In the meantime Bao Dai had broken
with the Vietnam Republic and gone
abroad, but the French persuaded him
to return as head of a new French-
sponsored ‘‘Vietnam Republic.” To fore-
stall the rumored recognition of this by
the United States and Britain, the
U. S. S. R., in early 1950, recognized
the original republic. Shortly afterward
the United States and Britain recognized
the independence of the French-spon-
sored regimes of Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia. The major Asian nations
have refused to do so.
The French, of course, have charged
—and of late the United States has.
echoed the charge—that the original
Vietnam Republic of Ho and his Viet-
minh is dominated by Communists
working in the interest of the Kremlin.
But the facts as reported by American
newspaper correspondents strongly sug-
gest that, whatever the extent of Com-
munist influence, the major operative
factor has been and is nationalism. Ho
Chi-minh was a
monarchist revolutionary before the
Russian Revolution. Anti-Communist
newspapers and periodicals in this coun-
try have consistently emphasized the
limited amount of “‘independence’’
nationalist, anti-
granted to the new regimes by the
French and have quoted the expressed
dissatisfaction of anti-Communist na-
tionalists with continued French control
of foreign policy, military affairs, and
the economy. Even Bao Dai, whose anti-
communism seems unquestionable, com-
plains of the slow progress toward inde-
pendence. The French in turn are
disappointed in Bao Dai, who has shown
extreme disinclination to lead troops in
the field. STs
Since 1946 the French have spent
about $5,700,000,000 on the war in
Indo-China. For the past few years the
United States has paid up to one-third
of the cost. Now it appears that the
United States is prepared to step up its
contribution.
- Our linking of Korea with Indo-
China will prove an irretrievable blunder
unless we accept the full implications
of this policy and open the door to
negotiation of all the interdependent
issues in the Far East.
MAU MAU TERROR
Fear, Freedom—and Magic . . by LS B Leakey
. Nairobi, Kenya
THE Kikuyu tribe, from which the
vast majority of the Mau Mau terrorists
are drawn, is the largest single tribe in
Kenya. Since it is also one of the most
advanced with respect to education,
social welfare, and political institutions,
many people have wondered that it
should have given birth to the Mau
Mau organization, which commits such
terrible atrocities and practices the most
primitive magic. To understand how
Mau Mau came into existence, one
must look back at the history: of the
tribe for the last sixty years or more.
Early European explorers and trav-
elers, making their way on foot through
L. S. B. LEAKEY, British archaeologist,
is curator of the Coryndon Museum
at Nairobi. He is the author of “Stone
Age Africa,’ “Kenya Contrasts and
Problems,’ and, most. recently, “Mau
Mau and the Kikuyu.”
*
East Africa toward Uganda, customarily
gave Kikuyuland a wide berth, knowing
that the people were hostile to Euro-
peans and resented any intrusion into
their territory. But the Kikuyu country,
though densely populated, produced
large amounts of food, and soon a
trade sprang up between the travelers
and the tribesmen. The caravans used
to halt for days on the southern edge
of Kikuyuland to exchange trade goods
—hbeads, cotton cloth, and wire—for
maize, beans, bananas, and _ millet.
Although the Kikuyu objected to the
caravans entering their territory, they
were more than willing to come out
to meet them and benefit by the trade
thus established.
Writing of the Kikuyu in these early
days, various European explorers noted
the very intensive agriculture that was
practiced to support a population which
at that time had a density of from 300
to 400 persons per square mile. By
1902, when the first British settlers.
arrived in search of land, conditions in
the southern Kikuyu country had been
greatly changed by a succession of
disasters. A smallpox epidemic had re-
duced the population, according to
some estimates, as much as 50 per
cent; an outbreak of the rinderpest had
killed off thousands of cattle; a severe
drought had caused one famine and an
invasion of locusts another.
Finding the population depleted and
a good deal of land reverted to bush,
the early immigrants thought the area
well adapted to settlement. Moreover, -
from their point of view it was most
advantageously situated, lying as it did
within a few miles of Nairobi, which
was then just coming into existence as
a small railway town. Not unnaturally,
therefore, the settlers sought permis-
sion to occupy part of this land, and
permission was granted. If the govern-
ment had known the basis of the Kiku-
345
yus’ property rights in the region, it
would certainly not have consented to
this alienation of their land.
THE KIKUYU tribe had grown up in
the country farther to the north, around
what is now known as Fort Hall, but
as its numbers increased, it spread both
northward toward Mount Kenya, into
what is now called the Nyeri district,
and southward across the Chania River,
into the Kiambu district, ‘what ‘I have
called the southern part of Kikuyu-
land. It took over the Nyeri district by
the “
the forest and marking out family and
individual estates, But when it started
to move southward across the Chania
River, it found the country occupied by
the Wanderobo tribe, which had di-
vided’ it into immense privately owned
hunting zones. Each zone was clearly
_ marked by natural boundaries within
which one family claimed the exclusive
right to hunt, trap, gather honey, and
collect the wild edible fruits and roots.
The Wanderobo undoubtedly regarded
these hunting lands as their personal
property. ;
The Kikuyu, by virtue of their nu-
merical strength and organized fighting
force, could have invaded the country
south of the Chania and taken it away
from the Wanderobo, but they did not
do so. They firmly believed that the
spirits of the dispossessed owners would
prevent any successful harvest on land
seized by force, and so they entered
into negotiations with the Wanderobo
families for the purchase of part of
their hunting areas. The spirits of both
tribes were properly propitiated and
gave the transaction their blessing.
Thus all the land occupied by the
Kikuyu between the Chania River and
the territory of the Masai close to
Nairobi was acquired by actual purchase.
346
right of first user’’—cutting down
When the Europeans first passed
through Kenya and started trading with
the Kikuyu, it was owned by the
wealthier families and occupied by
them and their numerous tenants.
When the white immigration started, it
was still privately owned, though as the
result of famine and disease only
sparsely populated.
Unaware of these facts, the govern-
ment of the time allowed Europeans ~
to settle in the southern Kikuyu country,
and the Europeans believed that they
were acquiring outright ownership of
the land. The Kikuyu, however, imag-
ined that the occupation of these areas
by the white man would be temporary,
since they had not sold the land. It is
true that some whites gave them money,
but the Kikuyu took this to be payment
for cultivation rights, since ownership
of land could not change hands with-
out certain elaborate religious ceremo-
nies. Thus when the families which had
fled from the region in the famine
years began to come back, they were
amazed to find that European settlers
claimed the land as their property and
refused to relinquish it.
In succeeding years the Kikuyus’ fr
sire to recover their old lands became
very strong, and in 1922 they formed
a political organization known as the
Kikuyu Central Association whose prin-
cipal object was to find a way of doing
so. The fact that they had themselves
acquired the land by purchase made
their grievance still greater, and politi-
cal agitators were not slow to exploit
it.
THERE WERE, of course, other causes
at work which prepared the ground for
the agitators. The influx of whites and
the accompanying religious, educational,
and economic changes have broken
down the well-tried social structure of
the tribe and replaced it with very little
of solid value. The medical services in-
troduced by the Europeans have im-
proved the health of the people and
the schools have opened the door to —
economic progress, but unfortunately
the new education has not adequately
prepared the younger generation for the
more complex way of life.
As literacy increased and as more
and more of the young men were able
to travel and see something of the out- ~
side world, the Kikuyu learned of the
ee eee ~ ——————eee
—
movements store ides nd self
government going on in other colon: ial
countries. Many became convinced that
“self-government” would be the cure
for all their troubles, and a group came
into being which was determined to
achieve it. Since the old belief in magic
and witchcraft was still strong in the
majority of the people, despite the fact
that Christian missions had been at
work in Kenya for fifty years, the or-
ganizers of the Mau Mau movement de-
cided to make use of these deep-rooted
superstitions for their own political
ends. The Mau Mau oath is not an old
and traditional oath at all, and in many
ways it contravenes accepted Kikuyu
rules for oath-taking ceremonies.
Nevertheless, once taker, it is for most
tribesmen absolutely binding, since they
genuinely believe that if they break it,
supernatural punishment will be visited
upon themselves and their families,
unless they have first been cleansed of
its: power.
In the earlier days of the Mau Mau
movement recruiting was entirely volun-
tary, but gradually the leaders intro-
duced the forcible administration of the
oath to persons unwilling to join. It ~
was essential to the success of their
plans to have practically the whole pop-
ulation either actively involved or at
least so-bound by an oath that no one
would give the active members away.
If some more resolute Kikuyu resisted
taking the oath, torture was used, and
eventually it became necessary for the
Mau Mau leaders to murder those who
still refused, lest they report what had
happened.
Fortunately for the country, certain
men who had been forced to take the
oath against their will preferred the
risk of supernatural punishment to suf-
fering silently the indignities inflicted
on them. Through the brave action of
these men the authorities discovered
what was afoot, and the Mau Mau
movement was declared to be unlawful.
Not a few of those who denounced
Mau Mau in this way were murdered by
terrorist gangs; others had their houses
burned over their heads. Some of the
more reckless and lawless members of
the organization also took upon them-
selves to attack individual Europeans, al-
though it seems certain that the leaders’
plans did not envisage such a step until
their organization was more oo :
‘ aheme ee rIO}
<
Sra ty fies
i
4
aa
. mittee repctted favorably a bill
Jefferson City, Mo.
THE ‘abolition of segregation in the
public schools and colleges of Missouri
is now being debated in the legislature.
Recently the House Public a Com-
elim-
inate segregation in the public schools,
and the House has passed and sent to
the Senate one -stipulating that any
qualified citizen shall be admitted ‘“‘to
any state-supported institution of higher
learning without regard to race, color,
or religion.”
Although many white individuals and
organizations are supporting this legis-
lation, Negroes are naturally at the fore-
front of the movement. The whites have
relied upon two principal arguments:
that the bi-racial system increases costs,
and that racial segregation in the schools
has no moral sanction. Negroes have in-
sisted not only that their self-respect as
American citizens has been injured but
that their right to acquire the national
culture has been illegally abridged.
For Negro teachers, however, the
issue is ,complicated by the possible
effect of integration upon their chances
‘of employment. “If segregation is
abolished,” some legislators are reported
to have said, “‘all the colored teachers
now employed in the public-school sys-
tem will have to be discharged from
their positions, and. Lincoln University
for Negroes may be closed as an econ-
omy measure.” In neighboring Kansas,
the Topeka Daily Capital~ disclosed a
few weeks ago, school boards in the
ten leading cities have already begun to
“purge” Negro teachers on the ground
that they “would not be welcome” in
mixed schools. eA
Some Negro spokesmen consider this
threat relatively trivial. In fact, one Ne-
gro newspaper asked recently: “Is that.
too great a sacrifice to pay for integra-
tion and a beginning toward real demo-
OLIVER C. COX is professor of soci-
_ ology at Lincoln University and the
author of “Caste, Class, and Race.”
tpril 25,
Lg
or dl
cratic living? . . . We cannot have our
cake and eat it too.” But while some
selfless champions of democracy may
think their employment and that of
others are as nothing compared to the
achievement of integration, this position
seems to me in general unsound. Free-
dom to work is at least as sacred as the
right to non-discrimination in education.
Indeed, education itself will have a
decreasing value if the occasion to em-
ploy it is increasingly limited. One
sometimes hears it said that. Negro
teachers “should prefer to dig ditches’
rather than endure the disadvantages of
segregated schools. But what about dis-
crimination in the ditches? In the early
nineteen thirties I saw Negroes fighting
to the death on the streets of Chicago for
an opportunity to work as laborers on
paving jobs. It is unnecessary to multiply
examples of the daify struggle of Ne-
groes to secure their right to work.
Moreover, the confidence of some in-
dividuals that they can always find an-
other job is irrelevant, for the problem
is not personal but social.
If Negro teachers must face unem-
ployment as the price of the abolition of
discrimination in education, the bargain
is unacceptable. The integration of the
elementary schools may, it is true, call
for a reduction of plant and teaching
staff, but in that case both Negro and
white teachers should be released on
some “non-discriminatory basis, such as
length of service or academic qualifica-
tions. And now is the time to insist
upon this. To discharge only Negro
teachers would be a most unconscionable
act of racial discrimination. It would
not only shatter the life organization of
many families but darken the prospects _
of every Negro youth now planning to
become a teacher.
While the abolition of segregation in
the educational system of Missouri has -
already been too long delayed, it should
not now be carried out so recklessly as
, to cause undue economic and educational
hardship. Far from being a barrier to
integration, an insistence that provision
be made for the employment of Negro
teachers is an indispensable test of the
sincerity of the integration procedure.
Anti-segregation legislation is impor-
tant, but its proponents must remember
that their real purpose is to enhance the
welfare of a people.
THE FUTURE of Lincoln University is
a more complex question. Located with-
in fifty miles of the University of Mis-
souri, some may say it should be closed
in the interest of economy. This reason-
ing, however, could also be applied to
the University of Missouri, since there
are great universities only a few hours
away in Illinois. Missouri, of course, will
not be closed—for reasons more impor-
tant than economic considerations. And
so, too, there are other than economic
factors to be weighed when the question
of closing Lincoln is broached.
In a non-segregated school system
forces may come into play to increase
both the size and the usefulness of
Lincoln University. The proportion of -
white to colored students at Lincoln
will be the opposite of that at Mis-
souri, and each should make its con-
tribution to the development of a uni-
fied nation. In these times the public
interest demands that the quality of
instruction at Lincoln be improved and
that white students in the community be
encouraged to go there. There is an
347
increasing need for the interracial edu-’
cation of white Americans.
Negroes who conceive of themselves
not as hangers-on of our American cul-
ture but as meriting a place in its creative
heart will not treat lightly the fate of
their scholars. To admit in connection
with integration that it is impossible to
eat one’s cake and have it too is to con-
sent to the elimination of Negroes from
college teaching or at least to their
existence by sufferance on the periphery
of sympathetic white faculties. The
racial consequences of this would be
manifestly regressive. Moreover, colleges
for Negroes have such significance for
Negro youth that their closing could
result in a net cultural loss to the race.
oo oe
NS ce
Since “integration at any price’ may —
work against the interests of colored
people, Negro leaders, in their laudable
struggle for the abolition of segregation
in education, should perhaps curb their
zeal for democracy and their antici-
pation of martyrdom lest they find them-
selves taking one step forward and two
back.
FAILURE IN AUSTRIA
Poor People Get Poorer . . by Charles A. Hoffman
WITH fewer than seven million people
and no military forces Austria has no
need for United States arms, but it
occupies a key position in United States
strategic plans, and more than a billion
dollars in E. R. P. funds has already
been channeled into the country. The
average Austrian, however, feels that his
economic position is as precarious as it
was before Marshall Plan help began.
A report prepared by the Economics
Division of the Office of the High Com-
missioner for Austria emphasizes how
slight a dent American aid has made on
Austria’s basic economic problems. And
it suggests no way to utilize that aid to
bring about the economic and political
reforms that are necessary if the Aus-
trian people are ever to enjoy a decent
standard of living.
A non-Communist Austrian news-
paper recently ran a front-page editorial
acknowledging the unprecedented gen-
erosity of the Americans but bitterly
attacking E.R. P. officials for allowing
Austrian politicians to pursue their
ruinous policies. “After seven years of
peaceful development,’ it said, “‘in
which E. R. P. credit has provided many
times the amount of money otherwise
available from government sources, we
have arrived today exactly where we
might have expected to be at the end
of a war—facing a menacing inflation.”
CHARLES A. HOFFMAN was sta-
tioned in Austria from 1945 to 1951
as a State Department information and
editorial specialist.
348
a
Among the reasons for this crisis the
editorial cited both “the government's
irresponsible spending, on the principle
that we can throw money out of the
window whether we have it or not be-
cause the Americans will give us more,
and the blind faith shown by the Amer-
icans in retaining practically no control
over the uses to which E. R. P. credit
is put.”
The editorial then complained that the
use of American money to bolster the
Austrian economy had enabled the gov-
ernment to escape the consequences of
its failure to plan or take positive action
on such problems as administrative and
tax reform, how to increase productivity
and exports, how to improve credit
facilities,*and how to change the op-
pressive licensing system which is
strangling trade. The government be-
lieves, it concluded, that “the specter
of communism can still squeeze out
dollars. With sour-sweet mien, it con-
tinues to make promises, but fundamen-
tally everything will remain the same.”
TO AN AMERICAN the Austrian idea
of ‘free enterprise” is incomprehensible.
Every business and trade is licensed. A
man cannot start even a haberdashery
without first serving years of apprentice-
ship at low wages. Then he may apply
for a license, which will be granted by
the government on the advice and con-
sent of a trade association with whose
members the applicant is a potential
competitor. The law provides that if
approval of an application wilt cause
unhealthy competition, a license must be
refused. Every approved licensee must
become a member of the association un-
der which his business is classified and
conform to its regulations. These associa-
tions are powerful enough to direct the
economic policies of the country. They
tion and are the foundation of the most
thoroughly cartelized economy in Eu-
rope. Prices are set artificially, and the
interest of the consumer is ignored. The
inevitable result is, of course, gross in-
efficiency and low productivity. It is a
veritable medieval-guild system.
Unfortunately the Austrian licensing
system has actually been strengthened
by E. R. P. aid. The report of the Eco-
nomics Division referred to above gives
innumerable examples of ‘the program’s
disregard of the principles under which
it was inaugurated. For instance, when
one of the most modern spinning mills
in all Europe was presented as a free
gift to Austria, it was widely proclaimed
that the whole Austrian economy would
benefit from the resulting rise in produc-
tion. Three years later, the report de-
clares, “though productivity has in-
creased, there is no evidence as yet that
the benefits have been passed on in the
form of higher real wages to workers in
the industry or lower consumer prices.”
Since 1937 the number of textile
dealers in Austria has more than doubled
—from 7,000 to 14,000—but the turn-
over of goods has dropped by one-
third. Profits, meanwhile, have increased
from a pre-war average of 15 per cent
The NATION |
= Aiea is
ope ae Nf SE Be
- firmly believe in restraint of competi- —
S
a
-
4
i
: pl margin has more than doubled!
Because yarn prices are controlled by:
the cartel they are more than 75 per
cent higher in Austria than in France
ot Belgium. This not only pinches the
Austrian consumer but makes textile
exports—a vital need for Austria and a
cornerstone of E. R. P. policy—almost
impossible. Austrian manufacturers can-
not compete with manufacturers in
countries where yarn prices afe com-
petitive.
The marketing of agricultural prod-
ucts is tightly controlled through co-
operatives and special chambers of
agriculture. And in a country often de-
pendent for its food on E. R. P. grants,
the prices of imported foods are kept
up through taxes and duties so that they
will not undercut the prices set for the
domestic product by the farmers’ market-
ing organizations. Though millions of
dollars have been poured into agricul-
ture by the E. R. P. and hundreds of
millions of schillings by the Austrian
government, production is 20 per cent
below the pre-war figure. Whether the
farmers areselling their produce illegally
or are using the aid money for personal
needs, as the Socialist Party claims, one
thing is certain: E. R. P. aid has not
succeeded in increasing significantly the
amount of food on the dinner table.
As early as 1949 the United States
protested “to the Austrian government
that representatives of the official
Austrian agencies designated to carry
~ out purchasing and sales contracts under
E. R. P. were misusing their position.
These protests were simply ignored.
Eventually the abuses became so flagrant
that a Parliamentary investigation was
authorized. In 1952 an official white
paper revealed that the Credit Anstalt
and the Landerbank, the two largest
financial institutions in the country, both
government owned, had been engaged
in profiteering from E. R. P.-financed
exports and imports. The Credit Anstalt
had even transferred E. R. P. dollars
from a government agency to privately
owned agencies in the United States and
Switzerland, thus enabling private in-
terests, at the expense of the Austrian
economy, to obtain dollars for their own
unrestricted use. Two purchasing and
sales agents appointed by the banks and
a third appointed by the trade associa-
ib 25, ae
She, Ty
fe
tions Were accused of using their posi-
tions to extract rebates from buyers and
sellers. Through the operations of their
own private firms, these men, who were
known to have unsavory reputations, had
participated in the very government
business they handled.
STRANGELY ENOUGH, American
aid, planned as a weapon against Russia,
has in several instances in Austria indi-
rectly benefited Russia or its satellites.
The price of wheat in Austria is con-
trolled by statute, and farmers are sup-
posed to deliver certain fixed quotas at
the controlled price. Since this price is
well below the world-market price, the
farmers complain bitterly. Three years
ago Soviet agents began buying wheat
from farmers on the black market at a
price above the controlled price but be-
low the world-market price. Wheat dis-
appeared from the Austrian market and
a bread shortage developed. The People’s
Party, which draws its support from the
farmers, was not inclined to make an is-
sue of the farmers’ failure to deliver their
grain quotas; in fact, one important
party spokesman and government official
stated that the violations were on such a
large scale that the government was
helpless: After much shifting of the
blame between the Socialist Party and
the People’s Party, the government ap-
pealed to the Americans to make up the
grain deficit with E. R. P. grants. For
once this seemed to be more than the
Americans could swallow and they re-
fused. Then the pressure was applied:
the Communist menace was played up;
the need of American help was empha-
sized. Austria got the wheat.
Since the war Austria has paid for
practically all its imports from the satel-
lite countries in dollars furnished by the
United States. It has exported to them
such valuable commodities as iron, steel,
and aluminum, to say nothing of the
oil which Russia ships out of Austria
without paying compensation of any
kind. The satellites. were supposed to
pay for their imports from Austria with
foodstuffs, raw materials, and producers’
goods, but they have repeatedly broken
their agreement and have tried to pay
with cheap items like buttons and glass-
ware, which Austria makes itself.
The Austrian worker not only gets no
benefit from American aid in the form
of lower prices but is paid substandard
wages. The average wage is roughly
$40 a month, while prices of most
articles are higher than they are here.
No wonder the United States finds
it hard to convince the Austrian man in
the street that it is providing E. R. P.
funds to help him and not for selfish,
imperialist motives. What answer can
there be to the agitator who points to
the new American automobiles driven
by the prosperous directors of a busy
factory and then asks the workers, “Has
the Marshall Plan helped you?”
Any objective observer of the Euro-
pean economic structure knows that rev-
olutionary changes are long overdue.
For five years we have attempted to pro-
mote reforms in the liberal, democratic
tradition. The results, particularly in
Austria, are not encouraging. The ruling
political and economic groups have
failed to realize their precarious posi-
tion or to take steps to save the society
in which they flourish. Their attitude is
one of unbelievable unconcern. They
seem as fearful of American-sponsored
reforms as of communism.
Americans should remember, more-
over, that Russia acquired a tremendous
share of Austrian industry and natural
resources through an agreement among
the four powers which granted it own-
ership of former German assets. In ad-
dition, the Russians have used the Aus-
trian resources at their command to
build a system of intricate and solid
economic interests. Large as are the
contributions we have made to Austria's
wealth since the war, the United States,
economically, will be in an extremely
subordinate position in Austria after the
peace treaty is signed. Russia has al-
ready demonstrated that it can make
deals with Austrian cartels to strengthen
its control. How long will Austria. main-
tain its independence then? And what
will happen to our strategic aims?
349
Monsters and Men
A Review by H. H. Wilson
GIANT BUSINESS — THREAT TO
DEMOCRACY. By T. K. Quinn.
The Exposition Press. $3.75.
HIS is a useful and important book
written by a former executive of
one of America’s major corporations.
T. K. Quinn is a democratic humanist
who understands that “our kind of
limited democracy cannot long with-
stand the conflicting authoritarian eco-
nomic cancer.”
One of the greatest sources of danger
for any society is confusion about the
nature and implications of existing in-
stitutions and practices. In the United
States we are inclined to assume that
we live in a society characterized by a
free-enterprise economy. This is a fan-
tasy that sewwes to perpetuate the irra-
tional, to blind us to dangerous trends in
both our economy and our political prac-
tices, and to restrict our capacity for
creative change. In reality institutions
and practices have developed in our so-
ciety which contradict basic assumptions
of political democracy. Furthermore, the
danger is compounded when institutions
and pressures appear to thrust forward
to positions of power charismatic leaders
or egocentric psychopaths.
To warn us that in the process of
creating an enormous productive capa-
city we have changed the whole eco-
nomic foundation of our society Mr.
Quinn draws on his experience in Gen-
eral Electric and as a consultant to small
business firms. He recognizes that demo-
cratic values and institutions stem from
economic and social conditions that ex-
isted during much of our national his-
tory. These conditions no longer exist:
We have changed from a nation of
small capitalists into a nation of hired
H. H. Wilson, a contributing editor of
The Nation, is professor of political
science at Princeton and author of
“Congress: Corruption and Compro-
mise.”
350
employees. No longer can the majority of
our people realize themselves in their
work. The work of three-fourths of them
is not their own but an item in the busi-
ness plans and operations of others. Eco-
nomic balance, formerly achieved by each
one acting freely, is no less certainly at-
tempted by centralized authorities allocat-
ing men and materials to specified assign-
ments. This shifting of economic security
from property ownership to job-holding
has also endangered political freedom,
which is always dependent upon economic
freedom.
This means that unless positive coun-
teracting measures are introduced, our
political and social institutions will be
drastically reorganized. The United
States of the future is being shaped by
the economic structure we have created.
TODAY ours is an economy dominated
by giant, quasi-private collectives, with
government permanently installed as
governor and general insurance fund.
Though we protest against creative, posi-
tive planning by government, every
sector of the economy has called upon
government to eliminate risk and, in
many cases, to legalize the elimination ©
of competition, to absorb loss, and to
guarantee profit. One result is that we
confront a dual problem—the need to
develop effective techniques for control-
ling formal government agencies and
their bureaucracies and also for control-
ling the policy and actions of huge
private collectives. It is worth empha-
sizing that these private collectives—
corporations—are instruments of power
and that they have many of the attributes
of government. For the monster cor-
poration is an economic state ruled: by
non-elected, self-perpetuating officers.
“It is a device which . . . threatens to
undermine the foundations of free so-
ciety and create a tyranny more ruthless
than any mankind has ever known.”
After this hard-hitting analysis it is
disquieting to consider the solutions
Mr. Quinn proposes. He advocates fed-
eral incorporation ‘of concerns doing
oe
interstate and foreign business; the pre-
vention of mergers and the dissolution
of those already existing; prevention of
the building of retail chains by major .
corporations; the extension of R. F. C.
loans to aid small business; the exten-
sion of price-maintenance laws and en-
couragement of “non-destructive” com-
petition; and insistence that efficiency
take account of social welfare.. These
are measures intended to re-create some-
thing like a free competitive economy,
with decisions made through the mech-
anism of a free market.
Mr. Quinn is convinced of the creative
potential of relatively small business, in
part because he knows of “no original
invention [in the line of household
appliances} . . . made by any of the giant
laboratories or corporations, with the
possible exception of the household
garbage grinder.”’ And he so fears “‘the
totalitarian ultimate in the hands of
communism or in fascistic Big Business”
that he ‘‘would del‘berately subsidize the
democracy of smaller units if necessary.”
This, he believes, can begin with a
planned program of decentralization of
great corporations. If decentralization
fails, “if I have to choose between the
rulership of monster private corpora-
tions on the one hand and too big gov-
ernment on the other, I shall unhesitat-
ingly choose the latter, for at least
I have an effective vote in government. I
have none in monster business, not even
as a stockholder.”
THERE ARE many possible reservations
about such a program. Basically it is in-
adequate in conception and timing, as
compared with Mr. Quinn’s analysis of
the situation. It underestimates the
power factor involved and ignores the -
actuality that we have reached a point of
no return. Mr. Quinn says, for example,
that it may even be impossible to get so
much as a federal, incorporation law:
“The truth about the economy has been
obscured by paid agents and publications
and the influence of lobbies and dollars.”
Despite this awareness he seems to
minimize the fact that big business and
big government have already merged.
The Republican Administration reveals
the impossibility of differentiating be-
tween private corporate power and goy-
ernmental power. We live now in a cor-
porate society in which economic and
political power merge as we move to-
ward a garrison state. “While we fight
;
i
eke
iy
April 25, 1953
eg
"eh ae aes Mos >
| | | otalitarianism from without, we en-
courage it from within.”
There is no effective opposition to
this development. No section of the
public, no important organized group,
is prepared to work for the restoration
of a free competitive economy. Even
if this were not the case, there are some
who would deny both the feasibility and
the desirability of the effort. For though
Mr. Quinn believes that “the so-called
crises of capitalism are brought about
M . - ~
by its abuses,’’ others are convinced that
they are inherent in its structure. He
admits that economic stabilization “in-
volves a degree of planning or over-all
regulation’”” but fears the bureaucracy
and centralization of socialism. It is no
deprecation of a valiant author to con-
clude that we are left with the problem *
of inventing social techniques and insti-
tutions which will make possible effec-
tive control of power and prevent sub-
jugation of human beings.
New Books in Brief
Love and Pleasure
MY HERO. By Maude Hutchins. New
Directions. $3. Highly recommended as
a supplement, or antidote, to “The
Second Sex.’ Mme de Beauvoir discussed
everything about sex except love or
pleasure; Mrs. Hutchins describes in
effect nothing else but that. In exis-
tentialist terms she is a remarkable ex-
ample of an immanence so complete,
powerful, and beguiling that it is tran-
scendent. And how! “My Hero” has less
solidity perhaps than her previous work,
“A Diary of Love.” It is less deliberately
shocking and directly physical; but full
of wit, gaiety, and charm. In plain terms
Mrs. Hutchins is an original. She is on
the side of the gods—the pagan gods—
and she speaks with the voice of a
mischievous angel.
Provocative Economics
ECONOMIC CHANGE. By Simon
Kuznets. Norton. $4.50. This collection
of essays written over the last twenty
years by a distinguished economist and
statistician who had much to do with
the development of national-income
measures strikingly combines technical
mastery and imaginative vision. Most
though not all of the essays can be easily
understood by an interested lay reader,
and such a reader will surely find in
them a concern for the meaning of
economic change most provocative of
reflection. Among the long-run dévelop-
ments that Mr. Kuznets analyzes are
the ‘closing of frontiers, the decline in
birth rates, the shift of populations to
cities, the rapid progress of industrializa-
tion, and the growth of trade restrictions
ae Taos
all over the world. He concludes that
the rate of growth in output in the
Western world has slackened, that our
increases in national income may not
reflect parallel increases in human wel-
fare, and that international comparisons
of national income are of uncertain
value. A most gentle complaint could
be made that Mr. Kuznets has often only
hinted where one would have appreci-
ated a fully story.
Story Teller
THE VAGRANT MOOD. Six Essays.
By W. Somerset Maugham. Doubleday.
$3. Perhaps Mr. Maugham is neither
sufficiently passionate as a man nor
sufficiently concentrated as a writer to be
a great novelist. Perhaps he usually
either transforms his material too little
or transforms it in the wrong way by
making it seem artificial instead of in-
tense. But he is a superb retailer of an-
ecdotes, reminiscences, and impressions
when he merely gives them a slight
novelistic touch without actually making
fiction out of them. Several of the so-
called essays in the present volume are
admirable examples of the genre and
not really the worse for a certain diffuse-
ness which makes them all the easier to
read. Edith Wharton pontificating on
contemporary art and music as well as
on literature, and being intolerably right
about everything, may be a caricature
but is probably revealing as well as
funny. Augustus Hare, writing his guide-
books in his own country house and
editing out of the household Prayer
Book all the passages in glorification of
Now, in a handsome, clothbound edition—
. the 50 speeches that thrilled America
MAJOR CAMPAIGN
SPEECHES OF
ADLATI E.
STEVENSON
=> With an intimate and eloquent Introduction
by Mr. Stevenson in which he talks freely and
inspiringly of the campaign that’s: over, and of
the troubled days that lie ahead. The speeches
Bd¥D [TeuI0D Jeydess0;04d TAIT 4q Yderszoj0Ng
At all bookstores, $3.50
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range from his welcoming address at the Chicago
convention to his gracious and profoundly mov-
ing concession of defeat on election night.
ee
ys
Se ae a ye eee
r=
ia
=
Se
God because, as he said in perfect
seriousness, “God is certainly a gentle-
‘man, and no gentleman cares to be
praised to his face,” may be hard to
believe, but no harder than most of what
was said and acted upon in that vanished
world of maids carrying cans of hot
water and curates who came in by the
servants’ entry which Mr. Maugham
describes with something remotely like
the loving irony of Clarence Day_re-
calling life with father.
Essays by Orwell
SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS. By
George Orwell. Harcourt, Brace. $3.50.
Although “Animal Farm” and “1984”
made the late George Orwell something
of a hero to the professional anti-Com-
munists, he had no more in common
with them than he had with the pro-
fessional apologists for Moscow. As this
posthumous collection of essays shows
once again, he was a fierce hater of in-
justice, of tyranny, and of cant, no
matter in what cause it was uttered.
Primarily political in his interests, he
held aloof, as a writer, from political
Organizations, since “acceptance of any
political discipline seems to be incom-
patible with literary integrity.” That in-
tegrity is stamped on every page of this
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too brief volume, which covers a variety
of subjects ranging from anti-Semitism
in England to the writings of Henry
Miller.
The piece from which the book takes
its title is a fragment of autobiography,
the author’s reminiscences of the English
preparatory school into which he was
thrust at the tender age of eight. Under
a headmaster who was a sadistic snob
he suffered a traumatic experience that -
clearly left both physical and _ psychic
marks. Here he relives that experience
with poignant intensity and yet com-
ments on it objectively. It is a literary
achievement _ that reader found
almost unbearably moving.
this
Jeans the Astronomer
SIR JAMES JEANS. A Biography by
the late E. A. Milne. Cambridge. $4. A
more or less official memofr which in-
cludes a sketch of Jeans’s life but is de-
voted principally to an account and
evaluation of his contributions to mathe-
matical physics and astronomy, with
some attention also to the popular books
he wrote enthusiastically somewhat late
in life. Some of the technical portions
can be understood by the layman who is
sufficiently interested, but a good deal
will be comprehensible only to those who
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differential equations. Milne, a fellow-
scientist and personal friend, is frank in
discussing what he regards as the
scientific limitations as well as the
achievements of his subject. One of his
general conclusions is that* though Jeans
accepted the ‘‘new”’ physics, he made his
most important contributions within the
field of the traditional. Perhaps the lay
reader will be most amused by the un-
conscious humor of the paragraphs on
the allegedly inevitable dedth of the
universe by “running down.” When one
remembers what a popular subject this
was only a few years ago and with what
awe “the second law of thermodynam-
ics” was invoked by those with only the
foggiest notion of what it meant, there
is something hilarious about Milne’s sol-
emn assurance: “I am now convinced
that an unconditional prediction of a
heat death for the universe is an over-
statement.”
On Medieval Poetry
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE. By Ezra
Pound. New Directions. $4. This book,
first published in 1910, is a monument to
the prejudices of genius. In it, without
condescending to state his critical princi-
ples, Pound evaluates the work of late
medieval poets who wrote in the Ro-
mance tongues, often passing swift and
aphoristic judgments. He ranges with
astonishing, though not infallible, erudi-
tion over languages and climes, touching
upon the troubadours of Provence, the
epic of the Cid, Dante, Villon, Lope de
Vega, and Camoéns. Bypassing the cul-
tural incrustations which have obscured
the artistic qualities of many of these
works, Pound fastens firmly on what-
ever is crisp, vivid, and exact. His taste:
is a premonition of the regard for pre-
cision which was to become a leading
principle with him and link him to
imagism. As Pound was ready to admit,
the volume is more like a notebook than
a finished work, but its disorder offers
many adventures. It had a salutary effect
on the literary tastes of 1910, and this
reissue with notes added later by Pound
himself will enable it to continue its.
mission. In addition, it is a generous
anthology of valuable and limpid trans-
lations which Pound succeeds marvel-
ously in using as a form of criticism in
themselves. |
The NATION
lle
a mig ‘ Py ;
fl
feel at home with highly generalized 7
aan
oe Ze il 25, 1953
Ag ¥ sg eae
| Theater
Harold Clurman
ERHAPS one of the marks of the
true New Yorker and the real
theater lover, as distinguished from the
metely fashionable one, is his adventur-
Ous pursuit of entertainment in the odd
spots of the town, the city’s cordial “‘un-
derground.” While East Fifty-seventh
Street (the Washington Square Play-
ets), Grand Street (the Neighborhood
Playhouse), MacDougall Street (the
Provincetown Players), Sheridan Square
(Macgowan-Jones and O'Neill),
East Fourteenth Street (the Civic Reper-
tory Theater) were once the places
where the enlightened playgoer sought
the most stimulating fare our theater
had to offer, the so-called off-Broadway
theater is now usually an apologetic and
discouraged phenomenon—possibly be-
cause everything off-center in our life
today has lost its confidence and spunk.
Still, if one has forbearance, hope, and
humility, one may find special pleasure
in treading the theater's byways.
One playgoer certainly was happier
during the past fortnight on Christopher
Street (Theatre de Lys), where the
‘Touring Players gave a series of three
one-acters by Ellen Violett bearing the
collective title ‘Which Way Is Home?”
than he was at the Forty-eighth Street
Theater at a revival of the 1937 farce
hit “Room Service.” Not that the latter
is a poor piece: I still found some of
it funny—despite a so-so performance
—but at best I was amused as by a rather
perfunctory joke that someone might
tell me on my way out of a restaurant.
Of the three playlets presented by
the Touring Players the most satisfactory
by far is “Brewsie and Willie,” based
on a story by Gertrude Stein. In this
rambling yet unified stretch of dialogue
which is both naturalistic and stylized,
Gertrude Stein—through her adapters
Ellen Violett and Liz Blake—has caught
and interpreted for us the basic home-
lessness of the G. I. at the end of' the
last war, and through him the basic con-
fusion in all of us.
Tenderly and wisely Gertrude Stein
points out the fear we suffer from being
at once a pioneer people (yes, even
eons S
* the Stars,”
now!), with eager, inquiring, youthful
minds, and credulous, gullible victims
of ready-made answers which have very
little to do with our daily experience.
We are afraid of experience, afraid of
life, because it baffles and upsets us by
being so persistently contradictory to
the prefabricated concepts with which
we approach it. We are immensely de-
lighted at our shrewd discovery that
there is no Santa Claus, and we howl
with pain because there is none. We
proclaim our virile capacity to face the
world, and We shrink like scared chil-
dren at every actual confrontation. Hog-
tied by materialism, we are ineradicable
idealists. We cannot reconcile our “‘prac-
tical realism,’ upon which we are con-
stantly urged to rely, with our idealistic
impulses, which torture us with their
unexpected but unrelenting intrusions.
The sensitive American—he who has
not allowed himself to be altogether
canned—is an emotional eccentric. His
craziness ‘bears witness to his aliveness
and is one of his most engaging quali-
ties. He must not be put in a position
where he has to beg permission to be
pessimistic; he must learn to give his
optimism a foundation in fact. He must
come to understand life not in terms of
“yes” or ‘‘no’”’ but in terms of “‘yes and
o.” Gertrude Stein says all this and
more in ‘‘Brewsie and Willie’ with a
curious directness that masks itself be-
hind a studied casualness. I half suspect
her of having been a good woman!
The Touring Players act the Stein
play with a certain unvarnished and
slightly awkward naturalness which
helps it. The company that calls itself
Current Stages (Cherry Lane Theater)
is well cast as to type for most of the
parts in O’Casey’s “The Plough and
but is frequently unintelli-
gible in its attempt at Hibernian speech.
The play comes off, nevertheless, in
its power and poetry. How lucky poor
tormented Sean was after all!
offered him a strategic position amid
the Dublin tenements, with their
abounding riches of humor, tragedy, and
native eloquence, as well as the vantage
Life.
Cancer ¥ |
SU) Ce a
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Cancer Society help guard those
you love.
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American
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393
point of being a witness at the moment
of dramatic crisis in the days of the
Easter rebellion. Thus he was able to
write truly contemporary realistic plays
which are passionate in feeling and pro-
phetic in utterance. Here the distinction
between prose and poetry vanishes with-
out detriment to either. One is reminded
of the lines in Chekhov's ‘Seagull’: “I
come more and more to the conviction
that it is not a question of new and old
forms; but that what matters is that a
FF LIMITS” has Bob Hopé horsing
and miming like a Mack Sennett
employee. The story casts him as a prize-
fight manager in the army who smart-
talks the most inept pug (Mickey
Rooney) into winning the lightweight
title. The part disproves the idea that
Hope’s comedy lies mainly in his fast
verbal satire, for here he creates a many-
faceted character who is as boastful as
Falstaff, as unmanly as Lloyd Hamilton,
and as good-humored, in a misanthropic
way, as Bugs Bunny.
An example of Hope's flexible char-
acterization is in the scene where he
cons his fighter at a 200-word-a-minute
speed, and while the terms “Hook him,”
etc., seem apt for the situation, they are
delivered with a dreaming fool’s mien
and mismated connections that hint the
manager is not only contemptuous of
both battlers but not even watching.
Sometimes Hope gets feelings of deep
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in
RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN'S
The King and I
A New Musical Play
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
ST. JAMES THEATRE, West 44 St.
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
Wednesday& Saturday at2:25: $4.20to1.80. _
man should write without thinking of
forms at all, write because it springs
freely from his soul.”
What most of our playwrights nowa-
days seem to lack is roots in some reality
more fertile and inspiring than their
professional world provides. “Sprung
from a deep soil of reality, the fanati-
cally and explosively honest sensibility
of O’Casey was able to produce three
or four of the most expressive plays of
our time.
Farber
distaste, disdain, into a single keen-eyed
stare, a haughty quiver of his body, or
a jutting of his leaden underslung jaw
a fraction of an inch in the direction of
his victim. But always his malevolence
is so mixed either with comic self-de-
basement or utter selflessness as to make
him seem precariously vulnerable.
Although the audience is treated to
the entire range of great silent comedies
—violence, exchange of insults, intense
humiliation and embarrassed apology,
ludicrous mix-ups, and Don Juan love-
making—somehow Hope never creates
the laugh that kills. It is not that he
refuses to milk or build a gag but possi-
bly that he just looks too normal and
of relief—‘Gee whiz, that guy’s worse
off than I am’—that the pathos of
Chaplin, Keaton, and Langdon achieved. °
Or possibly Hope’s style, which com-
bines precision of timing with intellec-
tual suppleness and finesse, puts too fine
an edge on all this sort of foolishness.
In one sequence from the dark ages
of situation comedy he scratches and
paints a general’s mile-long black sedan,
believing it belongs to a loathed gang- :
ster. For ten minutes of screen time he
gets your thoughts away from the an-
cient heaviness of the gag by doing an
elf-child’s display of grace and roguish
self-delight. He paints fetching abstract
patterns with broad calcimine strokes,
while giving you the footwork of a
sissified Nijinsky. It is really swell, but
you are reacting not to humor: but to ©
cleverness.
In the hands of director George
Marshall, a sort of Studs Lonigan dis-
tant cousin of Sennett, the film emerges
as an uneven work that often hugs bad
gags and zooms past promising situa-
tions. Marshall has an uncommonly
good eye for hard-boiled harried types;
he turns Marilyn Maxwell into a classic
figure of brassiness. The list of assistant
laugh getters—Rooney, Stanley Clem-
ents, Eddie Mayehoff—promises more
than it achieves. Making brief personal
appearances are some muscular fellows
—Dempsey, Tommy Harmon, Art Ara-
gon—who seem almost gentle in the
midst of the pratfalls and mad activity.
Records . ,
CHUBERT’S great song-cycle “Die
Winterreise’’ is given the best per-
formance I have heard on LP—by Karl
Schmitt-Walter, baritone, with Hubert
Giesen at the piano (London). The
voice is a fine one, though tremulous
now and then; and the singing achieves
moving expressive effect with unfailing
respect for the shape of the musical
phrase. I question only the insufficiently
animated pace of “Die Post’; and I
think that the pianist or the recording
engineer should have made the piano
parts count for more in the joint
performance than they do. The texts are
given; and the accompanying notes are
best ignored.
Many of the Strauss songs sung by
Anny Felbermayer, soprano, and Alfred
Poell, baritone, with Viktor Graef at
the piano (Vanguard) are unfamiliar to
me; but it isthe few well-known ones
that I like: the “Traum durch die
Dammerung” and ‘‘Ruhe, meine Seele”
superbly sung by Poell, the “Hat gesagt,
bleibt’s nicht dabei,” “Ach Lieb’, ich
The NATION —
Sat en
ae a, i
Mikes s Felbermayer ith ‘a se Brputatling
voice that gets to be a little monotonous.
Texts are given; but the third stanza
of “Hat gesagt,’ with the point of the
song, is missing.
Several of Strauss’s best songs—
“Standchen,’ “Traum durch die Dam-
| merung,” “Zueignung,” and ‘‘Freund-
liche Vision’’—and the sugary ‘“‘Morgen”
are sung by Suzanne Danco, so-
prano, with Guido Agosti at the piano
| (London). The exquisite voice ‘and
| phrasing that are exactly for ‘‘Stind-
chen” and “Morgen’’ are heard also in
the others, which seem to me to call for
| darker coloring. On the same record are
| *Mozart’s mildly engaging “Das Veil-
| chen,” “Abendempfindung,” “Dans un
bois solitaire,’ and “An Chloé.” The
texts would be more useful than the
accompanying notes. The recorded voice
| _ blasts occasionally.
| The exquisite voice and phrasing are
heard again in Schumann’s “‘Liederkreis”
(London), and are exactly right for the
lovely ““Mondnacht’’; but the dialogue
of “Waldesgésprich” calls for con-
trasting vocal colors. These used to be
the only songs of the cycle that I cared
for; but I have been impressed this time
by the dramatic atmosphere of “‘Zwie-
licht.” Texts are given.
| Beethoven’s lovely song-cycle “An die
| ferne Geliebte,’ his
|
songs, and Schubert’s “Nacht und
Traume”’ ‘(one of his greatest),
“Fischerweise,’ “Auf dem Wasser zu
singen,” “Im Abendroth,” “Die junge
Nonne,” and “Die Forelle” are sung by
} Elena Nikolaidi, contralto, with Jan
| , Behr at the piano (Columbia). She sings
| ‘them well, but with a voice that has
| lost the sensuous richness it once had.
Only English summaries.
| Danco’s; Recital of Seventeenth and
* Eighteenth Century music (London),
¢ with Agosti at the piano and Jeanne
| +Demessieux at the organ, offers one
‘}: piece of declamatory arioso by Schiitz
that I find uninteresting, but other pieces
that are lovely: Bach’s “Bist du bei
mir,” “Komm, siisser Tod,” and ‘“Wa-
rum betriibst du dich,” Gluck’s “O del
mio dolce ardor,’ Alessandro Scarlatti’s
“Sé Florindo é fedele,’’ Caldara’s “Come
raggio del sol,” Durante’s “Danza,
_danza,” and Caccini’s “Amarilli.” The
singing again is exquisite. And again
notes instead of texts.
Ap l 25, 1953
earlier Gellert ©
Three Mozart arias—Ach, ich fiuhl’s
from “Die Zauberflote,” Venite, ingi-
nocchiatevi from ‘ ‘Figaro,’ and L’amero,
Saro costante from “Il Re Pastore’’—are
sung very beautifally by Hilde Gueden
with the Vienna Philharmonic under
Erede (London). She also sings well
in the Motet K.165 “Exultate, Jubilate,”
which I care less for; but her voice, as
recorded, doesn’t sound as beautiful and
blasts occasionally. Again notes instead
of texts.
Famous Operatic Excerpts Volume 2
(London) offers excellent performances
by Fernando Corena, bass, of three de-
lightful comic arias from Donizetti's
“L’Elisir d’amore’” and ‘‘Don Pasquale”’
and Rossini’s ‘““La Gazza Ladra’’; and a
good performance by Aldo Protti, bari-
tone, of Largo al factotum from ‘‘The
Barber of Seville,’ but one of I/ balen
from “Il Trovatore” in which his voice
is. dry and has an excessive vibrato.
Again notes instead of texts.
An RCA Victor extended-play 45 is
mentioned here because it offers Ella
giammai m’amo from “Don Carlo,” one
of the outstandingly impressive demon-
strations ‘of Verdi’s artistic powers—
like the Sleepwalking Scene from ‘‘Mac-
beth” and the Dio! mi potevi scagliar
from ‘‘Otello”—and a performance
which is a demonstration of the impres-
sive powers that still are Pinza’s. Frank
Miller plays the cello solo; Leinsdorf
conducts the Victor orchestra. Pinza also
sings the Catalogue Aria from ‘Don
Giovanni” with an orchestra conducted
by Wallenstein.
Art Notes
HERBERT FERBER has had several
one-man shows of his sculptures, and
his work is found in leading national
collections. His abstract forms are done
in lead. They are strong, spiraling com-
positions, architectural in conception.—
Betty Parsons to May 9.
EDWARD MELCARTH’S first show in
several years presents scenes from con-
temporary Venetian life. The colors are
bright and sunny; the style reflects his
interest in the Renaissance masters. He
has also devoted several canvases to
American scenes.—Durlacher to May 2. ~
HENRY KALLEM, a Pepsi-Cola prize-
winner*some years ago, shows figures,
city scenes, and fantastic images. His
design is geometrical and his colors are
balanced.s—Salpeter to May 9.
MARK TOBEY, famous West Coast
modernist, recently exhibited at the
Whitney. These twelve paintings evoke
representational images but are abstract
in concept. The colors give evidence of
Oriental influences—W dllard to May 2.
BYRON BROWNE'S twenty-second
one-man show in as many years reveals
a change in style. He now paints in_
semi-abstract forms and dramatic color.
—Grand Central Moderns to May 2.
MANFRED SCHWARTZ, who is rep-
resented in collections all over the
world, exhibits brilliantly colored semi-
abstractions of figures, circus scenes,
and other subjects in his first show since
1949.—Fine Arts Associates to May 9.
® The electric chair can’t”
kill the doubts in the
Rosenberg case!
Hear:
Prof. STEPHEN LOVE
Chicago, Ill.
at the
ROSENBERG
CLEMENCY
k MEETING
Randall’s Island Stadium
Sunday Afternoon ,
APRIL 26, 2 P.M.
In case of rain, rally will be held
the following Sunday, May 3.
e
See:
“The Rosenberg
Story”
A Dramatic Presentation
Cast of 500
e
Admission $1.00
All Under 16, Free
Tickets Available at:
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Letters
No “Father” Needed
Dear Sirs: Alexander Werth is to be
congratulated on his sympathetic and
generally understanding comment (The
Nation, March 14) on the death of
Stalin. I venture, however, to suggest
that he has insufficiently appreciated t that
it does serve to mark what is, in effect,
the end of an era—the era which
started before November 7, 1917. This
is perhaps understandable, since Werth
himself belongs to that era, in
which the peoples of the Soviet Union
looked to their political leader to fulfil
the ‘‘father” role. It is perhaps difficult
for him, therefore, to realize that most
of that generation in the Soviet Union
are now deade. . . The Soviet people of
today have achieved a higher state of
maturity in which Malenkov, one of
themselves, can amply satisfy what they
require of him. Since Werth has used
Freudian terminology, I would follow
suit and say that the Soviet peoples do
not now need a “‘father.”. . .
EDGAR P. YOUNG,
Commander, R. N., Retired
London, England
The Smear Technique
Dear Sirs: The truth about McCarthy,
McCarran, Velde, Jenner, and _ lesser
evil lights in the Congress should come
out soon. If men like this can be elected,
a fraud must have been perpetrated
against the people in their states... .
Did the people get the facts from the
press on all the candidates? Certainly
we know that backers with money can
get mediocre candidates elected. It is one
of the evils of our election procedure,
and we ought to expose it more often
before 1954 and not be afraid of being
called “‘left-wingers,” ““Commie lovers,”
and so on. These attacks against teachers,
professors, ministers, and labor leaders
are certainly planned, and we had better
recognize the pattern. Whisper, insinu-
ate, write anonymous letters to the
F. B. I., phone or write to the Winchell
type, or the Fulton Lewis office, where
investigators piece together bits of un-
founded statements for the broadcasts.
In the next few months the charges
are made, repeated, and rehashed until
some readers and listeners let the smear
words stick in their minds... .
I saw the remains of political pris-
oners at Buchenwald as a member of the
356 , -
—"
10
11
12
14
“15
17
20
22
24
26
27
28
ao wo
Crossword Puzzle No. 513
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
7
ACROSS
and 18 down. Where to find what-not
articles in a Colonial kitchen, just
before you get in deep? (11,5) ™
Game suggesting the Dance of the
Apprentices? (8)
Slayer of the human race, occasion-
ally involved in current change. (6)
See 24.
Those who take this stand should be
able to bear it. (7)
Would you consider it soap in the
mouth of one who speaks vulgarly ?
(6)
This rere is probably over your
head. (4, 4
Implying no dearth of water from
the pump, as you know. (4, 4)
It’s immature to cry out with an ex-
pression of pain.
It takes poise to acquire form,
elementally. (7)
and 11. In the ground if at peace, in
the head if at war? (4, 8, 7)
Even stupid West Pointers can pass
in this. (6)
Those of state find a_dish on a sec-
ond appearance. (8)
Austerity linen, after part of the
16? (5, 6)
DOWN
and 25. Typified by Harvard O,
William and Mary O? (8, 6, 4)
Not. original picture producers, to
reveal certain aims. (7)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York 7, New York.
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
4 Little girl who sounds as though a
stroke might have fatal implica-
tions? (4)
5 Women who do this might leave well
enough alone. (7)
6 No one is left out, even if this is
exhausted. (3, 2)
7 Masculine articles in the future? (6)
8 Mineral involved in a fraudulent
amount? (6)
13 See 1 across.
16 Somewhat smaller than a pleasure
yacht! (5, 4)
18 Gray implied some blossoms are cre-
ated to turn rosy like this. (6)
19 If the mop were shaken, this might
come out. (7)
20 Displayed by stout fellows a century
before our time? (7)
21 Available ring position? (2, 4)
23 A Dickensian yarn might have sucl
a gimmick. (5)
25 See 2 down.
ee
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 512
ACROSS:—1 AIDES; 4 WASSAILED: 9
CONGENIAL; 10 AMBER: 11 ON THE
SPOT; 12 SOLDO; 13 TRUNK LINES; 17
UNROMANTIC. 21 OWNBPR; 22 PRIGN-
OIRS; 23 AMATI; 24 PNIGMATIC; 23
SD RESeER. 26 LAPIN.
DOWN :—1 CE 2 DENOTE 8
SKEWER: 4 WHIPPERSNAPPERS: 5
SPLIT INFINITIVE; 6 ADAM’S ALE:
LIBELING ; i 8 3 DORMOUSE ; 14 AUTOMATA
15 DRUNKARD AMORTIZE; 18
ENAMEL; 9 TIPTOP: 20 ASHICAN,
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A New Series from Europe
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Spring Book Number
OUR ISSUE OF MAy 2 will carry a double punch: a big Spring Book section
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section will itself be studded with features: a review by Maxwell Geismar
of Leon Edel’s biography of Henry James, which has already been greeted
in the trade as a publication event of great magnitude; a unique essay on
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acknowledged maestro of galactic literature; a dramatic report by William
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the bluenoses but by the Red-baiters.
As for Eisenhower’s First Hundred Days, the story’s in the title. You
will ponder it, and talk about it with your friends, for a hundred days more.
Who Owns the Atom?
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Ike’s First J
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Report and Appraisal
Ray Bradbury on Science Fiction |
James Jones, William Styron,
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ALU eN io ss | ay ; i : i
Maxwell Geismar on Henry James
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The Shape of Things
NATO and the Stretch-out
At Paris last week the Council of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization formally agreed to maintain its
“posture of strength”: nothing had been changed by re-
cent Soviet overtures. Verbally, the exhortations of Mr.
Dulles were echoed by all his European colleagues at the
Palais de Chaillot. But as indicated by ‘deeds rather than
words” a quite different state of mind prevailed. The
armaments stretch-out decided upon at the session re-
flected a definite lessening of apprehension. (It also
reflected, of course, the Eisenhower economy program—
but this stems from the same thing.) One can be sure
that if the famous showdown last set for 1954 were still
seriously expected, the planned strength of the NATO
army for that year would not have been cut by twenty-six
or twenty-eight divisions. The new program calling for
a long-haul’ increase of strength but the scrapping of
emergency measures, obviously makes sense; it also con-
tains nutherous political meanings yet to be explored.
For one thing, it suggests that Mr. Dulles’s threaten-
ing language and the more unrealistic of President
Eisenhower's peace conditions may represent tactics
rather than fixed policy. In any case, the Russians, while
rejecting most of the peace conditions recently set forth
by the American leaders and staking out a few claims of
their own, printed the Eisenhower speech in full and re-
peated in Pravda their readiness to proceed to “business-
like discussion of disputed issues.” No doubt they too
look to deeds for assurance, and the NATO stretch-out
decision offset a good many “tough” words.
Germany’s Play for Power
But if Russia‘s peace maneuvers exercised an unac-
knowledged influence at Paris, so did the growing doubt
over the future of the European army. When Chancellor
Adenauer reached home after his Washington visit, with
American promises of aid and friendship in his hand, his
stock rose very high. Already it is dropping. The vote in
the Bundesrat, delaying action on the E. D. C. treaty
until the international situation becomes clearer,’was a
a s
“(Vation
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
sharp blow to his plans. It indicated not only reluctance
to commit Germany to a tight military alliance with the
West—thus challenging Moscow at its most sensitive
point—but also the hope that a serious reunification offer
by Russia might make the whole plan unnecessary. And
as long as the pacts are hung up in Bonn, the NATO pro-
gram will remain in a state of uncertainty. For German
integration is a price Western Europe will pay only if
Russian aggression seems likely and fairly imminent.
Even the hint that some other solution for Germany may
be possible played its pee in last week’s slowdown at
Paris.
What Western Europe, and especially France, wants is
a plan that will minimize the threat of German armed
power and industrial dominance. Today the rise of Ger-
man industrial strength, largely on American dollars, is
the most startling and significant fact this side. of the
Soviet Union.
R. H. S. Crossman, in a recent issue of the New States-
man and Nation, reports Dr. Brentano, leader of the
Adenauer forces in the Bundstag, as proclaiming in a
public meeting that “whatever the Russians propose, in-
tegration with the West must proceed; every form of
neutralization must be excluded, and the claim for the
lost provinces east of the Oder must be fully main-
tained.” What this means is all too clear: in a very short
time Germany, its arms industry rebuilt (also with dol-
lars), would dominate the alliance of which it became a
part and would be able to gear the policy of the West to
its own aims in the East. The one thing that could pre-
vent all this would be a settlement between the West and
Moscow. No wonder Dr. Adenauer regards the idea with
such distaste.
Baloney at the Waldorf
Baloney was not on the menu at the annual ‘Associates
Press luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria on April 20, but
Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey’s speech
was full of .it. To reassure his listeners Bue Humphrey
took the position that “talk of a truce” or “even an actual
truce” would not have an early important influence on
the rate of military spending; we must first achieve a
“proper permanent posture of defense,”
a phrase left
~
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 357
ARTICLES
Ike’s First Hundred Days
I. Foreign Policy by Arnold T. Sloane 359
II].Domestic Policy by Bruce Catton 361
a
Day After Tomorrow:
Why Science Fiction?
by Ray Bradbury 364
Books Are Burning:
The Spreading Censorship
by William Murray 367
SPRING BOOK SECTION
Six Young Authors in Search... 369
Too Much Symbolism by James Jones 369
The Prevalence of Wonders
by William Styron 370
The Lyre with One String
by Maude-Hutchins 371
The Buds of Ugliness
by Leonard Bishop 372
Wisdom of the Child
by Jefferson Young 372
Withdrawal of the Artist
by John H. Griffin 378
In Defense of Folly
A Poem by Philip Booth 373
BOOKS
The Literary Orphan
A Review by Maxwell Geismar 374
Recent Poetry—A Miscellany
A Review by Thomas Riggs, Jr. 376
Experts and Policy
A Review by Robert Lekachman 378
New Books in Brief 379
THEATER by Harold Clurman 382
RECORDS by B. H. Haggin 383
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Associates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin ’ Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. 8. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, N. ¥,
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising
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358
ROS I oS
ers i ey o* e- B ca be
wee na? PA ieee, oo Poh)
a
& at 5 rs : (en J
undefined. Then “readjustments” might be necessary.
and sometimes to another.” “Sound currency” and “re-
duction of taxes” were offered as the best substitutes for
government spending. Defined, this means deflation. Mr.
Humphrey also called for “a radical revision of our
tax system,”’—a phrase which the Alsops obligingly de-
fined later in the week. “Secretary Humphrey,” they
wrote, “is reliably reported to favor a uniform national
sales tax.” :
The Secretary believes that such a financial “‘readjust-
ment” would increase the incentive to invest. But
any venture capital created in this manner would be
likely to go to “underdeveloped areas” overseas, where
“underdeveloped” wage rates promise higher returns
than at home, Finally, echoing the President's statement,
Mr. Humphrey suggested that ‘a substantial percentage”
of any savings achieved by disarmament should be used
for world aid and reconstruction. Since the government,
however, has promised to reduce expenditures all along
the line, it is difficult to see how this can be done. Just
as Mr. Dulles was unprepared to cope with the Soviet
diplomatic “peace” offensive, so Mr. Humphrey appears
unprepared to cope with the economic consequences of
even a protracted lull in the shooting war.
The Counter-Evolution
This is not a “do nothing” Administration; it is an
“undo everything” Administration. A basic political
philosophy which has been in slow evolution \in this
country since the days of McKinley is in process of
reversal. Government is going to ‘bat, not for the con-
sumer, but for the producer; not for small business, but
for big; not for low tariffs, but for high; not for public
housing, but for banks and insurance. companies; not
for public power, but for private utilities; not for social —
security, but for the dole; not for civil-service expansion,
but for the spoils system; not for price controls, but for
profit guaranties; not for the worker, but for the em-
ployer. The counter-evolution extends beyond our land
borders to the oil under the sea and down into the
earth to affect our mines. Who will get the first C. A. B.
license for lunar travel—Juan Trippe?
The retrogression is. most clearly séen in the Ad-
ministration appointments. We recommend careful read-
ing of Mr. Catton’s article in this issue. New items are
reported daily: Parke M. Banta of Missouri, who in the
Eightieth Congress voted .to take 750,000 people off .
social security, becomes counsel to the new Health,
Education, and Welfare Department; Jerome K. Kuyken-
dall, long a private-utilities lawyer, is recommended as
a Federal Power Commissioner. }
In retrospect, Eisenhower's greatest domestic accom-
plishment during his first hundred days as President has
‘been to make Taft seem like a man of the center.
‘The Nation
sete res
7
“sometimes to the advantage or detriment of one group
x
b
}
7
id a Nea, | Ta : ; a
oe McCarthy’s Scummy Snoopers
Senator McCarthy’s junior investigators returned from
their fast and furious European junket pouting but far
from contrite. Seldom has more damage been doné the
prestige of our government in so short a time. Long
before the two young men arrived in London, the British
_ ptess had given them the drubbing they so richly de-
served. “Scummy snoopers,” “distempered jackals,”
jeered the Financial Times; “Will McCarthy Men Look
Over B. B. C?” headlined the Dazly Express. “Positively
Mister Cohn, absolutely Mister Schine,” and “Let, Mc-
Carthy’s two precocious youngsters see everything they
want to see,” wrote A. J. Cummings «ain the New
Chronicle. “Let them be made familiar with the British
hatred of bullying honest officials to serve the ulterior
purpose of a fanatic in authority.” Indeed, the British
press was all set to have a go at “the bobbsey twins,”
but they arrived in London frightened and evasive and
barricaded themselves in the American embassy. At the
airport, however, British reporters managed to shoot one
good question at them before they enplaned for home:
~“Don’t you think that your investigations and activities
are very little different from those employed by countries
to whose political ideas we are opposed?” Their answer
was: ‘There is nothing wrong in our activities at all.
They are pursuant to a legislative act.”
New Address For THE NATION
Beginning Friday, May 1, The Nation and the
Nation Associates will be established in new perma
nent offices at 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, N. Y.
The telephone number will be CHelsea 2-8400.
IKE'S FIRST HUNDRED DAYS
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
came to office twenty years ago last
March; the first three months of his Ad-
ministration were known as the "First
Hundred Days.” The value of much that
he accomplished during that period has
been hotly disputed, but one thing even
his bitterest foes acknowledge—he gave
Congress and the country dramatic and
compelling leadership.
What has Eisenhower’ given Congress
and the country inhis first hundred days?
I. FOREIGN POLICY
by Arnold T: Sloane
THE terrific punch which the Eisen-
hower Administration was to inject into
America’s foreign policy now looks like
a shadow-boxer’s feint. Remember those
fiery if irresponsible projects, so recently
born and already laid to rest—the plan
to “‘liberate’’ peoples from the Elbe to
the Sea of Japan, the phantom naval
blockade that was to force Communist
China to its knees, and the sizzling re-
pudiation of those Yalta agreements?
Gone, all gone. As so often happens,
the new management has had to ac-
knowledge that glib opposition is one
thing and the responsibility of power
ARNOLD T. SLOANE is the pseu-
donym of a close observer of American
foreign policy.
_ May 2, 1953
another, When a man moves into the
White House and switches on the light,
he sees the imponderables of geography
and natural resources in all their naked-
ness.
It is hard even to survey United States
relations with other countries when you
have to keep glancing at the knife Joe
“McCarthy brandishes behind your back.
John Foster Dulles had a sensible no-
tion when he became Secretary of State.
It was to leave administrative routine to
his subordinates and with intetvals for
meditation stroke in new policies on the
great canvas of the changing world. In
planning his procedure Dulles forgot
the men in Congress who are so impa-
tient to usurp his conduct of foreign
policy. Their interventions have proved
oh aes i:
Associated Press Wirephoto
a far more formidable distraction than
the daily tasks of departmental admin-
istration.
Dulles’s plan to guide America in
world affairs from an Olympian peak.
has evaporated. First there was the
McCarthy committee’s assault on the
State Department’s Voice of America.
Then came the unrelenting pressure, still
continuing, to purge the department of
independent thinkers and to intimidate
the rest. Scarcely had Dulles caught his
breath from the latest tussle when he was -
thrown head first into the McCarthy-
led struggle over Charles Bohlen’s con-
firmation as ambassador to Moscow. As
if all this were not enough, he had to
contend with the affair of McCarthy and
the Greek shipowners.
This harassment, plus constant calls
to appear before Congressional commit-
359
ee ee ae . —
tees, left the Secretary of State precious
little time for the meditative shaping of
foreign policy. What skipper goes in
for yogi exercises while his ship is
foundering? But far worse than these
distractions was the hopeless attempt to
evolve enlightened policies that would
be acceptable to the unenlightened but
powerful band of Asia Firsters, get-
toughies, and other fanatics on Capi-
itol Hill. His own and President Eisen-
hower’s decision to buy peace at any
price from their foes in Congress crip-
pled the new Administration’s direction
of foreign policy even within the small
room for maneuver permitted by the
imponderables of contemporary history.
What happened, then, in the first hun-
dred days or so?
AT THE START we were told that our
Far Eastern policy was to be zipped up,
that we were going to give Western
Europe a big heave toward unity, that we
would end the nonsense in the Mid-
dle East blocking that
region's our strategic
plans. One of the new Secretary's early
pronouncements amounted to a threat to
curtail United States aid to its European
allies unless they moved rapidly toward
federation and translated the European-
army project from paper to actual divi-
sions in the field. Dulles then set forth
on a swing around Europe, on which he
devoted much of his time to extinguish-
ing the Europeans’ flare of resentment
at what they considered his essay in
blackmail. Even the subsequent parade
of Eden, Butler, Mayer, Bidault, and
Adenauer to Washington left the Euro-
pean Defense Community wrapped in
uncertainty. Nor was the Eisenhower
Administration able to conceive an ade-
quate alternative.
In reviewing our Far Eastern policy
the Administration considered various
courses. It weighed a new offensive in
Korea and recoiled from the cost in
lives and money and from the big ques-
which was
integration in
‘French-American
tion-mark hovering over military suc-
_cess. It contemplated a naval blockade
of the China coast and, mainly owing to
grave doubts whether a majority of the
United Nations could be won for such
an adventure, shelved it. What finally
emerged was the fatuous “wraps off
Formosa” decision and a noncommittal
joint communiqué
which said in effect: if the Communists
take advantage of a Korean armistice to
commit aggression elsewhere in the Far
East, the United States and French gov-
ernments will reserve their freedom of
action.
The Eisenhower Administration, as
had been foreseen, did shift the em-
phasis somewhat from Europe to the Far
East. Dulles indicated that American
aid to Europe would be reduced and
aid to East Asia increased. The Admin-
istration was ready to pour still more
money—perhaps $700,000,000 instead
of $400,000,000 a year—into the war
in Indo-China. Eisenhower and Dulles,
more than Truman and Acheson ever
did, have regarded the Korea-Indo-
China-Formosa-Malaya campaigns as
parts of a single struggle against the
Communist opponent.
IN HIS CHOICE of men to represent
the country abroad the President fol-
lowed the standard pattern. The new
ambassadors are the usual collection of
wealthy business men who were helpful
during the campaign and career diplo-
mats. The most disconcerting turn in
that field was the retirement of George
Kennan from our foreign service.
Stalin’s insistence on Kennan’s recall
from Moscow last year was a piece of
dismal Soviet stupidity. Those acquainted _
with the reports Kennan was sending
home from Moscow knew he was an
influence for moderation, courageous
enough to warn his chiefs in Washing-
ton of the consequences of ringing the
Soviet Union with air bases and re-
building West Germany’s military might/
360
en
= - 7 i? yl i
Pr ite eee
tS. “eae fl es ‘3
or ee ee tS ee one
By dropping Kennan the Adi
deprived itself of one of its most knowl-—
edgeable aids in Russian affairs.
Perhaps most barren of all is the Ad-
ministration’s world-trade policy. For
two years one foreign government after
another has been peppering Washington
with requests to end commercial dis- _
crimination against foreign exporters. In
mid-April the géneral secretary of the
Organization for European Economic
Recovery, Robert Marjolin, was in
Washington, striking a note of urgency § *
concerning Western Europe's lagging
economy. For a year, he told the Ad-
ministration, Western Europe's produc-
tion had ceased to rise, and France's
was even declining. Meanwhile pro-
duction in the Soviet Union continued to
mount, 10 to 15 per cent annually. If
the trade-not-aid idea is to be more than
just another catch phrase, Marjolin
made clear, the entry of foreign goods
to American markets must be facilitated.
In at least two speeches since he took
office .President Eisenhower has _pro-
claimed that our policy was “‘to stimulate
profitable and fair world trade.” But
when the British Chancellor of the
Exchequer, R. A. Butler, came to Wash-
ington he learned that the Administra-
tion was unable to decide how far, if
at all, it could go against America’s
protectionists. At a moment when
Europe regarded its dollar shortage as
menacing, Eisenhower created the Lewis
Douglas committee and gave it the
rest of this year in which to write a
report on economic policy—he already
has at his disposal three official reports
and six others by competent. private
study groups, all recent and all recom-
mending that our commercial restrictions
be liberalized.
IN RESPONSE to Europe's cry of Fire
the President asked Congress to prolong
until June 12, 1954, the Reciprocal
Trade Agreements Act. On top of all
this he appointed an arch-protectionist
to the Tariff Commission. And despite
Europe's financial plight the United
States is preparing to cut its own defense
expenditures while pressing the NATO
nations to increase theirs. In the middle
of these’ developments Dulles made his
celebrated statement to Washington
newsmen. The real lesson of that inci-
dent has not been generally understood.
What Dulles suggested over the steak
The NATION —
‘ee
Parana coset
dinner was that whjle h
the wars in Korea and Indo-China, he
L
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L
nade
r7 ne A Ss
cn
. ie
e hoped to end
owe
would prefer to keep alive the Chinese
civil war between Formosa and the main-
land. He admitted that our allies would
undoubtedly refuse to join us in backing
Chiang Kai-shek; so one might consider,
he said, a U. N. trusteeship for Formosa.
The problem of Formosa would be sure
to be raised if we proposed to redraw
the frontier between North and South
Korea at the peninsula’s narrow waist,
for the Communists would make coun-
terclaims—especially concerning For-
mosa.
To assume that the Communists would
accept U. N. guardianship for Formosa
—under United States tutelage?—as
compensation for yielding the hundreds
of square miles they now hold below
the waist of Korea is pretty naive. Yet
this formula, which the Communists
would reject out of hand, struck some
obsessed but influential Senators as
appeasement of the Reds. Senator Know- |
land was the first to leap to the tele-
phone, if not to arms, to demand an
explanation. Senators Taft and Wiley
quickly followed. But Knowland’s
prompt protests to the President and to
Dulles were enough to draw a feeble
denial from the White House. The
affair showed plainly that the merest
hint that we might yield 5 per cent if
the Communists yielded 95 per cent
mobilized the pack of self-styled anti-
appeasers, in Congress. It revealed the
immense barrier Congress has erected
against any move by the Administration
to negotiate with the Communist bloc
on a give-and-take basis, even if we pro-
ceed almost entirely on the basis of
“you give and I'll take.” A British
diplomat concluded, characteristically,
that the episode “was not promising.”
THE EISENHOWER Administration,
as some of its leading members confess,
was totally unprepared for the peace
overtures from Moscow after Malen-
kov’s rise to power. These Russian ad-
vances promise to take the. Administra-
tion off the hook in Korea. They have
suddenly given substance to Eisen-
hower’s campaign pledges. In the first
weeks of the new Soviet leadership
Washington echoed with the old famil-
iar wofds. about Russia. Dulles at a
news conference set forth three reasons
why we could not reach an understand-
May 2, 1953
=
ae. ;
, _ *
‘ ibe 7
r ~
ing with the Kremlin. The President,
more wisely, announced that we would
accept the Soviet moves at their face
value unless they were proved unworthy
of confidence. His words cut straight
across the torrent of abusive statements
by Senators who insisted we must regard
the Russian peace offensive as phony
unless it was shown to have some reality.
The new Administration’s most sig-
nificant declaration on foreign policy
came in President Eisenhower's April 16
speech to newspaper editors in Wash-
ington. Though it lapsed twice into the
thesis of campaign days that the Rus- .
sians must be pushed back to their 1939
frontiers, in general it shunned prevo-
cation. It was a cautious but encouraging
invitation to Malenkov to answer the
definition of American aims with a
Soviet counterstatement. It left open all
avenues to serious negotiation of a
settlement between the Communist and
the non-Communist world. It avoided
the take-it-or-leave-it approach. The
President obviously presenting
America’s maximum program; he will
hardly have expected Russia to relinquish
its control over the satellites the next
morning. Many of the ideas Eisenhower
put forward were a revival of New
Deal—Fair Deal concepts of world af-
was
fairs: for example, his hint that if arms
limitation became possible, America
would join with other nations in putting
a big part of the money saved into a
fund for public works on a world scale.
At the moment, with a Korean armis-
tice in sight, the outlook has perked up.
But the really difficult problems must
be tackled after a truce in Korea has
been achieved, when a Far Eastern and
then a German settlement move into
the foreground. For these we are il
prepared. The President’s latitude to
negotiate appears rigidly restricted by a —
diehard Congress. However, that need
not be fatal. Only last November Dean
Acheson was opposing India’s reason-
able resolution in the U. N. for a Korean
armistice. One day he discovered that —
the United States was a minority of one
in the United Nations. Thereupon he
switched to support of the Indian pro-
posal, ignoring the China Lobby.
Unless the United States now gives
evidence of its own good faith, in addi-
tion to demanding more proof of Rus-
sia’s, it may again find itself a lonely
wallflower at the U" N. ball. We need
not suffer that humiliation if President
Eisenhower has the stamina to override
not merely the China Lobby but the
Congressional majority of obstructionists.
II. DOMESTIC POLICY >
: Washington
ACCORDING to Holy Writ, the
heavens and the earth were created: in
six days. Remaking them necessarily
takes a bit longer, even for a Republican
Administration. At the hundred-day
mark the Eisenhower Administration is
still busy with warming-up pitches.
Yet a pattern has been set, the pattern
on which the government is apparently
going to operate in the years just ahead.
It contains no surprises; in fact, it could
have been forecast by anyone who paid
close attention to the Republican cam-
paign speeches. The Republican Party
in office talks and acts precisely as it
did when it was out of office.
BRUCE CATTON is a contributing
editor of The Nation.
by Bruce Catton
To trace the pattern, begin by remem-
bering Sherlock Holmes’s inquiry into
what the dog did in the night. When
he was told that the dog had done.
nothing in the night, he remarked that
that was extremely significant. The very
inactivity of the Eisenhower Administra-
tion in its first hundred days is signifi-
cant. Of six thousand bills introduced
in Congress during this period, only
thirteen have been enacted into law, and
of these only one could be considered —
“major.” Here is the clear tip-off that
we are not going to have a “strong”
President, in the traditional political
meaning of the term. Not since Teddy
Roosevelt have the Republicans had or
wanted a strong President—a President
who presents his own clear program and
by political acumen and drive prods and
361
-
]
pushes the whole machinery of govern-
ment until the important parts of the
program are-put into effect.
I do not mean that there is no pro-
gram, or that it will not be carried out.
I mean that the real power is shifting
back to Capitol Hill.
MORE THAN three months after in-
auguration an Administration that cam-
paigned vigorously for lower taxes and
a balanced budget has not yet submitted
its budget. Since the start of the new
fiscal year is only ten weeks away, Con-
gress is setting out to do the job itself.
It is of course doing it piecemeal, sub-
ject to innumerable pressures from with-_
in and without, blithely deferring ex-
penditures and presenting the result as
“savings,” struggling as best it can
against its very strong desire to cut
taxes first and get the budget in balance
sometime in the future.
Increasingly, the Senate has asserted
control over the executive branch, es-
pecially in matters under the jurisdiction
of the State Department. The Voice of
America is almost * wholly at Senator
McCarthy's mercy. Important officials
have been dropped from the department
at Senatorial instigation. When Harold
Stassen tried to curb McCarthy’s inde-
pendent operations in the foreign field,
the White House pulled the rug out
from under his feet within twenty-four
hours. Senator Mundt has announced
that he and his pals will purge the
State Department since Secretary Dulles
has failed to weed out the horrible
Acheson hold-overs. This interference
has been taken with astonishing meek-
ness. The mere fact that confirmation of
the Bohlen appointment was finally
voted, after McCarthy and his crowd
had had a ten-day field day over it; was
actually presented as an Administration
victory. In a way perhaps it was—at
least the executive branch stopped short
of complete surrender.
On the question of revising the Taft-
Hartley act the White House has to date
offered no leadership whatever, despite
campaign promises. Instead, the Con-
gressional hearings on the act are drift-
ing along so aimlessly that no legisla-
tion at all may result. So far the hearings
have served to air the extremely con-
servative view—abolish the union shop,
eliminate nation-wide bargaining, turn
as much control as possible back to the
362
states. There is not much chance, as of
now, that this reactionary position will
be embodied into the law, and that is
quite all right with the anti-labor group.
The mere demand for a tougher law
tends to offset organized labor's demand
for modifications, and as one spokesman
for big industry remarked, ““Why should
we worry about amending the law? All
we need to do is enforce it as it is.”
The President’s demand for extension
of social-security coverage has been
pretty well smothered by Republican
diehards in the House. The same forces
are now engaged in blocking the rela-
tively modest slum-clearance program.
If stand-by controls against inflation are
continued it will not be because the
White House fought for them but be-
cause Senator Capehart of Indiana, of
all people, took up their defense. The
farm program remains in the air; ap-
parently no effective effort will be made
to redeem the campaign pledge to help
“the farmer obtain his full parity, 100
per cent parity, with the guaranty in the
price supports of 90 per cent.”
To some extent all this is due to very
bad liaison between the. President and
Congress. A good deal has been made
of the “get-acquainted” luncheons at
the White House, but the fact remains
that understanding between the legis-
lative and executive branches is -almost
non-existent. A common complaint by
Republicans on the Hill is that they
cannot talk even with the White House
assistants who are supposed to handle
liaison. It might be noted that one
reason for the fight on the Bohlen
nomination was the bitter feud between
presidential assistant Sherman- Adams
and Senator Bridges.
Much of the trouble comes from sheer
political ineptitude. Senator Taft him-
self commented on this rather sharply
in a recent speech. Seeking to ‘explain
why progress in implementing the Re-
publican program had been slow, he
said; “Men who have been eminently
sae in mee own fives aed been
chosen [for top government jobs}, but
as far as I know they don’t have a
single day's experience running a federal
government—the biggest institution the
world has ever seen.” Worse than its
political inexperience is the Administra-
tion’s apparent reluctance to make up
its mind about things. President Eisen-
hower does not dominate, and there is
-nothing to show that he especially wants
to dominate, or that he could if he did
want to.
A case in point is the Defense De-
partment’s turning down of the low bid
offered by a British firm on machinery
for an Army Engineers’ project. Quick,
routine action was called for: either ac-
cept the bid as a means of promoting
reciprocal trade or reject it in line with
the buy-American policy. Instead, the
matter dangled for a long time. It was
discussed with officials of the Board of
Trade in London and with the embassy
in Washington. It was discussed at two
separate Cabinet meetings. The decision
that was finally taken went directly
against one of the President’s cherished —
policies.
THE EVIDENCE so far is fairly good
that on most matters Congress will call
its shots during this Administration. But
that is only part of the pattern. It is also
apparent that this is going to be one of
the most conservative Administrations
the country has had in many a year.
That the Cabinet should turn out to be
a millionaires’ club was perhaps only-to
be expected, but that so many other
top-level appointments should go to
representatives of the big interests is
rather appalling. The Agriculture De-
partment is glittering with processors
and traders. The Interior Department is—
filling up with men who have their
doubts about public power and the im-
portance of safeguarding the public do-
main. The Housing and Home Finance
Administration is headed by a vigorous
foe of public housing. A prominent
lobbyist has been named to the Federal
' Trade Commission, a strong protection:
ist to the Tariff Commission. The Office
of International Trade is under a Sec-
retary of Commerce known as a high-
tariff man, and’ the new appointee to the
Federal Power Commission is not one
who will ever frighten the private power
interests.
The NATION —
o Pevisdonntie
an
ros che "
me on ~
2 ee will happen to
the farmer, sing. Wit the consumer,
and the taxpayer it the coming years
depends only partly on the laws passed
by Congress. It depends as much on
the administrative and policy-making de-
cisions of high-level appointees. It will
be affected, for instance, by such things
as the*recent rise in interest rates on
short-term obligations, the proposed
abolition of the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation, the growing tendency to
consider the whole business of govern-
ment lending from a strict banker’s
viewpoint.
Furthermore, precisely at the time
when the extreme conservative wing
_ holds the leadership in Congress, the
Administration has been setting the ex-
ample for a give-away policy in respect
to the nation’s basic resources. Eisen-
hower blithely committed himself to
the offshore-oil give-away before he even
understood it. There followed the
Barrett bill, which would in effect give
away grazing rights on the public do-
main via leases in perpetuity; the Pres-
_ident’s recommendation that govern-
ment-owned synthetic-rubber plants be
ee Pil he a
Sib ¢ ho Sr
sold to prifite industry; Herbert
Hoover’s proposal that federal power
projects be sold to the power interests;
the move to shut down the government’s
synthetic-liquid-fuel pilot plants and
turn the whole operation over to private
industry; the proposal that mineral rights
in the public domain—properties of in-
calculable value—be turned over to the
states; and, lastly, the rising clamor to
dump in industry’s all-receptive lap the
tremendous industrial potential of
atomic energy.
ADD IT UP for yourself: an ultra-
conservative™Cabinet and Congress, a
White House that refuses to exert
firm’ leadership, a set of well-heeled
party backers breathing, deeply of the
Washington air after twenty years in the
wilderness. The sheer clumsiness of some
of the Administration’s leading figures
may, to be sure, create. stumbling-blocks
here and there. Secretary of Commerce
Weeks’s incredible mishandling of
the Bureau of Standards case is the kind
of political blunder no Administration
can afford to repeat very often. Secretary
Dulles’s conduct of ‘the State Depart-
ment already has the press corps specu-
EISENHOWER’S “CRUSADERS”
HERE are some typical appointments made by the
Eisenhower Administration.in vital just-below-Cabinet-
level spots:
ALBERT M. CoLe, Housing and Home Finance Ad-
supports.
lating quietly about a likely successow
Defense Secretary Wilson’s acts have
not yet provided any evidence that his
opening gambit—what’s good for Gen-
eral Motors is good for the country—
was a mere fluke. Secretary of Agricul-
ture Benson continues to build up bad
relations with the farm bloc.
Perhaps no serious political damage
has yet been done. President Eisenhower
enjoys the best press relations in mem-
ory. How could he help it? The pub-
lishers are all on his side. The Presiden-
tial press conferences have gone much
better than was anticipated; perhaps the
one real expert on the White House
team is press secretary James Hagerty.
But the indecision and the fumbling have
not gone unnoticed by the newspaper
corps. Of course they can do very little
about it, since the overwhelming majority
of the men who own and operate news-
papers and magazines remain firmly
committed to the theory that President
Eisenhower is exactly what the country
wants and needs. Not many reporters
bother to file critical stories because such
stories are not acceptable. With this
setup the Administration can afford to
make a good many mistakes.
DON PAARLBERG, Economic Adviser to the Secretary
of Agriculture: a-confirmed opponent of farm price
FRED G. AANDAHL, Assistant Secretary of the In-
ministrator: a bitter foe of public housing is put in
charge of the government’s housing program.
JosEPH E. TaLBotr, member of the Tariff Com-
mission: a high-tariff advocate of the McKinley variety,
who feels that the President has too much to say about
tariff and trade policy.
EpwarpD F. Howrey, member of the Federal Tradé
Commission: an able lawyer who has represented big
business before the commission for years.
ANCHER NELSON, head of the Rural Electrification
Administration: a Minnesota politician who helped
draft the farm plank at the last Republican convention
and showed strong hostility to loans for power gen-
erating plants and transmission lines...
JouN H. Davis, director of Commodity Marketing
and Adjustment, Department of Agriculture: an officer
from the National Wool Marketing Corporation takes
charge of the department’s price-support operations,
bringing with him a belief that a large part of the job
could be handled better by private industry.
terior in charge of water and power: a strong supporter
of the states’-right philosophy, favoring a maximum of
local ownership and control of public power projects.
FELIX WorMsER, Assistant Secretary of the Interior
in charge of mineral resources: another outspoken high-
tariff man—as far as lead and zinc are concerned.
Rosert W. S. McLeob, top security officer, State
Department: the former administrative assistant- to
Senator Bridges and good friend of Senator McCarthy
gets a key post with Secretary Dulles.
The personnel turnover has extended into what are
normally considered civil-service career jobs. Thus Sec-
retary of Commerce Weeks has tried to get rid of the
Director of the Bureau of Standards—and may yet
succeed; Secretary of the Interior McKay has recom-
mended the dismissal of the directors of the Bureau of
Mines, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau
of Land Management. The proposed change in the
Bureau of Mines has aroused the ire of the forse
John L. Lewis.
May2,1953. 0.
363
DAY AFTER TOMORROW
Why Science Fiction?
THREE years ago I wrote a short novel
entitled ‘The Fire Man’ which told
the story of a municipal department in
the year 1999 that came to your house
to start fires, instead of to put them out.
If your neighbors suspected you of read-
ing a mildly subversive book, or any
book at all for that matter, they simply
turned in an alarm. The hose-bearing
censors ‘then thundered up in their red
engines and squirted kerosene on your
books, your house, and sometimes on
you. Then a match was struck. This short
novel was intended as science fiction.
Elsewhere in the narrative I described
my Fire Man arriv ing home after mid-
night and finding his wife in bed
afflicted with two varieties of stupor.
She is in a trance,.a condition so with-
drawn as to resemble catatonia, com-
pounded of equal parts of liquor and a
small Seashell thimble-radio tucked in
her ear. The Seashell croons and mur-
murs its music and commercials and
private little melodramas for her alone.
The room is silent. The husband cannot
even try to guess the communion be-
tween Seashell and wife.
her is not unlike applying shock to a
cataleptic.
I thought I was writing a story of
prediction, describing a world that might
evolve in four or five decades. But only
a month ago, in Beverly Hills one night,
a husband and wife passed me, walking
their dog. I stood staring after them,
absolutely stunned. The woman held in
one hand a small cigarette-package-sized
radio, its antenna quivering. From this
Sprang tiny copper wires which ended
Awakening
in a dainty cone plugged into her right —
ear. There she was, oblivious to man
and dog, listening to far winds and whis-
pets and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking,
RAY BRADBURY’S science fiction has -
been acclaimed by many critics as a
brilliant contribution to American lit-
erature. Among his books are “The
Illustrated Man” and, most recently,
“The Golden Apples of the Sun.”
364
Ray Bradbury
helped up and down curbs by a husband
who might just as well not have been
there. This was mot science fiction. This
was a new fact in our changing society.:
As you ¢an see, I must start writing
very fast indeed about our future world
in order to stand still. I thought I had
raced ahead of science, predicting the
radio-induced semi-catatonic. In the
long haul, science pulled abreast, tipped
its hat, and fed me the dust. The
woman with the radio-thimble crammed
in her ear the other night symbolized my
failure to count on certain psychological
needs which demanded _ satisfaction
earlier than I supposed.
Whether or not my ideas on censor-
ship via the fire department will be old
hat by this time next week, I dare not
predict. When the wind is right, a faint
odor of kerosene is exhaled from Senator
McCarthy.
All of the above long prologue leads
up to the simple fact that I very much
enjoy, I relish, writing science fiction.
There is- great serious fun for the
writer in asking himself: when does an
invention stop being a reasonable escape
mechanism—for we must all evade the
world and its crushing responsibilities
at times—and start being a paranoiacally
dangerous device? How much of any
one such inyention is good for a person,
bad for a person, fine for this man,
fatal to the next?
by Ray Bradbury
°
So much depends, of course, on what
~the individual fears when he gives him-
self over to the electronic tides breaking
on the shore of his Seashell. The voice
of conscience and reason? An echo of
morality? A new thought? A fresh idea?
A morsel of philosophy? Or bias, hatred,
fear, prejudice, nightmare, lies, half-
truths, and suspicions? Or, perhaps even
worse, the sound of one emptiness strik-
ing hollowly against yet another and
another emptiness; broken at two-min-
ute intervals by a jolly commercial,
preferably in rhymed quattains or coup
lets ?
In writing a_ science-fiction story
around such an idea, the author must
consider many things. Is there, for in-
stance, a delicate interplay where the
society does not crush the individual
but where the individual realizes that
without his cooperation society would fly
to pieces through the centrifugal force
of anarchy? Is the programming on
such an ear-button receiver of a caliber
to enable a man to be a gyroscope, both
taking from and giving to society;
beautifully balanced? Does it tell him
what to do every hour and every minute
of every day? Or, fearing knowledge of
any sort, tell him nothing, and spoon-
feed him mush? The challenge and the
fun come in handling all the above
ideas and materials in such a way as to
predict how perversely or how well man
will use himself, and therefore his
mechanical extensions, in the coming
time of our lives.
It is both exciting and disconcerting
for a writer to discover that man’s ma-_
chines are indeed symbols of his own
most secret cravings and desires, extra
hands put out to touch and reinterpret
the world. The machines themselves are
empty gloves into which a hand, either
cold and excessively bony, or warm,
full-fleshed,’ and gentle, can be inserted.
The hand is always the hand of man,
and the hand_of man can be good or
evil, while the gloves themselves remain
amoral,
A,
The Nation
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_ May 2, 1953
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roblem of good and evil fasci-
found externalized and purified in the
thousands of semi-robots we are using
and will use in the coming century. Our
atomic knowledge destroys cancer or
men. Our airplanes carry passengers or
jellied gasoline bombs. ‘The hairline,
the human, choice is there. Before us
today we see the aluminum and steel
and uranium chess pieces which the in-
terested science-fiction writer can hope
to move about, trying to guess how man
will play out the game.
THIS, I think, should answer why I
have more often than not written stories
which, for a convenient label, are called
science fiction. There are few literary
fields, it seems to ‘ne, that deal so strik-
ingly with themes that concern us all
today; there are few more exciting
genres, there are none fresher or so
full of continually renewed and renew-
able concepts.
It xs, after all, the fiction of ideas, the _
_ fiction where philosophy can be tinkered
with, torn apart, and put back together
again; it is the fiction of sociology and
psychology-and history compounded and
squared by time. It is the fiction where '
you may set up and knock down your
own political and religious and moral
states. It can be a high form of Swiss
watch-making. It can be poetry. It has
sresulted in some of the greatest writing
in our past, from Plato and Lucian to Sir
Thomas More and Francois Rabelais
and on down through Jonathan Swift
and Johannes Kepler to Poe and Edward
Bellamy and George Orwell.
If you try to cram philosophical and
sociological * theories into the non-
science-fiction tale, you more often than
not wind up with more crust than fill-
ing. It takes a very agile writer indeed
to keep a book together under such con-
ditions. But in the story of prediction, at
its best, you are given leave to act out
your problem in easily stage-managed
symbols, in allegories, if you wish. It
isn’t necessary to stop for long-winded
explanations of philosophical or socio-
logical climates. Simply by showing your
‘real characters living and dying against
your fresh background, the reader can
guess an entire and different world, can
feel it come alive through an osmotic
literary process which is often exception-
ally subtle, Science fiction, then, does
a — = _——
ae
a
one the favor of making outsize images
of problems so they can be seen and
handled from all sides like those Easter
balloons strung along the avenue by
Macy’s each year.
Over and above everything, the writer
in this field has a sense of being con-
fronted by dozens of paths that move
among the thousand mirrors of a carni-
val maze, seeing his society imaged and
re-imaged and- distorted by the light
thrown back at him. Without moving
anything but his typewriter, that im-
mensely dependable Time Machine, the
writer can take those paths and examine
those billion images. Where are we
going? Well, first let us see where we've
been. And let us ask ourselves what we
are at this very hour. Fortified with this
knowledge, nebulous at most, the writ-
er’s imagination selects the first path.
Would you like to know how a Com-
munist government might run _ the
United States? A fascist clique? A gov-
ernment of matriarchs? Novels exist
covering all these subjects. What if all
parents gave over the education of their
children entirely to machines? Or if a
law was passed forbidding pedestrians
in the year 2001? Why travel to the
Moon or Mars if we only continue our
wars there with Russia or Britain or
Africa? Why build rockets at all? For
fun? For adventure? Or is this the same
process which sends the salmons back
upstream year after year to spawn and
die—a subliminal urge in mankind to
spread, in self-preservation, to the stars?
Are we then secretly fearful that one
day the sun might freeze and the earth
gtow cold or the sun explode in a ter-
rific thermal cataclysm and burn down
our house of catds? And is all this
space-travel talk nothing more than the
human race itself seeing to it that it sur-
vives when survival means getting otf a
single, unstable planet and _ seeding
space to its farthest boundaries, where
no natural catastrophe, no congealing of
sun or passing comet, can destroy man?
Is_self-preservation, then, our prime
mover, and all our speechifying about
adventure and fun and a New West in
the Sky so much rationalization ?
I KNOW I cannot answer the above
questions. But I also know I am end-
lessly fascinated with these questions,
minor as they may seem to some, of
pompous as they may, seem to others.
And many, including myself, are having
a go at answering them, in the science-
fiction field. Here are a few more:
How do you go about converting a
group of non-materialist utterly alien
Martians to the Methodist conviction?
If you find a race of dogs or cows on
Venus with I.Q.’s verging on 190, ca-
pable of carrying on highly enlightened
and logical conversations on social and
metaphysical topics, where does this put
the Christian faith relative to their dic-
tum that canines and cows do not have
souls of transferable value? If these
dogs and cows are morally aware and
responsible for their actions, that is sup-
posedly the test: one must pass in order
to be credited with a soul. Well, then,
one is tempted to ask the Christian re-
ligion to point out that exact moment in
the history of dogdom and cowdom on
Venus when they stopped being brutes
without souls and became equal and
perhaps superior to man, thus inheriting
the soul as a blessed gift?
I ask these questions both in good
humor and in all seriousness. I ask them
simply because some time soon they
must be answered. The day of the rocket
is not so distant that we can delay longer
in answering some of them. It will be
very embarrassing if we discover on
Mats not only that the Adam and Eve
legend is the myth we suspected it to
be but that Mr. Darwin, too, has been
thrown bodily out the window by the
things we find on that far world. Sci-
ence and religion might both run in
circles, like broken toys, momentarily,
confronted with such factual heresy.
Not that we won't be able to adjust
to any problems met at home or abroad
in the solar system in 1999. We will
adjust. But I also think our adjustment
will derive in part from our practicality
365.
fs
my H
in both entertaining ourselves with sci-
ence fiction and looking to our answers
now, while still it is afternoon. These
problems are human problems, which
all too soon will no longer be science-
fictional but part of a past history our
children will read. I consider none of
the above questions improbable or im-
possible. I consider them very probable
and possible indeed.
Consider the similarity of two books
—Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” laid
in our recent past, and George Orwell's
“1984,” set in our immediate future.
And here we are, poised between the
two, between a dreadful reality and an
unformed terror, trying to make such
decisions as will avoid the tyranny of
the very far right and the tyranny of the
very far left; the two of which can often
be seen coalescing into a tyranny pure
and simple, with no qualifying adjective
in front of it at all.
Space, which is very large indeed, is
not the only huge thing which stands
before man. Bigness in all its forms
towers above us—bigness in religion,
bigness in the fields of communication,
labor, corporative enterprise, and gov-
ernment. No sooner has the private citi-
zen warded off the millstone wheel of
one Juggernaut than another lumbers
on stage. Compared to other ages, in
which man hid from a single Giant
here or a Titan there, we are living, it
cannot be denied, in a year when evety
one of us must stand ready, alone, ax
in hand, by the Beanstalk.
Science fiction, it has been suggested,
could possibly be the ax which on occa-
Best of Recent Science Fiction
IF YOU have not yet tried science fiction—or have read it only casually
—here is a handy guide to the best that has been published recently. We
asked four top men in the field to name six of their favorite new titles.
These men were H. L. Gold, editor of Galaxy; H. H. Holmes (better
known as Anthony Boucher), author and critic; Robert A. Heinlein and
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., authors. Not unnaturally, some of the lists overlapped;
Alfred Bester’s “The Demolished Man” had the unique distinction of
appearing on all four. In the combined list which follows, the names of
the individual recommenders appear in parentheses. Titles are in alpha-
betical order and include one or two old ones which have recently been
reisssued. The fact that some of our judges named the works of their
fellow-judges is purely fortuitous; the lists were prepared independently
and no judge knew who the others were.— EDITORS THE NATION.
Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction. By H. G. Wells, Edited by Anthony
Boucher and J. Francis McComas. Little, Brown; McClelland. (Vonne-
gut)
Flatland. By A. Square (Edwin, A. Abbott). Dover. (Holmes)
Golden Apples of the Sun. By Ray Bradbury. Doubleday. (Gold)
Limbo. By Bernard Wolfe. Random House. (Gold)
Martian Chronicles, By Rad Bradbury. Doubleday. (Vonnegut)
1984, By George Orwell. Harcourt, Brace. (Heinlein)
Pebble in the Sky. By Isaac Asimov. Doubleday. (Heinlein)
Player Piano, By Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Scribner’s. (Heinlein)
Puppet Masters. By Robert A. Heinlein. Doubleday. (Vonnegut)
Rogue Queen. By L. Sprague de Camp. Fantasy Publishing Company.
(Heinlein)
Ring Around the Sun. By Clifford D. Simak. Simon and Schuster. (Gold,
Holmes)
Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension, Edited by Groff Conklin. Viking.
(Holmes)
Star Science Fiction Stories. Edited by Frederik Pohl. Ballantine Books.
(Holmes)
The Demolished Man. By Alfred Bester. Shasta. (Gold, Heinlein, Holmes,
Vonnegut )
The Space Merchants. By Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. Ballantine
Books. (Gold, Holmes)
The Worm Ouroboros, By E. R. Eddison. Dutton. (Gold)
‘Tomorrow the Stars, From Twenty-eight Science Fiction Stories. Edited by —
Robert A. Heinlein. Doubleday; Dover. (Vonnegut)
What Mad Universe. By Fredric Brown. Dutton. (Heinlein)
366
I ee as teee = ii ele ee
’ Sate
ay, ae
sion might hew as much as ha lf an inc hb
of fibrous material from certain Bean-
stalks. I do not know whether it has
ever-killed, maimed, or even bruised a.
Giant. I do not know whether it can be
a sling to send the pebble against the
brow of Goliath for the millions of
Davids alive \and put-upon today. I
would not dare to say that it is probably
the literature of warning or that it
“might be the dream which can help
ward off the nightmare. Too many have
claimed too much for science fiction al-
ready. And there is no charting agency
available to show how much literature
goes into’ the minds and, years later,
works down and comes out through the
hands of acting individuals,
I know only that there isn’t a time,
when I’ve‘had a really good night's
sleep and am clear-headed, that I haven’t
thought of science fiction and been ex-
cited and concerned with its function,
minor if you-wish, both as fresh enter-
tainment and as morality cloaked in
symbol and allegory.
Certainly I have often wished that a
new name might be applied to this field, ©
since the old name has grown shopworn
‘in the service of bug-eyed monsters and
half-naked space women. But there
seems to be no way to avoid that, and
new writers coming into the field will
have -to carry the burden of the old
Jabel until someone provides a better
one, in this land where everything must,
absolutely have a label.
EVEN AS I FINISH this “article, our
civilization is thinking about the future
and pouring it into molds to harden and
become the newer machines which will
further prove that, in motion, man-
kind’s ability to externalize his loves
and hates, thus more quickly building”
or destroying his culture, is seemingly
inexhaustible. As long as ‘‘science fic-
tion” can keep me alert to all this, I'll
go on writing it. And I'll go on as long
as there is gusto and zest in the writing;
for if it should ever become completely
and bodily nothing but self-important
social and political prediction, I think I
would become bored, and my reader
bored, too. :
‘I once strongly suspected that fun
was the handmaiden, if not the -progen-
itor, of the arts; now I know this for
certain. And with a great sense of pleas-
ure and personal well-being I intend to
a
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continue in eevee a BE eeode many
| years along with those others who are
_interested in. trying to-find a bridge to
cross that vast gulf of communication
permanently for all of us. I do not
know whether tomorrow’s street will be
ee
tye
ss
full of human beings with Seashell
thimble-ra€ios whispering in their ears
and all the world and its problems
moved away from and neglected. Or
whether by some mitacle we may all
carry supersonic stethoscopes with us
on vu rounds, so that each may know
the sound of every other human heart. I
only know that it would be interesting
to walk on that street and think about it
and write about it, before that evening
sun goes down.
‘BOOKS ARE BURNING
The Spreading
IN A recent speech in Chicago, Victor
Weybright, chairman of the Reprinters’
Committee of the American Book Pub-
lishers’ Council, warned that unless \we
defend our right to read what we
choose, we shall be subjected to a
nation-wide censorship that will emas-
culate our current creative literature
and ban many of the classics from our
library shelves. “In my opinion,” said
Mr. Weybright, “the current drive
which threatens the widespread avail-
ability of books in the United States
portends the possible suppression of
legitimate scHolarship and creative liter-
ature in ways unmatched in our time ex-
cept during the Hitler regime in Ger-
many and, even miore overwhelmingly,
in Commuhist Russia.” Investigation of
recent censorship activity can only lead
to the distressing conclusion that Mr.
Weybright is not exaggerating. Readers
of The Nation will not be surprised to
_ learn that this campaign has been
‘ planned and organized by the same
super-patriots who are undermining our
- Bill of Rights, attacking the U. N., sub-
' verting the Voice of America, and terror-
* izing our educators.
As Mr. Weybright pointed out, books
. are still the most important outlet for
_ boldness_of thought and imagination.
Naturally, . therefore, the conformists
seek a way of plugging that outlet.
Narrow-minded as they may be, we must
_ . not underrate them. They fully under-
stand the value of publicity,~and™they
have profited much from the successes
achieved in other fields.
WILLIAM MURRAY is a_ frequent
.. contributor to The Nation.
May 2, 1953
aa
Censorship .
The campaign for book censorship is
led by the Chicago Archdiocese Council
of Catholic Men headed by Father
Thomas J. Fitzgerald. The council pub-
lishes a nationally distributed black list
which includes books by winners of
Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. It works in
close cooperation with local police
officers in many parts of the country.
Father Fitzgerald has repeatedly recom-
mended the creation of a literary-review
board for the publishing industry,
headed by a “czar,” which would im-
pose self-censorship. The only alterna-
tive, he .admits, is federal censorship.
This, of course, would be a direct viola-
tion of the First Amendment's guaranty
of freedom of the press. Father Fitz-
gerald’s ideas have received support
from McCarthy, Jenner, Velde, various
Catholic organizations, the American
Legion, and most recently from a Con-
gressional investigating committee on
“current pornographic materials” headed
by E. C. Gathings of Arkansas.
Until the Gathings committee went to
work, the campaign against books was
carried on locally rather than nationally.
As in the attack on Chaplin and ‘‘Lime-
light,’ pressure was brought to bear on
local distributors and dealers. Often city ,
and state legislation has managed to im-
pose effective if unconstitutional censor-
ship. The Nation reported last January
on the censorship set up by a city ordi-
nance in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with the
result that more than three hundred
books are on a banned list to which
thirty titles are being added every
month. Georgia has a three-man litera-
ture commission which is currently re-
reading Chaucer before deciding
by William Murray
whether to ban his works. Sixteen stores
in Brooklyn have yielded to the pressure
of the Catholic Decent Literature Com-
mittee and stopped the sale of 414
publications, including novels by Wil-
liam Faulkner, Budd Schulberg, Nelson
Algren, Richard Wright, Willard
Motley, Erskine Caldwell, and Irwin
Shaw.
There have been public book burnings
in North Carolina and Oklahoma. In
Youngstown, Ohio, Police Chief Edward
J. Allen, Jr., has forced distributors
under threat of arrest to remove a num-
ber of pocket-sized books from the sales
shelves, including Hemingway's ‘‘Across
the River and into the Trees,’ Dos
Passos’s ‘‘Forty-second Parallel,’ and
works by Maupassant, D. H. Lawrence,
and Somerset Maugham. In Cleveland
local police action has banned pocket-
sized editions of Sigmund Freud’s
“General Introduction to Psychoanal-
ysis’ —because, according to a local
distributor, “it contains a chapter on
sex’ —and of Apuleius’s ‘“The Golden
Ass,” because “the title of the book
might be offensive.’’ An organized drive
against books is also under way in
Detroit, where police censorship 4s al-_
ready in force, and in Manchester, New
Hampshire.
In Middlesex County, New Jersey, a
local Committee on Objectionable ~
Literature has succeeded in banning
twenty-six titles, although the case is
now being contested in the courts. The
Civil Liberties Union is fighting the
passage of so-called “obscenity laws’ in
New York and Minnesota. A proposed
amendment to the New York State
Code of Criminal Procedure which
367
would empower police chiefs and sheriffs
to seize “objectionable materials’ has
already been approved by the legislature
and awaits the Governor's signature.
DEPRESSING as these facts are, there
was little danger that censorship would
become nation-wide until the Gathings
committee began to operate last Decem-
‘ber, After all, we have had books
banned before, notably in Boston. Then,
too, the attack seemed to be directed not
so much at ideas or personalities as at
pornography and. obscenity. It has been
concentrated chiefly on _ pocket-sized
books, which are printed by some ten
major publishers and a host of smaller
firms. The theme of the reformers has
been that children now have easy access
to harmful literature which before the
rise of the reprint trade was limited to
adults willing to spend three or four
dollars for a book. The low price and
availability of the reprint, the reformers
contend, make it imperative that we take
action to protect our children from the
corrupting influence of such notoriously
indecent authors as Hemingway, Dos
Passos, and Faulkner, not to mention
that master of obscenity, Shakespeare.
But they have in mind more than the
morals of our children. Some prominent
members of Congress would like to limit
our right to read for other reasons.
One bill has been prepared for presenta-
tion to the House which would compel
the Librarian of Congress to apply the
subversion test to all the books within
his jurisdiction. The list of condemned
books would then be circulated ‘to other
librarians to take what action they wish.
Senator McCarthy would censor not
only what Americans read but what
Europeans and Asians-read. Two arro-
gant and foolish young men, the Sena-
tor’s investigators, have been touring
libraries maintained by the United States
Information Service abroad. One of their
complaints has been that not enough
copies of the American Legion Magazine
are available and too many of The
Nation and the New Republic. That
ex-Communist and perennial absolutist
Louis, Budenz, always the first to testify,
was quick to assure McCarthy that the
State Department distributes books by
“at least seventy-five Communist au-
thors’ to our overseas libraries. Clearly,
freedom of ideas is the issue, not
pornography.
368
The Gathings committee began its
- investigation by piously clainiing that it
was concerned with pornography only
because “pornography is big business.”
But on the second page of the committee
report is a reference to “content that was
believed to be subversive of morals,
allegiance, or faith.” The report asserts
that the reprints ‘have degenerated into
media for the dissemination of artful
appeals to sensuality, immorality, filth, -
perversion, and degeneracy.” But as Rep-
resentatives Celler and Walter point out
in their minority report, it “directs un-
favorable comment toward ideas them-
selves contained in cited publications.”
The majority report attacks “The
Haters,’ a Bantam book, by Theodore
Strauss, because “the author was obvi-
ously trying to cash in on the Scottsboro
Representative Gathings. ~
pro-Negro agitation which was Com-
munist-inspired.” It criticizes “‘Cage
of Darkness,’’ by René Masson, because
“the author does not seem to like the
‘upper classes’ or law-enforcement of-
ficers,”” and condemns “The Harem,”
by Louis Royer, as advocating polygamy.
Does the Gathings committee want
federal censorship? No, says the com-
mittee on page 12. Yes, says the com-
mittee on page 17, where it urges an
“effort by Congress” against the pub-
lishers. Past court decisions seem to
block effective censorship of books, But
this can be remedied, it believes, since
Congress can pass new laws which will
limit the “liberal concgption of the
tradition founded upon the constitu-
tional provision guaranteeing the free-
, dom of the pres
: e-
Dy Rae
4
by warning publishers to
disciplinary measures or suffer the con-
sequences_of the public clamor for more
federal action. What public clamor?
Bernard DeVoto points out in the
current issue of Harper’s that the chief
danger lies in the fact that the committee
intends to abridge the First Amendment
and firmly believes that Congress is
entitled to do so. -““What we may care
to read,’ comments Mr. DeVoto, “is
no concern of Congress.’’ He also re-
minds us that in June, 1949, Representa-
tive John S.+Wood asked some seventy —
colleges to submit all their textbooks
for examination and approval by the
Un-American Activities | Committee.
That attempt at thought control failed,
but the current one stands a better
chance of success. The Gathings com-
mittee has requested another appropria-
tion to enable it to continue the investi-
gation and will probably get it.
THE REPRINT publishers, of course,
are not blameless. Even the major firms
resort to provocative illustrations on book
jackets. Many of the pocket-sized books
are trashy novels of a quasi-pornographic
type. So it is easy for the reformers to
scream ‘‘filth’’ and urge censorship as
the only solution. ‘
An article in Amertca, the national
Catholic weekly, points out that “if the
pocket-book publishers had been more
objective in their testimony before the
committee, willing to admit mistakes
that are obvious to everyone else, and
less briskly defend every book under
their imprint, we bystanders would have
been much more persuaded of their
realization of the responsibility that is
inescapably theirs by the very fact that
they are publishers.” This is undoubted-
ly true, but it is also true that the publi--
cation. of trash, however lurid, is not
going to undermine American society
to any devastating extent. Censorship,
however, will be fatal. “I deplore the
putrid state into which our newspapers
have passed,” said Thomas Jefferson,
“and. the malignity, the vulgarity, and
mendacious spirit of those who write |
them. These ordures are rapidly de--
praving the public taste. It is, however,
an evil for which there is no remedy.
Our liberty depends on freedom of the
press, and that cannot be limited without
being lost.” .
me; 2
7 - ~ at
ant oh ae 5 a
.” The coches.
take self-
The NATION
i
a May 2, 1953
ES
RECENTLY there has been a good
deal of interest in the “values’’ and be-
liefs of the younger generation of Amer-
ican writers. In Harper's, the Partisan
Review, and the Saturday Review there
have been surveys and interpretations
by various critics, historians, and com-
mentators, but the writers themselves
. for the most part have remained silent.
The Nation has accordingly asked six
novelists whose work has attracted in-
terest and praise in contemporary let-
ters to state their present convictions,
as individuals and as representative fig-
ures. James Jones is the author of
-“From Here to Eternity.’ William Sty-
ron is the author of ‘Lie Down in
Too Much
ae oe
tat
NG BOOK SECTION
Six Young Authees
in Search...
Darkness,” for which he received a
Prix de Rome from the American Acad-
emy. Maude Hutchins is the author of
the entertaining “Diary of Love,”
banned in Chicago, and of ‘My Hero.”
John H. Griffin is the author of ‘“The
Devil Rides Outside,” also controversial,
and perhaps the most original novel in
1952. Jefferson Young is the author of
the highly praised ‘““A Good Man.”
Leonard Bishop is the author of ‘Down
All Your Streets” and “Days of My
Love.”
Together, these writers represent a
valuable cross-section of what is going
on in the American novel today.
EDITORS THE NATION
Symbolism
By James Jones
Marshall, Il.
IT’S HARD to start cold, and attempt
-to define what you believe or feel about
anything so complex as writing or writ-
ers. The very nature of writing and
writers is diversity. Any comment has
_ to be.so general.
_ There is a lot in our age today that is
‘similar to the Elizabethan Age, I think.
The unrest, the perpetual wars, the
opening up of new scientific and spatial
frontiers, the sense of living daily amid
Many great dangers to continued exist-
ence. Individual life is growing much
cheaper in our country—just as well as
the rest of the world—no matter how
loud we Americans holler the opposite;
and on the other side of the same coin,
the hidden side, the average person is
living with much greater vitality than
we usually admit, simply because hg is
existing under such stress. All that is a
lot like Elizabeth’s age, I think.
But our writers today, all of us, have
a common neurotic background that pre-
* vents us. from seeing all this with the
a
‘=:
en
SS 22" avs
_
enthusiasm of the Elizabethans. Some-
times, by hoisting ourselves up by our
own bootstraps, which is a pretty rup-
turing method, we are able to rise above
our cheap history and unwillingness to
face moral paradox and write some-
thing good. More often we don’t, be-
cause our neurotic backgrounds have
enervated us and we lack the vitality
and moral courage of the Elizabethans
to enjoy un-morality. Only when we
can screw ourselves up to a great pitch
of excitement or inspiration are we able
to do this occasionally. But the Eliza-
bethan writers did it all the time.
I think one of the results of this atti-
tude of ours is that we find ourselves
concerned more with symbolism than
with characters. Thus instead of letting
our characters write our books we let
our ideas write our characters. Conse-
quently we're in constant danger of
winding up preaching—either for or
against, it makes no difference. Even our
critics suffer from this same malady, I
think. They criticize us, not for the
lifelikeness of what we write or for the
memorable characters we produce, but
for the symbolic meanings our writing
is supposed to impart. They worry about
values. We worry about values. Have
writers lost their values? Has our cul-
ture lost its values? Are there any values
left anywhere? Meantime, the people
who don’t read our books and don’t
know themselves to be valueless go
right on living as if they valued things.
If the critics ever do find a book that
doesn’t claim to impart symbolic mean-
ings, they holler like hell. They won’t
even accept the idea, let alone the
book,
I suppose the same thing is also true
of any generation of writers, any given
period of writers. It’s probably just be-_
cause I myself happen to live in this
period that it affects me so strongly to
see it. But it does affect me strongly,
very strongly, and it does make me wish
we could all turn to life itself, rather
than to our ideas about life—which ate
almost always wrong anyway. In every
generation of writers there are always
two or three great ones and a host of
lessers, and I guess in our generation
too a few of us will eventually really
grow up to surmount all this. But it
does seem to me that it will be harder to
do in our generation than in previous
ones, because of the increasingly neu-
rotic backgrounds we've had to come
out of. But, again, this may just be be-
cause I’m one of this generation instead
of the last one.
I think the tragedy of the American
writer today is not so much that he
lives in a tragic time as that he would
prefer to live in another one.
But like I said, I expect some day one
or two of us will eventually grow up
and stop being ‘children. I’m about con-
vinced you can’t be a big writer unless
you stop being a child and first become
a big man. I hope someday I'll be able
to do it.
369°
ae Prevalence of Wonders. i
per, Se
By William Styron
Rome
I HARDLY think that anyone in so
short a space can do much justice to
what he believes, and perhaps least of
all should this be attempted by any
writer, whose works, finally, should be
sufficient expression of his credo. Lots
of writers find themselves hopelessly
baffled when it comes to dealing with
ideas, and even though I suspect that
this is a grave and lazy weakness, I
none the less count myself among the
group and, in a symposium of this sort,
flounder about in a vague wonderland
of notes and inconclusive jottings. But
I was asked to write a “frank and hon-
est statement of your feelings about
your art, your country, and the world,”
so I will proceed, as frankly and as
honestly as I can.
About my art: I know little of the
mechanics of criticism and have been
able to read only a very few critics, but
I respect those people—critics and read-
ers—who feel that the art of writing is
valuable, since, like music or sailing or
drinking beer, it is a pleasure, and since,
at its best, it does something new to the
heart. I for one would rather listen to
music or go sailing, or drink beer while
doing both, than talk about literature,
but I am not averse to talking about it
at all, just as lawyers talk about law
and surgeons about surgery. And I take
it quite seriously. I have no conscious
illusions of myself as teacher or
preacher; I do know that when I feel
that I have been writing my best I am
aware of having gathered together some
of the actualities of myself and my ex-
perience, projected these whole and
breathing on the page, and thereby have
enjoyed some peculiar poetic fulfilment.
This is self-indulgence; but I trust that
it sometimes approaches art, a word
which I’m not ashamed to use from time
to time, and I trust that it might also
please some reader, that person who, in
my most avid self-indulgence, I am not
so ingenuous as ever really to forget.
So I might say that I am not interested
in writing propaganda, but only in that
sort of personal propaganda engendered
by afternoons of vicious solitude and
the weird, joyful yearning which it
370
pleases oneself to think, just for a cou-
ple of seconds, that Bach must have
felt. If out of all this, placed us vividly
as I can place"them in their moment in
time, there are people who emerge
worthy of a few moments of someone's
recollection, I am satisfied. Good people
and bad people—bad enough to justify
the truth at every signpost in one’s most
awful nightmares, good enough to sat-
isfy every editor on Tzme magazine, and
so much the worse.
1 would like to say something in re-
gard to my feelings about America. I
have lived in France and Italy for some-
thing over a year now—not a long time
but long enough for me to feel well
ahead in my postgraduate education. I
have been here under a large handicap,
though a handicap which, as I will try
to demonstrate, might have its redeem-
ing qualities. This handicap may be ex-
plained simply by the fact that I am one
of those people who are unable to enjoy
a painting, a piece of sculpture, a work
of architecture, or, for that matter, prac-
tically any visually artistic representa-
tion. To suffer such a lack while in
Italy is somewhat like being let loose,
while suffering from ulcers, in one of
those wonderful, large West Side del-
icatessens; yet, as Clive Bell, to whom
I have run for refuge as apologist, so
sympathetically points out in his essay
called ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis,”
there are people congenitally incapable
of such an experience, just as there are
people born without the sense of smell,
and no more to be blamed than their
equally sensitive friends who can visual-
ize in the aerial, clear abstractions of a
Vivaldi concerto, only horses galloping,
nymphs and shepherds, or the first girl
they ever kissed. So, deprived as I am
in a place so rich in wonders as Rome
of the means to assimilate those won-
ders, I have been thrown a bit on my
own devices, so that my viewpoint, as
an American living abroad, has prob-
ably often been closer to Burbank and
his Baedeker among the ruins of Venice
than any number of generations of com-
fortably adjusted artists. Many people
can feel the true rapture at the facade
of Chartres, and these are no doubt a
~~ cally more limited who, ‘attuned to the —
night clubs of Montparnasse or escar- —
gots primarily, are outraged, stricken,
and resentful when it dawns upon them .
that the French consider them jackasses.
Not all art lovers, of course, are nice
people. But a warm and tolerant feeling -
of brotherhood for man is, I believe,
often measured by the extent of one’s
love for man’s monuments and man’s
artifacts, and not a few American tour-
ists, like myself, don’t know a Piero
from a peanut.
I think this blindness of mine,
though, has had its worthy effects, for if
it has helped to keep me from under-
standing the more beautiful things
about Europe it has also conspired with
a sort of innate and provincial aloof-
ness in my nature to make me much
more conscious of my modern environ-
ment, and self-consciously aware of my
emotions as an American within that
environment. And thus at last, after
more than a year, I think that I am as
“adjusted” as I ever will be, having
succumbed neither to’ the blandishments
of exile nor to any illusions of a fault-
less America. There cannot be much
dogma about nations when oné lives in
One World, eighteen hours from home,
and for me now things are pretty well
balanced.
The “U. S. Go Home’ signs no
longer offend me, since I have learred
that they are the work of the Commu- »
nists and don’t mean me but the Amer-.
ican army encamped nearby. I have even
come to the point where I can sympa-
thize with the signs and ask myself:
“Suppose New York were full of
Swedish soldiers all mouthing orders
‘for beer in an alien, thick, jaw-breaking
tongue. Would I not want to scrawl
‘Swedes go home!’ on every available
wall?” I have learned, too, that anti- .
Americanism is many different things:
unjustified among the spoiled and snob-
The NATION
1
. ( uc i
was aie fected actress see at a ea
recently to utter the most slanderous
anti-American remarks, and enplane the
next day, via TWA, for New York;
justified when a Parisian reads about
McCarthy in Figaro, or when our most .
widely read weekly editorializes upon
France and compares it to a whore; non-
existent, finally, among most Italians,
whose happiest tradition has been an in-
ability to be anti-anything and each of
whom has a cousin in Brooklyn.
_What I suppose I've really learned is
the elderly truism that all of us can
learn something from each other.. That
whereas our radios are better, no car
from Detroit can match a fleet, shiny
Alfa Romeo; that our plan€s work,
crack up less often, and are generally on
time, but that the dreadful snarl on
Madison Avenue might be alleviated by
a study of the marvelous Paris bus sys-
tem; that, on the other hand, a bottle of
Chateauneuf * du Pape is ambrosia, in-
deed, but that there’s still nothing like
a Coca-Cola on a hot summer day, as
every Frenchman knows but won’t ad-
mit; that the man from Chicago gob-
bling hamburgers on the Champs
Elysées is undoubtedly a fool, but there
is something wonderful to be said about
his brother, the July tourist with his
straw hat and his lurid tie and his cam-
—-*
1ost ‘pathetic eagerness to
- find, a” a “strange land, some kind of
dazzling and miraculous enlightenment:
sometimes his manners are bad but he’s
making the effort at least, and one finds
few French tourists outside of France;
that our mass production is the world’s
finest: “Oh,” says the American, “your
Italian sports cars are great, but in the
states everyone can own a car.’ “But
Signore,” is the reply, “here not every-
one wants a car’; that our Park Avenue
head-feelers are the very best: “But
Signore, here we do not need psycho-
analysis.’’ It’s simply a matter of balance.
One must end a credo on the word
“endure,” but I think we will do just
that—Americans and Italians and
Frenchmen, in spite of all those who
threaten us momentary harm. Humans
have become involved too much in life,
and the wonders are too thick about us,
to be daunted by a handful of madmen
who always, somehow, fall. The hope
of heaven has flowered so long among
us that I just can’t envision that hope
blighted in our time, or any other, for
that matter; perhaps the miseries of our
century will be recalled only as the work
of a race of strange and troublous chil-
dren, by the wise old men in the aeons
which come after us. Meanwhile, the
writers keep on writing, and I should
like to think that what we write will be
worth remembering.
The Lyre with One String
By Maude Hutchins
Southport, Conn.
PERHAPS the artist, is the only one
who is not entitled to his own opinion;
what I mean by that is that I do not
believe in propaganda, in a novel, polit-
ical or social; or prejudice, or even
opinion, in so far as they can be avoided
without stress. I do not think it is the
artist's business to prove anything at
all. The artist is a professional observer,
not only of things—shapes, colors, lilies,
termites, trees—but of feelings, too,
and what makes things work and how
come Mary Jane said that, a kind of :
what's cooking. Unlike the doctor, “more
like the scientist, he leaves the conclu-
sion to you; the scientist, nobody’s
keeper, weeps, it is true, when his in-
May 2, 1953
fernal machine is morally misused, but
he is not responsible.
On the other hand, I believe that each
writer is trying to say one thing; one
idea, perhaps, possesses him, he /s pos-
sessed. It is as if he had been dealt a
hand that he must make the most of,
free to reshuffle it, but within his own
parenthesis almost. The idea that he is
trying to make clear to himself first, and
secondly to his readers, naturally takes
on a subject matter and he is stuck with
it, as, let us say, a mathematician is with
blocks or apples. That he doesn’t mean
blocks or apples is not always clear to
the man in the trolley car. As for me, I
have been accused of my theme—well,
give me time, I’m stuck with it; it is
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the root in a sense, perhaps there will
be branches and, who knows, blossoms
maybe. No one is accusing Mr. Herzog
of being preoccupied with mountains. I
bet his publisher hasn’t said, “Can’t you
write about something else?” On the
other hand, perhaps he has said, “Look
here, old man, try sex next time.” I
can’t help it if the nursemaid, as I gazed
at my first moon, with no subject matter
in me at all, pointed out that a man and
a woman were embracing in it. She was
my literary sponsor in baptism, perhaps.
Unimportant as subject matter is,
there has to be one. Certainly the idea
is first, supported by analogy. Then, if
the writer is an artist, his pages shine
with beauty of phraseology and many
little visions until the reader is seduced
(sorry!). Nevertheless, the reader is not
content. He says, ““What does it mean?”
The idea, so compelling to the writer,
has escaped. Léon Bloy said that the first
sorrow was the sorrow of not being a
tent I believe that the second is that of
not being understood. But if you do not
make yourself clear, do it as beautifully
as possible, and in place of your little™
idea perhaps the idea, Beauty, will last
longer anyway. An excited taxi driver
was trying to make himself clear to me.
He had just witnessed a shocking acci-
dent. It was not easy to follow his story;
it was so fresh in his mind and he had
not thought it out or what it meant. He
ended up, “He was decapitated, in a
sense.” None of his violent images
stayed with me, but that sentence did.
Well, I believe in enthusiasm, senti-
ment, hospitality, love; and I think that
the artist by nature is a recluse, diffident
and shy, but with a compulsion. Like
Peter Rabbit, that talented rodent who
tried really and truly to get.away from
Mr. MacGregor, but who felt all along
that sneeze coming on that disclosed his
whereabouts in the watering can. Well
—here I am in The Nation.
The Buds of Ugliness
By Leonard Bishop
Paris
THE WAY I see it is this way. The first
thing a writer must do before he picks
up his pen for the creating of fiction, is
to knock apart the fiction he has created
about himself and which, in the past,
has enabled him to get along. He must
know himself more than others do, so
that when he begins to write, the need
to write comes from himself and he has
familiar equipment with which to work.
And after he has found an inner reality,
permanent, enduring, staunch, the writer
must again create a fiction about him-
self. He must believe somehow, through
all the frailties in his discipline, all the
unbridged spaces in his reasoning, that
he is important. He must acquire a van-
ity of existence—not vanity of person—
so that when he writes he never doubts
that what he writes will be read and
believed: To me, being a writer is not
being a special guy who has been taken
into an exclusive cult. Writing is my
business, my job. I’m sure people will |
forgive me for enjoying my work. But I
believe that to be a writer is a touch of
noble. Not because we ate special, not
because we relieve the tensions of some
human’s mediocre existence, but because
Bie
we face the terrifying brutalities needed
to uproot the dignity of humanity which
is so well hidden by habit, fear, bewil-
derment. If I seem to be fanatic, it is
because I am so grateful (to whatever
it is that propels us one magic day) for
having found an ambition, a reason, a
touch of the dream, and so much hope,
because of writing. And it took me
twenty-seven years of complicated, con-
fused, bitter living to come to one sim-
ple clear sweet decision.
Now let me be a little opinionated.
(What went before was nothing.) The
4 aes
es eae
writer today, or any artist, no matter
what his medium, should not be fright- _ 7
ened by the cultural youth of America
or so fascinated by the overwhelming
anciency of other countries that he must
either rush to those countries or lose
faith in American spirits. While’ the
backwoods of Tennessee has produced
as many ignoramuses as fhe township of
Comitrion in France, I’m sure that as
many people coming from Tennessee
have integrated themselves, in time, to
so-called society as have the French
farmers. When I think of the States, and
see what's around me here in Europé,
someone ought to clout those idiots
who run here for their learning.
And it is not me that feels proud of
America,but I hope that one day Amer-
ica will feel proud of me. I impose a
debt on myself. That is to write, with a
constant undercurrent of hope, so that
in time I will explain part of America to
Americans and to others.
And I know that a writer must write
out of deep fruitful love for people. He
must have faith, even if nothing around
him justifies it at the time, that all peo-
ple are born with the beginnings of
good. They are corrupted along the
way, but they begin good. A writer must
make the fiction of a dream real, the
quality of the air tastier, the streets .
which people walk on populated with
more people and with more wisdom and
with more friendship. A writer must, if
this be his need, open the buds of ugli-
ness and lay them out before others, and
demonstrate how ineffectual ugliness is
when it is understood. A writer must
point his literary finger at the “trap”
and keep shouting, ‘Watch out, watch
out.” Even if the writer is by the trap
most of the time and some impulsive
person he’s warning pushes him into it.
Wisdom of the Child
By Jefferson Young
New Orleans
I KNOW that all the peoples of the-
world share a common heritage, that of
humanity ‘itself. I believe in the dignity
of man, in his universal brotherhood,
and that he will survive through love.
A writer, an artist, sounds a musical
note and with the other members of his
generation he strikes a chord in a sym-
phony that began with the beginning of
man. All the notes must be heard or the
chord would be incomplete. Let us hope
that the chord of my own generation
will be a worthy addition to the sym-
phony.
We must always be aware of what we
know as a child: that God is love and
that the birds sing.
The NATION -
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Withdrawal of the
aw
‘Artist
_ By Jobn H. Griffin
; Mansfield, Tex.
THE WRITER of this generation,
called the Silent Generation, is faced
with a peculiarly silencing situation.
He is faced with a:nation and a cul-
ture so derivative and many-sided as to
be without, sharply defined character-
istics; with a people now going through
the purifying processes of crisis; with a
public the statisticians wrongly label
mentally pubescent.
He is faced with a vast crowd of self-
styled critics, unbelievably transparent
in their technics, and so shallow and
self-infatuated with their critical gowns
that he cannot receive the kind of help
for which he has any respect except
from that handful of genuine critics
who are themselves, for the most part,
silent. ;
He is faced with a commercial propo-
sition wherein the two best-selling com-
modities are religion and sex, not as’
integrated qualities but as extreme op-
posites, commercialized to a point where
religion is devoured in proportion to
its cheapness and tawdriness, and where
sex is robbed of its beauty by being
couched in fake terms that achieve pre-
cisely the opposite effects of their
benevolent contentions.
The result has been withdrawal. The
good talents, unable to draw focus on
the whole scene, have preferred to deal
with only minute portions of it. And
the mistake has been that they have
dealt with portions lifted out of the
context of humanity rather than with
those portions common to all humanity.
Where we need Rabelais we find only
Sappho—artists too sensitive and re-
fined to dirty their hands on the living-
ness of their material; afraid of the
heartbeat, afraid of the warmth, afraid
of the sneets of the little coteries.
But this withdrawal has much justi-
fication. It is the result of a culture
wherein certain concepts of “goodness”
have been so horribly exploited as to
make them repugnant to some source of
truth within us. Nobility has become a
questionable virtue because its showiest
practicants are so un-noble as to disgust
us with that false light. Christianity the
same. Too many of its loudest practi-
cants ate people of such utter contemp-
tuousness as to disgust us with the
source they claim to espouse.
But I believe that the artist must uti-
lize these raw materials, not - reject
them. He must be dedicated enough and
humble enough to choose his subject
matter from the universal aspects of the
human apparatus, not from its aberra-
tions. He must, as a combination priest,
physician, jester, and lover, give the
people what the heart of all people
claims—entertainment, insight, nourish-
ment, the substance of affection.
And most of all, I believe that the
writer today must find a legitimate way
of returning such words as mobility,
loftiness, virtue, - merriment, ribaldry,
humility, and compassion to the spiritual
vocabulary of our age, this without
prudery or fear, and then he will be
writing for all time and quite especially
for his own time.
In Defense of Folly
" What evidence his wallet hides’
I neither know nor care; if it’s a magic
card |
secreted in green sheaves of capital,
I will not hunt that witch. Parades
or trials are not for him, his hair ™ -
is wilder than his careless cowherd’s
heart;
but there is traitor in him still, betrayal
of some hurt he will not share.
As witness for dissent, I’ll stand
to say him innocent: he is disloyal
only to the few who tolerate
~him like a straying, sad-eyed hound:
history he doubts with a bravado
howl; cornered, he growls back his
gospel
from a chain of lies. Let him go;
he is already prisoner, held incomu-
nicado.
PHILIP BOOTH
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— 4
BOOKS
The Literary Orphan
A Review by Maxnell Geismar
HENRY JAMES. THE UNTRIED
YEARS: 1843-1870. By Leon Edel.
J. B. Lippincott Company. $5.
THE SACRED FOUNT. By Henry
James. With an Introductory Essay by
Leon ‘Edel. Grove Press. $4.
INCE the death of F. O. Matthies-
sen, Leon Edel has been the lead-
ing James scholar in America. He has
planned this full-length biography—the
present volume is the first of three—
for more than twenty years, and mean-
while has edited the complete plays of
James and various of the novels, includ-
ing “The Sacred Fount’ listed above.
Like Matthiessen, Edel escapes from all
the irritating and: boring clichés of the
cult of James; from the circle of the
hit-and-run specialists, or those who
have clung td the coat tails of the
master and established their career by
the fervor of their adulation.
Edel has humor, irony, perspective.
He uses the resources of biography, his-
tory, and in particular psychology, to
illuminate the values and craft of James.
For the temperament of “this sick and
disordered creature,” as James described
himself during these years, did indeed
help to create those precepts, canons, and
codifications, those Jamesian “laws” of
fiction, which in some circles have been
viewed as untouchable absolutes of im-
maculate aesthetics. The scene of ‘The
Untried Years’ moves from Washing-
ton Square and Boston to Europe and
then Newport, during the years of
James’s youth and literary apprentice-
ship—the “pure Newport time” which
he looked back upon with longing and
nostalgia. And the family circle was in
some curious way—bright and shining
and affectionate as it seemed on the
MAXWELL GEISMAR, a contributing
editor of The Nation, is a4 literary his-
torian and critic. The third volume in
his series, “Rebels and Ancestors: The
American Novel 1890-1915,’ will _be
published in the fall.
374
: back.
surface—disordered, insecure, even dis-
eased.
The central effort of Mr. Edel’s first
volume is to describe and interpret this
early environment, and it is beautifully
done. The father, Henry James, Sr., son
of ‘William of Albany,” suffered from
a profound depression during his youth,
after he had lost a leg in a fire. Being
told it corresponded to a “vastation” in
Swedenborgian terms, he succumbed to
the mystic theosophy of the Divine Man
for the rest of his life. The mother,
reticent, self-sacrificing, however much
the young Henry resented what he
thought was a lack of attention, was
actually the real support of the family;
and from here, as Edel suggests, the
novelist drew his first uncertain, worried
view of human relationships. The wo-
man, almost indefinable, offering nothing
that could be called her own, -neverthe-
less dominated the man; after her death
Henry, Sr., had nothing to live for.
One gets the impression that they
were completely bound up in each other,
physically as well as spiritually—the
older Henry was blunter than his son in
this respect—and perhaps at the expense
of the children’s comfort. At least the
novelist consistently viewed love as the
“sacred fount” which nourished perhaps
only to destroy; he was careful to avoid
entanglements, or even relationships,
with either men or women that might
injure his own independence. I myself
believe there were deeper issues involved
here which Mr. Edel, at least in this
volume, does not discuss fully. Henry
James’s involvement with both fire and
the fantasy of psychic castration, at
least, forms a curious parallel with the
career of Stephen Crane, whose work_
was clearly based on the themes which
James kept circling around. Meanwhile
there was the famous “‘accident,’ which
James proclaimed, convulsively, to the
world, and which was nothing more,
physically, as Edel states, than a strained
This was complicated by James’s guilt
about the Civil War, in which he did
not serve, and his attempt to link his
personal misfortune with the universal
catastrophe. mrterward William James
described his brother’s ailment in terms
of constipation. The parental and family
situation was aggravated by the intense,
if underground, rivalry between the two
gifted and ambitious brothers, for whom
Mr. Edel uses the parable of Jacob and
Esau. Henry's health improved con-
siderably when William was gbsent. And
directly after Henry had scored his first
literary successes in Norton’s North
American Review and Godkin’s Nation,
Vol. I, No. 1, in July, 1865, William
suffered his own period of crisis and
despair. This was during the central ~
love affair of Henry’s youth, if it was
that, with his Albany cousin, Minny
Temple. With her ‘splendid shifting
sensibility” and her “long, light, and
yet almost sliding steps,’ this radiant
and ill-fated cousin was the source of
Isabel Archer, Milly Theale, and other
heroines in James’s later fiction.
Brooding over her illness and death
just at the start of his own rise to fame
and fortune—a career which had been
presaged in his early nightmare of “Art
and Love, Power and Glory, Fear and
Terror’—the novelist believed that her
decline, too, had contributed to the
increase of his talent. (This became, in
different ways, the theme of both “The
Portrait of a Lady’ and “The Wings of
the Dove.) Or at least, as Mr. Edel
suggests in a brilliant passage, her death
had relieved James from his “great,
brooding, disastrous anxiety,’ and he
was free to pursue the rewards of the
mind. Very early he had consciously
committed himself ‘to my particular
divergence,” which was not responsive
to James Russell Lowell’s notion of a
national literature dedicated to adoles-
cent maidens.
For the young Henry had been read-
ing not only Dickens and Browning, but
Sainte-Beuve, Mérimée, and Balzac—
who was, at the other pole of American
literature, Dreiser’s early’ master, too.
He had already said, “My work is my
salvation,” anticipating the famous later
statement: ““We work in the dark—we
do what we can—we give what we have.
Our doubt is our passion, and our pas-
sion is our task.” But this was in a quite
different vein—wasn’t it?—from that of
the later critics and disciples who
The Nation”
te ee
aan ee ae :
3 Me Sa ¥ es 5 a - ae _ oe yo Ve ; ee J
Behe tgs ei ee rote a
nats ted his arrogance, and a certain - y i,
ai oe eee yen infantile At Last a Noted Psychiatrist Tatks Frankly of
I egoism, without his humility. On his ‘
first Roman pilgrimage, where the sense
| of a remote and glamorous past had .
|
completely captured the imagination of
this literary and domestic orphan—
whose own church, as he said, was
pewless—he had admired Michelangelo,
whose vigor, health, and courage marked
|
By Frank S. Caprio, M.D.
|
| |
| “him’as a “teal man of action in. art.” W.,, do so many men and women how to deal with this problem when it
| : seek that extra-marital “adventure” arises, but also how it can be avoided.
1 That was the American note, not too which so often leads to tragedy and Hundreds of individual case histories ? }
} far from William’s ‘virile’ style, to broken homes? Recent studies have idan Sen ee ee of. batty hos i
i which, incidentally, Mr. Edel pays only shown that infidelity ere is ee = started because of a ‘quarrel, failure to
q : : : ¢ the ever-increasing rate of one divorce understand personality differences or iat
|- asomewhat grudging tribute. But it was in every three istriages. P y
even to meet the every-day problems of
| also the note of Henry James’s own Now an internationally known psy- married life. Yet how easily the wife or ht
|. self-realization. The life of art to which chiatrist_ takes this subject out of the husband could have handled the crisis
4 : > ; realm of whispers and discusses it frank- by knowing the real cause! i
| ~ he had dedicated himself with utter and ly, honestly and with keen analytical un- In Marital Infidelity, Dr. Caprio an-
| complete passion, and which apparently derstanding. Dr. Caprio shows not only swers such crucial questions as: i.
had prohibited, or become a substitute
for, the rich and tormented human re-
. lationships of ordinary life, was for
| James his single great experience. In
this light “The Sacred Fount” is, if not
James’s own parody of that self-infatu-
ated “‘observer’”’ who endows a mediocre
scene with such mystery, at least an
| iconic comedy of the discrepancy be-
| tween reality and illusion—a comedy of
| errors, that is to say, in which the en-
“Is It Wise to Confess?” vi i
“How Should a Wife Handle the Other Woman?”
“Should a Husband Overlook His Wife’s Flirtation?”
“What Effect Does Alcohol Have on Infidelity?” a
“How Does Infidelity Affect the Children of the Family?” |
“How Does the Sexual Relationship in Marriage Affect
Infidelity?”
Read These Fourteen Fascinating Chapters
} ‘ 1. The Causes and Consequences of Infidelity 8. The Love Affair
| chantment of art and the eee as of 2. Psychic Infidelity 9. The Triangle-Stalemate oa
| existence confront each other eternally, 3. Circumstantial Infidelity 10. The Other Woman on
and davincibl 4. The Philandering Husband 11. The Children =) |
; e 5. The Unfaithful Wife 12. Confessions and Forgiveness
| 6. Alcohol and Infidelity 13. Who’s to Blame Ay
| _ 7. The Problem of Jealousy 14. How to Stay Married F
! D
READ IT 10 DAYS FREE
-THE NEW Because of its importance, the publishers have arranged to send you A
} Marital Infidelity for 10 days’ free examination. Read it yourself and i
| = TA T E S M A N , you are free . return it for full refund within ee S50 }
| AND NATION , B= Also by Dr. Caprio “™ =. i
THE POWER OF SEX
t i
‘) The leading weekly review, with the larg- A frank treatment of the various aspects are troubled by sexual problems as they i
est net sale of its class in the world. . of sex from infancy to maturity and old grow older. Dr. Caprio offers readers a_ |’ iF
age. Deals with the crucial problems of practical, realistic evaluation of their sex
handling sex curiosity in children; of problems from the psychiatrist’s point of }
> It enjoys a world-wide reputation for fore-
‘sight, knowledge and fearless independence. young people preparing for marriage; of | view and the first really constructive dis-
With consistent lucidity, it sets. before its the newlyweds about to depart on their cussion of how the power of sex can be
; eeadlers eich wesk the clionk faces ature honeymoon; of the husband and wife used to achieve full happiness. 4
wes, We : Pe ho are facing difficulties in achievin lj
| political situation in Britain and overseas. cectatactory Sieeonahip: ot Sends vis 232 Pages $3.00 }
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RRPPIFEPREIPRIGSPIAI SPOS PF OLII
Da ame Ce las 1s re ee ee wl
May 2,1953 28 ih
ee
Recent Poetry—a Miscellany
A Review by Thomas Riggs, Jr.
EUROPA AND THE BULL AND
OTHER POEMS. By W. R. Rodgers.
Farrar, Straus and Young. $3.
SPRING BIRTH AND OTHER
POEMS. By Mark Van Doren. Henry
Holt and. Company. $3.
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF
DYLAN THOMAS. New -Direc-
tions. $3.75.
COLLECTED POEMS 1921-1951. By
Edwin Muir. The Grove Press. $3.50.
HOELDERLIN. His Poems Translated
by Michael Hamburger with a Criti-
cal Study. Pantheon Books. $3.50.
ET us start with Rodgers. He is
Irish and rhetorical, and his verse
is an excitement to the ear. His first vol-
ume, ‘Awake and Other Wartime
Poems,” was published over ten years
ago. He works for the British Broad-
casting Corporation, and the long
“Easter Sequence’ was written for per-
formance on the air. Perhaps, as Stephen
Spender has recently observed, his broad-
brush musical exuberance is the begin-
ning of a new popular poetry. How it
does listen! There is an extraordinary
poetical whoopee in the title poem,
which is the best in the volume, but I ~
doubt whether the B. B. C. would think
it proper fare for all those grave British
families gathered around the set. It is a
strip-tease version, with verbal bumps
and delays, of the intercourse of gods
and men, and it has a marvelous sensual
stride and motion:
No one noticed
The Bull and Europa sloping away
Westward into the weed, she with both
hands
Holding her bellyful of jolted joy,
Buoyant but dubious: he, bushed in
stealth, ‘
Tiptoadying tenderly, picking his way
Between brusque grass and briar, till at
last
THOMAS RIGGS, JR., is an assistant
professor of English at Princeton Uni-
versity, and a member of the Creative
Writing Program. He has published a
number of poems, and various articles
and reviews on contemporary British
and American literature.
376
>
He waded out: the slow subtracting
depths
Rose up; boldly he chinned the ruffling
waves...
The verse is a celebrator of spectacles -
and, for these lush Ovidian subjects, is
a real circus pleasure. When the subject
matter, however, is more serious, as in
the Easter sequence, the whoopee is of
dubious taste, and flat imitations of
Auden add to the uneasiness. Rodgers is
limited in range but he has a special tal-
ent, full of delight in its proper employ-
ment.
THE TALENT of Mark Van Doren is
of quite another kind, lucid, unpreten-
tious, absolutely at home with itself, and
with a wide range within surely mastered
traditional forms. His mind as a poet is
somewhere close to its own center and
makes serene comments; paints pas-
torals; notes, creates, and praises. I think
it is characteristic that one of his poems,
in a time when the problem of evil
seeMs overwhelming, should be called
The Problem of Good, and that the
angel of doubt with which tortured
Jacobs wrestle should here be given
welcome:
Praise the good angel doubt,
Guardian of us that walk
On the deep waters of this world.
Praise him. He never rests,
However weary the way
Over these dark, salt, dangerous mead-
ows.
Do not look down, he says; .
Beware with me and the sun
Of faith’s innumerable caverns.
Monsters can be there.
You will have plenty of time.
Too soon descending, you are devoured.
Praise him. He believes
In the long day we are given.
Praise him. He dances upon the whitecaps.
He is an extraordinarily prolific poet,
and this collection of four years num-
bers more than 150 pages. His very
pleasure in the traditional movements
of English verse communicates itself; in
the group of sonnets he sometimes plays
contentedly with the conventions of the ~
form, like a housewife happily polish-
<2 apee
ing her silver spoons, In the last three
sections of the book the afr of naivete
becomes an alert carrier for serious mat-
ters. There is a fine group here of spec-
ulative portraits of characters in the Old
Testament, that most bloody book; and
the late lyrics are-aware of dangers but
undaunted.
THE OTHER three volumes are col-
lections: they contain what there is of a
total work. The superb, strange lyrics of
Dylan Thomas, the Welsh bard and
young dog, are now gathered ‘together
in one volume. His poems merit all
their praises, and with their collection
one has the sense of a completed phase
in a meteoric history, whose beginning
was so striking that the imagination bog-
gles at the thought of further reaches.
The poems in this volume are develop-
ments of the original rush of energy
which exploded, in 1934, upon a liter-
ary situation dominated by “social con-
sciousness.”” Thomas has the bardic
consciousness: he writes a personal lyric
in which the sense of his own history
and name is surrounded by strange
lights and glooms, and if his poems are
often obscure, it is that they obey noc-
turnal laws. His poetry exists in a world
in which the sexual forces of nature, the
shifting tides and currents for which the
individual cannot fully account but to
which the passion of his being is finally
responsible, override the merely per-
sonal clamor.
Thomas’s theme is struck with the
first poem here collected:
I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the
soils. 32%.
And the development of the book,_in
its compact metaphorical compression,
takes the boys of summer to the point at
which the summer_leaves them. Despite
such fin€ occasional poems as A Refusal
to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child
in London, these poems are inward
hymns to an indwelling vitality—tich
‘with juices, corrupt with various experi-
ence, laying claim to an absolute kin-
ship with urges beyond rational defini-
tion. It is tempting to see the volume as
a progression from the boys of summer
to the old ram rod of the superbly bawdy
and unforgettable Lament, who goes
through the weathers of the body until
the weather of the spirit lasts him out:
i
oe
{
i
{
|
|
eee en ene eo
hen I was half of the man I was
y ee \ 4
_ And serve me right as the preachers warn,
-(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of down-
ental),
No flailing calf or cat in a flame
Or hickory bull in milky grass
_ But a black sheep with a crumpled horn,
At last the soul from the foul mousehole
Slunk pouting out when the limp time
came, ;
And I gave my soul a blind, slashed eye,
Gristle and rind, and a roaretr’s life,
And I shoved it into the coal-black sky
To find a woman’s soul for a wife.
In a characteristic note to this edition
Thomas says what his poems are about.
“I read somewhere of a shepherd who,
when asked why he made, from within
fairy rings, ritual observances to the
moon to protect his flocks, replied: ‘I'd
be a damn fool if I didn’t.’ These
poems, with all their crudities, doubts,
and confusions, are written for . the
love of Man and in praise of God,
and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't.”
This is both bardic and doggish. It
echoes the advice of Thomas’s distin-
guished predecessor, Edeyrn the Golden
Tongued, who, compiling the rules of
Welsh court poetry in the thirteenth
~ century, established that it is the prov-
ince of the strolling minstrel to depre-
cate and shame but the province of the
poet to celebrate and give praise.
THE “Collected Poems’ of Edwin
Muir contain the choice of thirty years.
Like Mark Van Doren, Muir is a poet
without braggadocio. On the strength
of this volume I would consider him
unexcelled among living English poets.
He has gone his own way, unmarked by
the fads and manifestoes of the century.
Suddenly, as with Hardy and Robert
‘Graves, here he. is; and has been all
along, a, fact of the landscape.
Muir's poetry is lacking in bravura of
‘the surface but abounds in fine excesses.
‘Here, for example, is the opening of
Ulysses: z
‘The doors flapped open in Ulysses’ house,
The lolling !atches gave to every hand,
Let traitor, babbler, tout and bargainer in.
The rooms and passages resounded
With ease and chaos of a public market,
The walls mere walls to lean on as*you
talked, ~
Spat on the floor, surveyed some new-
comer
With an absent eye. There you could
be yourself.
The italics are mine, not Muir’s; but I
know no other way to point at a phrase
J May 2, 1953 é
+
“so quietly remarkable as this. These are .
the best words in the best possible order:
the words are not exotic nor the order
complex, but mastery is there.
Like the poems of Yeats, Muir's
poems need one another, and perhaps
one could not gather a full sense of the
richness and penetration of this te-
markable mind from a smaller selection
Adlai E
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his logical mind, and one of the finest literary talents
of today, Mr. Cousins, in his book, has filed a formid-
able brief in the case for enforceable world law.”
—ApLal E. STEVENSON
‘Who Speaks for Man?
By NORMAN COUSINS
She Macmillan Company
60 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 11, N.Y.
than this. Poem echoes poem, symbols
gather substance and luminosity, until
one becomes aware that the whole work,
as it is in a different way for Eliot, is
the chronicle, with no signs of the ex-
haustion of a vein, of a deep affair with
time. For Muir time is not, as it is for
Pater’s children, a discontinuous process,
a series Of discrete moments each one
RECOMMENDS=
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The author of A Diary of Love turns her
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life of an American male, from childhood on.
THE NATION: Maxwell Geismar—“Highlly '
recommended as a supplement (or antidote)
to ‘The Second Sex’ (which) discusses every-
thing about sex except love or pleasure. ...
She is an origina with a manner all her
own, and lots of style.” $3.00
A NEW DIERECTIONS BOOK
Hutchins
Sun,
ao —
Be rs Wy
of which is hectically responsible for the
quality of life. The time of these poems
is of complex dimensions. It is a river,
a flow, through the channels of the in-
dividual life, and links the landscape of
the Orkney childhood with the imag-
ined landscape of age, as in the marvel-
ous The Return. This is the common
time of the poets, tragic and irreversible.
But time is also the opening of the ego
into myth; animals and landscapes be-
come heraldic matters and not mere
decorative backdrops for the human
action. Muit’s sense of myth has little
to do with the modern pedantry of
myth. Like Hardy’s, it is a way of com-
munion with the past:
Archaic fevers shake
Our healthy flesh and blood
Plump in the passing day...
And time is also circled with eternity,
within which time is transfigured: the
“tormented wood” of the cross
Will cure its hurt and grow into a tree
In a green springing corner of young
Eden,
And Judas damned take his long journey
backward
From darkness into light and be a child
Beside his mother’s knee, and the betrayal
Be quite undone and never more be done.
IT REMAINS to note with more than
. welcome the revised edition of Michael
Hamburger’s text and English translation
of the great German romantic poet H6l-
derlin. Hélderlin was born in 1770,
in the same year as Wordsworth and
Beethoven, and died in 1843, but his
poems have waited until this century for
full recognition. The tragic and moving
story of his life has become legend, and
this has perhaps interfered with an ap-
preciation of that lucid genius which
shone beyond his madness. He was a
brilliant philosopher and _ classical
scholar, and, like many of the luminaries
of the Enlightenment, a belated Greek.
All the poetry which remains was writ-
ten before the end of his thirty-sixth
year. Then the schizophrenia which had
always dogged him took sway, and for
another thirty-six years he remained in
the isolation of that “inner vision” with
which Jung speaks of the schizophrenic
state. His poetry moves from statements
of philosophical idealism to the concise
and tragic self-knowledge of his final
creative phase:
Mit gelben Birnen hanget
Und voll mit wilden Rosen
Das Land in den See,
378
Ihr holden Schwane, <2
Und trunken mit Kissen
Tunkt ihr das Haupt
Ins heiligniichterne Wasser.
Weh mir, wo nehm’ ich, wenn
Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo
Den Sonnenschein
Und Schattem der Erde?
Die Mauern stehn
Sprachlos und kalt, im: Winde
Klirren die Fahnen.
(With yellow pears the land, And full of ~
wild roses, Hangs down into the lake,
O graceful swans, And drunk with kisses,
You dip your heads Into the hallowed-
sober waters.
Alas, where shall I find when Winter
comes, flowers, and-where Sunshine, And _
the shadows of earth? The walls stand *
Speechless and cold, in. the wind Weather-
cocks clatter.)
The last half of Hélderlin’s life was
almost silence, in the Tubingen tower in
which he took refuge. He wrote end-
lessly, but the bulk of the papers of his
madness have not been preserved. “No
one is harming me,’’ he would often say,
and once among his papers a_ visitor
found written: “Only now do I under-
stand human beings, since I have been
living far from them and in solitude.”
Experts and Policy
A Review by Robert Lekachman
ECONOMICS IN. THE PUBLIC
SERVICE. By Edwin G. Nourse.
Harcourt, Brace and Company. $6.
HIS book is the story of the Pres-
ident’s Council of Economic Ad-
visers by its first chairman. It is scarcely
a record of success. Mr. Truman appar-
ently wanted to use the council as ad- -
vocates of his economic policies before
Congress and the nation. When he en-
countered Nourse’s opposition, he took
to ignoring the council and its recom-
mendations. As time went on, Leon
Keyserling dissented more and more
from Nourse’s conception of the council
as separate from politics, and eventually
this difference of opinion became so
acute and the President showed such a
growing preference for Keyserling that
Nourse felt called upon to resign.
Nourse confesses that he was never able
to establish intellectual contact with Mr.
Truman: the Economic Reports repre-
sented compromises within the council
and between the council and the Pres-
ident’s aides, and he was defeated in
his effort to secure Congressional sup-
port. and cooperation. The low estate to
which the council has now fallen and
the doubts which surround its future
contrast unhappily with the high hopes
expressed by Congressional supporters
of the Employment Act of 1946,
There were two major reasons for
ROBERT LEKACHMAN js a member
of the Department of Economics of
Barnard College.
the council’s failure. The first, explicit
in this book, was the uncertainty about
its purpose and functions. Should the
council anonymously advise the Pres-
ident in the light of the best that eco-
nomics offers, issue no papers of its
own, and testify before no Congressional
committees, or should it attempt a job—
of public and Congressional education
designed to explain and to increase the
role of economics in the determination
of public policies? There aré dangers
in both courses.,An anonymous council
might have little influence. On the other
hand, a council actively engaged in
propaganda would soon destroy confi-
dence in its economics. It cannot be said
that Mr. Nourse resolves his dilemma.
A second reason is found in the
current condition of economics. It is
plain to me that economic analysis offers
no clear-cut advice on many issues of
current policy and that the advice econo-
mists give is compounded of their po-
litical and social views as well as their
economic reasoning. This is a much-
disputed point among economists, and
in fairness it should be said that many
economists believe that ethical and po-
litical neutrality is consonant with policy
asecommendation. If my point is well
taken, then politics cannot be separated
from economic policy and the Council
of Economic Advisers cannot hope to
be a group of technicians above the
battle.
Although Mr. Nourse’s book is im-
portant, it is unfortunately not good. It is
repetitious, it takes hundreds of pages to
The Nation
tr
,
:
it
I
|
|
‘
ti
pose its central issues,
s nd its language
; marred by its author's evidently com-
pulsive love of the cliché. Nevertheless,
anyone interested in the difficult ques-
tion of how expert services can be used
to influence political decisions, should
read this book, even if he may judi-
ciously skip a good portion of it. .
New Books in Brief
Adventures of the Pilgrims
THE PILGRIM READER. By George
F. Willisom. Doubleday. $5.95. It is a
pleasure to report that Mr. Willison,
who some years ago gave us an enter-
taining and well-balanced account. of
the Pilgrim Fathers in “Saints and
Strangers,” has returned to Plymouth
_ after an excursion to Virginia, “The
Fifth Crown.” In this new book he pre-
sents in the words of the Pilgrims, or
their contemporaries, a narrative of
their adventures from their secret
gatherings at Scrooby to the absorption
ef the Old Coldény by. Massachu-
setts in 1692, intruding himself only
to supply connecting passages and notes.
The result is a revealing collective por-
trait of very human men and women,
mo more immune to the weaknesses of
the flesh and the wiles of the devil than
their descendants, but inspired by a
passion for freedom to undertake in-
credible hardships and dangers. The
realities of their saga are so much more
_ instructive than the thick growth of
ptous myth fhat surrounds their graves
that we should be very grateful to Mr.
Willison for resurrecting them in this
unvarnished manner.
Birth of Israel
_ STATE IN THE MAKING. By David
*
Horowitz. Translated from the Hebrew
by Julian Meltzer. Knopf. $4.50. This
is a revealing behind-the-scenes account
of some of the exciting diplomatic
negotiations, 1945-48, leading up to the
‘ establishment of Israel. Mr. Horowitz,
a Polish-born economist who later be-
came director general of the Israel
Ministry of Finance, was a key figure
in presenting the Zionist case before the
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry
of 1946 and its successor, the United
’_ Nations Special Committee on Palestine,
in 1947. He also served as the Jewish
Agency liaison with the eleven-man-
U. N. committee which ultimately re-
1953
OL”
mee ee hs =
turned to Lake Success with a majority
report favoring partition.
Horowitz and his colleagues, includ-
ing Moshe Shertok (later Foreign. Min-
ister Sharett), Nahum Goldmann, Ar-
thur Lourie and others, shuttled between
Jerusalem, Geneva, London, Washing-
ton, New York, and Lake Success—a
small group of men burning with a
mission to explain, persuade, and prove
their case before the international juries
that were to decide the future of the
Jewish National Home. His - story
touches on illegal immigration, the in-
terament of Jewish leaders at Latrun,
the hanging of ‘Jewish dissidents, the
blowing-up of the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem, and the extraordinary forty-
eight hours preceding the adoption of
the partition resolution by the General
Assembly. It is all told easily, with
interesting sidelights on such personal-
ities as Ernest Bevin, Chaim Weizmann,
Harold Beeley, Ralph Buriche, Richard
Crossman, Bartley Crum, and others who
figured in the birth of Israel.
On Doing Time
INSIDE. By Helen Bryan. Houghton
Mifflin. $3. The impact of this book is
out of all proportion to its content.
With a world in conflict, why should
the story of imprisonment of a woman
in the model Federal Prison for
Women, Alderson, West Virginia, move
us so deeply? The writer is fifty-one,
college educated, former secretary of
the Fund to Aid Spanish Refugees. Sum-
moned before the Un-American Activi-
ties Committee of Congress, she refused
to reveal the names of subscribers. She
was. sentenced to three months’ impris-
onment for contempt.
The model institution gets full justice
for its program, education, food, cloth-
ing, sanitation, and humanity. Absorbed
in her new experience, the prisoner ob-
serves detail with a practiced eye. A
moving part of the book is devoted to
the life histories of some of her com-
@ new book by
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
author of The Second Sex
Marquis
De Sade
i
“Perhaps
the very best thing
that has
yet been written
on the subject.’
—EDMUND WILSON,
THE NEW YORKER
This book also contains the
first anthology in English of
the writings of Sade. $5.00
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a
panions. She tells them with rare liter-
ary skill and a still rarer compassion.
Of crude physical suffering there is
nothing. This is not the story of the bru-
, tality and mismanagement which cause
ptison riots; it is a quiet story but
breathlessly disquieting. Why? Because
it speaks for all those who have lost
their freedom. It shows how doing time
distorts the meaning of time. The author
is filled with wonder at the vast reaches
of the human spirit in pain, and she
possesses reverence for life. She is sen-
sitive to the curious psychological effect
of imprisonment. For these reasons
“Inside” is a must for people who care.
Happy Marriage
TWO LIVES. By Lucy Sprague Mitchell.
Simon and Schuster. $5. Subtitled “The
Story of Wesley Clair Mitchell and
Myself,” this is a record of two lives
interwoven marriage and
through the sustained interest of each
in the other’s successful career. Mrs.
Mitchell is best known for her work as
chairman of the Bureau of Educational
Experiments and for her books by and
about children. Her husband, who died
in 1948, was an outstanding economist
and for a quarter-century Director of
Research of the National Bureau of Eco-
nomic Research. The book is too long;
not in the narrative itself but in the
voluminous extracts from letters, lec-
tures, and published works, but it gives
a buoyant and interesting picture of two
lives of unusual happiness and fulfil-
ment. As is usual in autobiographies,
the most vivid and readable passages
are those covering the author’s child-
hood. The lack of an index is especially
deplorable in view of the number of
interesting people with whom the
Mitchells came in contact.
through
Goya’s Mind and Method
GOYA'S (CAPRICHOS. | BEAUTY,
REASON, AND CARICATURE. By
José Lopez-Rey. Two Volumes. Prince-
ton. $12.50. An exhaustive analysis of
one of Goya’s major achievements, this
work richly rewards the reader’s sustained
attention. Fortunately the 265 plates, ex-
cellent in quality, are bound separately,
and one is spared the discomfort of
constantly turning the pages to follow
the elaborate illustration of Lopez-Rey’s
380
commentary. The plates include a full
array of Goya’s magnificent preparatory
drawings and much rel ‘ted material, in-
cluding a number of the illustrations for
Lavater’s “Physiognomy,’ from which
Goya seems to have drawn many sug-
gestions for caricature. The plates of the
Caprichos themselves reproduce a copy
owned by Mr. and Mrs. Philip Hofer
which is remarkable because the impres-
sions were pulled by Goya himself; the
Caprichos have been
known from editions published well
after Goya’s death and after the plates
had been badly reworked by other hands.
While this book was written for special-
ists, the matter it considers is of such
tremendous impact: and is treated with
such clarity and directness that it can
be recommended to anyone willing to
make an effort to learn about Goya’s
mind and his method of procedure.
Sainted Rascal
ZORBA THE GREEK. By Nikos
Kazantzakis. Translated from the Greek
and with Notes by Carl Wildman. Simon
and Schuster. $3.50. Nikos Kazantzakis,
the Italo Svevo of Greece, has reached
American readers late in his career: he
was born in 1885 and has been writing
for over forty years. The vast novel his
publishers have chosen as an introduc-
tion seems particularly suitable, since
the protagonist, a figure not unlike the
author in cultural background and in-
terests, is as virgin to the more parochial
Greek customs as we are ourselves.
This is the story of a well-to-do young
man who inherits a lignite mine on the
shores of Crete. Thither he repairs with
his unfinished work on Buddha 4nd his
foreman, Buddha’s antithesis, the flesh-
and-blood child of Zeus, Zorba the
Greek. Zorba is a wonderfully moving,
loving tribute by his creator to the vigor
and poetry of the Greek people. He be-
longs in the national gallery of sainted
rascals.
The books meanders; it accepts on a
grand scale the reader’s willingness to
explore superstition, hope, inanition;
action, love, venality, and finally death
and decay. There are hilarious and
ribald high points, of course, one of the
best being the fantastic chapters on the
monastery in the hills to which Zorba
and his “‘boss’’ have gone for their own
reasons. Not since Rabelais have the
too generally
fo —
a ee = 73 7
“ \es See Pay
~ ~. ee a r a, te:
good brothers been treated to such a
dressing down; it will shock many but
cannot fail to delight and amuse a
goodly few. Add the fact that the
whole long tale is superbly written and
so well translated that one is unaware
it is a translation.
Brittany Magic ‘
WEDDING DANCE. By Anne de
Tourville. Translated from the French
by Mervyn Savill. Farrar, Straus and '
Young. $3. Some of the witchery of
the Brittany about which she writes has
been snared by Miss de Tourville, which
helps to prove she is an uncommonly
gifted author. One hopes to see more
of her work in English. The present | f
novel, a short love story, is a magical
infusion of folkiore; peasant reality, and
poetic insight brought to small perfec-
tion by language of such loveliness as
to have mesmerized at least one grateful
reader. :
In terms of craftsmanship, the
author’s most unusual achievement is
probably her creative use of both nature’
and myth. Pre-Christian religious be-
liefs and ceremonies, in more or less
adapted forms, survive in Brittany with
surprising strength. Never vulgarized
simply to supply local color, they are
used in this book to illumine ‘the inner
workings of the characters and the ex-
ternal influences that bear on them. All
of this stems from sound anthropology,
but it is particularly suggestive when
presented in poetic rather than documen-
tary fashion. Love, hate, greed, envy are
more than the personal motivations of
the characters; they flow from mysterious
and remote forces, present to the con- .
sciousness of the people, who move in.
response to their ancient and more
powerful meanings. In this world, the
elements again tremble on the verge of
becoming incarnate.
Novel of Sicily
THE HOUSE BY THE MEDLAR
TREE. By Giovanni Verga. Translated
from the Italian by Eric Mosbacher.
Grove Press. $3.50. Verga’s finest novel
of Sicily, first published over seventy
years ago, has at last reached us in an
English version that stresses the many ~
modern devices characteristic of the
author’s narrative style. Repetition of
The NATION
jo pean
—
ative “use of an eyouthe silk
| handkerchiefs of the young girls, or
the medlar tree itself—like a drum-
beat in his prose, is another. This minute
study of Sicilian life as exemplified in
‘the destinies of one family, the Mala-
vogiia, is written with a realism and
compelling immediacy that we associate
with the work of later writers.
At the head of the Malavoglia family
is the grandfather, Mastro "Ntoni, a
fisherman who owns his own boat and
hence does not hire himself out to
others. The other members are his son,
_ the son’s wife, .and their five children,
three boys and two girls. The story is
the recital of. what’ happens when,
through a misfortune at sea, the son is
lost and the slow disintegration of the
family begins. But beyond the harsh
fate of the Malavoglia, Verga gives us
a veristic study of the village of Aci
Trezza and the villagers’ subjugation to
the implacable sea.
American readers will remember that
the popular ‘‘Cavalleria rusticana’” is
based on a Verga story. Other Verga
material—short stories and some travel
notes—were translated by D. H. Law-
rence, who gave Verga his rightful place
as “surely the greatest writer of Italian
fiction.”
Love, Luxury, and Politics
THE ANGRY ANGEL. By Lajos
Zilahy. Translated from the Hungarian
by Thomas L. Harsner. Prentice-Hall.
$3.95. Lajos Zilahy has been popular in
- Europe for over a generation as a novel-
ist whose skill, craftsmanship, and fa-
miliarity with the milieu he recreates
put him. far above the merely slick
writer. Unfortunately, as with Simenon
until fairly recently, so marked is
Zilahy’s facility that some of his other
qualities have gone by the board: he is
a considerable commentator on the
world we live in.
This country discovered ae when
“The Dukays” hit the best-seller lists in
1949. “The Angry Angel” will give
readers of fat fiction another slice of
the same with the difference that the
author here interjects the crucial problem
of divided political loyalties within a
Balkan family. However, since Zilahy
never goes deep enough to endanger his
mass papatat. on two continents, the
ao 2, 1953
ee: that ie
i-fascist of yesterday
is the anti- Communist of today and that
not everyone left of center is Red does
not intrude to the detriment of love
story or lavish atmosphere.
War on the Sea
FAR FROM THE CUSTOMARY
SKIES, By Warren Eyster. Random
House. $3.75 A convincing and effective
first novel about life on a destroyer in
the Second World War, in which the
descriptions of boats, of battles, of the
sea, nicely done as they are, take prece-
dence over the study of character.
African Boy
BLANKET BOY. A Novel of South
Africa. By Peter Lanham and A. S.
Mopeli-Paulus. Crowell. $3.50. The
story of the Basutoland culture, ex-
Mot kiak %) eee KK, ek Kk ok kK. Ke
ploited and debased by the English and
Dutch, told by a tribal chieftain and an
“Englishman living in South Africa.
Awkward and contrived as the novel
is, designed as a panorama of current
history in Johannesburg, Durban, and
Zululand, it is nevertheless tragic and
informative as a record of racial conflict.
Backwoods Chronicle
THE LOT OF HER NEIGHBORS. By
Bonner McMillion. Lippincott. $3.50.
A colorful and picturesque chronicle of
a backwoods farming community by a
new writer who has the elements of
a Texas Jean Giono. The suicide of a
farmer's wife, which is assumed by all
to be murder, starts a series of untoward
events and illuminates a variety of
hidden passions in these country souls,
who are described with sympathy and
humor, in fine prose.
* A Blazing Torch of Truth for These Challenging Times... *
i Youth on Trial 4
* »
By MAJOR LUCIAN J. CILETTI
*« ad
@ A wnique, stirring story of ONE little dedicated World War II veteran with
« ONE idea from Cassino’s ashés, his untiring efforts for peace in freedom »
under God, and 153 young Americans hopefully, fearlessly speaking out to
“x the world for a better tomorrow. Also included in this Book-of-the-Month *
selection are unusually interesting American historical commentaries, selected
x quotations, and inspiring addresses. %
® Acclaimed nationally by 17 outstanding reviewers including THE N. Y. TIMES,
*« THE - Y. HERALD TRIBUNE, CUMULATIVE BOOK REVIEW DIGEST
(Sept., 1952), LIBRARY JOURNAL, THE BULLETIN (Nat’l Assn. Sec. School +
Princip ae Also coverage in NEA JOURNAL. RECOMMENDED for libraries,
«x schools, youth groups, social studies, social workers, teachers, parents. '
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SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER—>5 to 25 copies of $3.75 deluxe edition (beau- *
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THERE'S A REASON WHY
is the only unanimous choice made by
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listing the BEST science-fiction books.
Here it is: This book will fascinate -
anyone looking for something exceptionally good
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THE DEMOLISHED MAN by ALFRED BESTER
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381
eo
Theater
Harold Clurman .
N “An Experience of Critics,” a
thoroughly amiable but rather useless
little volume which the Oxford Univer-
sity Press has just published, Christopher
Fry sweetly says, ““No man in his senses
expects a critic always to be right—in-
deed it would be very disconcerting if
he were: we should have to believe him,
and the knowledge of his fallibility is
often a great comfort.” Bravo! But
what ‘‘man”’ is Fry speaking about? The
general reader or the person whose
work is being criticized? And how can
anyone determine whether or not a critic
is right? What makes him “right”?
What is “right’’ ?
Every year or so, I decide never to
utter another word about dramatic criti-
cism, because it seems to me that what-
ever has to be said on the subject has
already been said, and is surely known.
But one inevitably returns tothe subject
not only because, as Goethe once re-
marked, “everything has been said, but
since no one listens one must always
begin again,” but because dramatic
criticism more perhaps than any other is
everywhere a source of irritation,
“The dramatic critics are ignora-
muses,” says the theater worker, but he
keeps on reading them, quoting them,
appeasing them, defending himself
against them, cursing them, and praying
for good notices. Clarity on the subject
never seems to be arrived at, and when
at last the theater worker thinks he has
achieved calm, he finds himself at some
point once again caught in a spasm
of exasperation over what “that idiot
>
X” just said about his play or perform--
ances.
What causes and perpetuates this con-
fusion? Not, I think, intellectual fuzzi-
ness so much as economic fear and the
neuroses attendant upon it, which are
no longer purely economic. At a party
recently I encountered three people
whose work I had reviewed. The actress
whose virtues I had sung was effusively
cordial (she had never met me before),
a friend of mine—usually demonstra-
tively affectionate—whose work I had
praised with a slight demur greeted me
' with lukewarm courtesy, and another
382
genial soul who felt I had been harsh—
not to say ‘‘unfair’’—grew pale with the
strain of self-control. In all three cases, -
be it noted, the shows these people
were involved in are great successes, and
nothing I could say could in any way
jeopardize their careers. = _
REVIEWS are an important factor in
the making of commercial success in
the theater today. Hence the reviewer's
notice is feared. This fear makes tt
virtually impossible for the person en-
gaged in a stage production to read a
notice as criticism. It also makes the
writing of criticism difficult. Perhaps the
French critic who said that criticism of
contemporaries is not so much criticism
as conversation was right; and one can
write true criticism only of artists who
are far away or dead! For criticism, it
must never be forgotten, has very little
to do with “knocks” or “‘boosts,’’ “pans”
or ‘‘raves.”
Beyond the economic concern which
constitutes the root of the trouble—
particularly in New York—and the na-
tural desire of all people to be loved
and admired, there is a terrible lack of
self-confidence among our theater artists.
They live in an environment which pro-
vides few established standards, tradi-
tions, or a secure basis for development.
The artist among us does not educate his
public, and the public never learns what
it is supposed to demand from or give
the artist except applause or indiffer-
ence.
In such an atmosphere the artist,
already terrorized by economic pressure
and worry over a repute which seems to
be won chiefly through affluence, is
shaken in his judgment and spirit. He
becomes dispossessed of himself. He
seems somehow uncertain even in that
of which he is supposed to be a master.
When the theater man cries “Fool eat
the critic, it is as much a sign that he
thinks the critic may be right as an
epithet of contemptuous superiority.
While the critic is usually sure as to
whether or not he likes a play, the
theater artist often behaves as if he
himself had no idea of what he set out
are
: _ oo
to do. He is a man of talent without a
sounding board within himself.
The critic writes for the audience
rather than for the artist. Theater folk,
particularly actors, might do well not
to read reviews of plays in which they
are involved. ‘The artist learns about his
own work from a few other artists with
whom he is in close contact and from
a very limited number of people he
trusts—hardly any of whom are ever
critics. Sometimes he learns over the
years from the audience en masse. The
critic, in so far as he is a critic and not
a private publicity or ticket agent for
his newspaper, writes subjectively, but
if -he is a sound critic he will be
sufficiently clear about himself to
objectify his tastes, thoughts, preju-
dices. When the critic does this, the
reader is enabled to measure the differ-
ence between the critic who judges
and the thing judged. When in his re-
view of a play, Bernard Shaw suggests
his own attitude toward life and the
drama, his reader may not only appreci-
ate the Shavian philosophy but through
it come to understand more fully the
nature of the play being reviewed. That
is One reason why, though we are no
longer able to see most of the plays
Shaw wrote about, we are still able to
enjoy his criticism of them.
THE CRITIC is hardly to be valued by
the degree of his “rightness” or
“wrongness’”’ on particular plays. There
is no such thing. The critic is valuable
only in so far as he is interesting and
illuminating on his subject; when he
helps us see or realize something about
the play which has some significance for
us independent of his conclusion as to
its ““goodness’”’ or “badness.” In fact, I
believe the critic should avoid, as much
as possible, most labels of merit
(“‘great,”’ “fair,” “moderately amusing,”
“a play you must see,” etc., etc.) and
concentrate on the moral, intellectual,
emotional analysis of the ingredients
which compose the play or performance
he is judging. In this way the critic will ©
help the reader understand something
‘important about the play and stimulate
him to judge more knowingly for him-
self.
ihe essential. function of the theater
critic is not to blame or to praise, but
to see, to describe, to clarify, to spread
understanding and, if possible, knowl-
The NATION ,
=
‘
.
“wrong.” (One of the most brilliant and
enlightening criticisms I ever heard was
a violent attack on Renoit’s painting,
which I love!) The critic is not to be
regarded as a burden or a competitor
to the artist, but as an adjunct, some-
one by the artist’s side, in a very real
sense cooperating with the artist for the
benefit of the community of which both
artist and critic are a part.
The critic, like the artist, must be
humble and also proud of his task,
ae even ier we ees
work. I know there have been some
rare reviews that have outlived the plays
they were about, but I am often very
much inclined to tell my readers that
the poorest play is worth more than the
best reviews, and that they should go to
the theater as frequently as possible with
alert mind and open senses, regardless
of what any of us (critics) say. Above
all, the playeor: should not imitate the
reviewers’ most uncreative aspect and
deadly fault, which is to think of plays
s ‘hits’ or “flops.”
Records 3
B. H. Haggin
, T WAS TOSCANINI who gave the
public of my time as a concertgoer
}}/ —which began somewhere around 1915
} —its first hearings of Beethoven’s Missa
Solemnis in 1934; and his performances
of it since then have been the ones that
have established in my mind the shape
of the work for me, as his performances
have established in my mind the shape
and meaning of Beethoven’s Ninth.
| . They have done this because, for one
tinuity and coherence [that] finds tem-
pos which integrate the many sections
| ... into a progression from one dazzling
sublimity to the next.” Nobody else has
_ achieved this with the finale of the
| Ninth, which I was writing about in the
| preceding quotation; and the achieve-
| ment in the Missa is even more remark-
hble and impressive because of its enor-
mously greater scale. Also, Beethoven’s
sustained intensity in those sublimities
, the longer stretches of the Missa almost
unbearable; and one of the most re-
markable achievements of Toscanini’s
_ performance is to make it bearable. To
which I must add that a no less remark-
able achievement is the treatment of
some of the quiet pages of the work that
are for me the most wonderful of all—
‘ the mystically introspective opening sec-
| tions of the Sanctus and the Benedictus,
the radiant Allegretto section of the
| Agnus Dei.
+. Concerning the recent broadcast per-
formance there remains only to say that
_ May 2, 1953
thing, of the unique “feeling for con--
in the finale of the Ninth becomes in’
the playing of the NBC Symphony and
the singing of the Robert Shaw “Chorale
were superb; but that the four solo
voices were not well matched, and that
while those of Eugene Conley and
Jerome Hines were very beautiful, Nan
Merriman’s was threadbare, and Lois
Marshall’s—amazing in the assured way
it climbed to any height and kept going
at any length—lacked the sensuous
loveliness one wants to hear
soprano.
In Janacek’s Slavonic Mass one hears
extraordinarily powerful writing in a
highly individual language “and style.
Brestislav Bakala conducts the excellent
Moravian Mixed Chorus, Brno Radio
Symphony, and Frantisek Michalek,
organist, in a performance that is im-
pfessive even wtih the tremulous singing
of the unidentified soloists (Urania).
The RCA recording of Rossini’s ‘“The
Barber of Seville” offers ear-ravishing
singing by Victoria’ de los Angeles
(Rosina), beautiful singing and phras-
ing by Nicola Monti (Almaviva),
Nicolo Rossi-Lemeni’s singing of La
iid!
» :
calumnia as part of an amusing char-
acterization (Don Basilio), and Gino
Becchi’s blatant extravagances in Largo
al factotum (Figaro). With these solo-
ists Serafin conducts the Milan Sym-
phony and Chorus effectively. E. J.
Dent's English version is too remote
from the Italian text to be of practical
use in following it.
- Victor also has. issued in its Treasury
series a performance. of Verdi’s “The
‘hedidy to fea” od ae to defend his
Masked Ball” in which Caniglia
(Amelia), Gigli (Riccardo), and Becchi
(Renato) sing better than in the “Aida”
that presumably was recorded later. That
is, Caniglia’s singing in her arias is less
explosive, more legato, and quite beauti-
ful except for some strident high notes
and occasional sagging pitch; Gigli,
though he sobs through the later scenes,
is content to sing with beauty of voice
and engaging musical style in the first
two; and Becchi too sings with restraint.
In addition there are Barbieri (Ulrica),
with a tremolo that isn’t excessive, and
Elda Ribetti (Oscar), with a soprano
voice that I find unpleasant. With them :
Serafin conducts the orchestra and chorus
of the Rome Opera. The dubbed sound
becomes distorted near the ends of sides
—worst of all in the beautiful second-
act music on side 2. A good combination
of translation and summary is provided
with the Italian text.
® The Crossword Puzzle was unavoid-
ably omitted from this issue.
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We of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, the finest in the
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However, we do say that science fiction is the most vigorous and
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Going back only as far as Jules Verne, we find the revolution-
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WEEK
pra las by Philip Wittenberg
1865
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Around
the
US
Vigilantism Plays
the Villain
Los Angeles
THE citizens of Silver City, New Mex-
ico, paid scant attention last December
when a score.of motion-picture people
arrived to make a film dealing with a
Mexican American mining community
not unlike their own. Six weeks later
Silver City and neighboring towns were
threatened with mob rule.
The last time Grant County had been
the scene of organized violence was in
1951 when the Mine, Mill, and Smelter
Workers’ Union struck the Empire Zinc
Company at nearby Hanover. After an
injunction barred the men from picket-
ing, the wives and daughters of the
largely Mexican miners held the picket
line for nine months, eventually winning
working and housing conditions equal
to those of the “Anglos.”
The picture as planned was to be a
fictional version of that struggle. It was
sponsored by the union, which had also
collaborated on the script. There was
some fear that reenactment of the strike
scenes might revive the hostility between
Anglos and Mexican Americans and be-
tween labor and management, but the
union, despite its left-wing leadership,
was conceded even by the Silver City
Daily Press to be in many ways “a good
union,” and it was allowed to go ahead.
The Reverend John Patrick Linane, dean
of Grant County’s Catholic priests, read
part of the script and granted permis-
sion to use the church and school yard
in the picture. No organized protest was
made even when it was learned that
many members of the film company, In-
dependent Productions Corporation, had
been banned from major Hollywood
studios for theic defiance of Congres-
sional investigating committees and al-
leged pro-Communist sympathies.
Then, on January 22, a local school
teacher wrote a letter to Walter Pidgeon,
president of the Screen Actors’ Guild,
asking him to look into the alliance be-
tween the movie-industry “‘questiona-
bles’’ and the ‘‘questionable”’ local union.
The product of their cooperation, she
said, could not possibly be “good Amer-
ican propaganda.”
Mr. Pidgeon obliged, as did the Mo-
_tion Picture Industry Council and the
Hollywood Film Council (A. F. of L.).
All three denied any connection with the:
Silver City company and asked federal
agencies to investigate its activities. On
February 12, before the picture was half
completed, Victor Riesel in his syndi-
cated column called the project ‘‘a new
kind of ‘shooting’ war,” declaring that
Silver City was “not too far from the
Los Alamos atomic proving grounds”
(nearly 250 miles); that “hundreds of
thousands of dollars’ were being spent
““by the lefties on this picture’’ (the pic-
ture cost approximately $100,000); and
that “two carloads of Negroes’ had
been imported for a mob-violence se-
quence (the three Negro members of
the company were a sound-boom oper-
ator, a still photographer, and a stage
hand; but at about that time a Negro
basketball team had, appeared in the
nearby town of Bayard),
On February 24 Representative
Donald L. Jackson repeated most of
Riesel’s statements and told Congress
that the picture was a “diabolical attack
upon the United States,” a “heinous
effort of the international Communist
ap tee
conspiracy,” “in effect, a new weapon
for Russia.” It was ‘‘deliberately de-
signed,” he said, ‘to inflame racial
hatreds and to depict the United States
of America as the enemy of all colored
peoples,” and would do “‘incalculable
harm’ if it were shown in Latin Amer-
ica, Asia, or India.
@ The next day the her-
oine of the picture, Rosaura Revueltas,
a leading Mexican actress, was ar-
rested by the United States immigra-
tion officers on the charge of having
entered the country illegally. She was
accused specifically of technical irregu-
Jarities in her passport, which a border
official had failed to validate, and in her
application for permission to work in
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the United States. “In view ee at has ‘
been going on up there and the motes
involved,” said the district immigration _
officer, Joseph Minton, “I think anyone
has the right to assume there might be
other angles to this case.” On that as-
sumption Miss Revueltas was taken to
El Paso, denied bond, and held for ten
days. She then returned to Mexico City,
and the charges were dropped. Her
“arrest, reported the El Paso Times, “has
caused international complications, and
protests have poured into Minton’s
office from Mexico City.”
Meanwhile, pressures were building
up in Grant County. The Silver City
Daily Press became increasingly hostile
to the movie crew and union; sub-
merged personal, racial, and labor griev-
ances rose to the surface. The situation
was made more serious by the mounting
unemployment. At the peak of the agita-
tion against the movie-makers 250
miners were laid off by the American
Smelting and Refining Company. _
e Was it, then, fear of
subversion, the threat of unemployment,
or outside provocation that caused the
acts of violence in Silver City and
its environs? During the week after the
arrest of Miss Revueltas the hoodlum
spirit was rampant. Several attempts
were made to destroy the movie sets and
halt production; two union leaders were
assaulted and a camera was damaged;
cars paraded through the city with a
loudspeaker blaring anti-Communist sen-
timents. Some hundred persons held a
vigilante meeting and.sent union ofh-
cials and film crew an ultimatum to
“clear out of Grant County in twelve
hours or be carried out in pine boxes.”
Judging from all reports, only a small
group of Silver City’s 8,000 inhabitants~
were infected by the vigilante fever.
However, ten days after the film com-
pany had departed and reinforcements
of state police had been withdrawn, the
home of a union official at, Bayard was
burned to the ground and a union hall at
Carlsbad was set on fire.
“As Representative Jackson predicted,
Mexican » American relations suffered
“incalculable harm’’—but before the
picture was completed or shown.
» HANNAH BLOOM
[Hannah Bloom is The Nation’s cor-
respondent in California.}
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* New York, Saturday, May 9, 1953
The Shape of Things
The Loyalty Obsession
In the spring of 1947 the American people were sold
a loyalty and security program for federal employees. It
was accepted without question, loyalty being a good
word and everyone who had read about the atomic bomb
having become properly concerned about security. The
Nation was one of a rather lonely company that warned
of the dangers implicit in the naive notion that loyalty
~ could be measured by the yard, like ribbon at a dry-goods
counter. Six years and many million dollars later the en-
_tire program has been scuttled. A new security set-up has
just been announced for which President Eisenhower has
been at great pains to obtain the pre-natal blessing of
those unlovely midwives, McCarthy, Jenner, and Velde.
Billed as a remedy for the evils of President Truman’s
ill-advised program, this latest attempt to measure the
‘ pulse-beat of the loyal gives to department heads virtually
arbitrary power of removal and subjects all present and
future federal employees to a character scrutiny based on
certain specified standards of conduct. Under the new
set-up authority is vested in agency heads for the final
determination of an employee’s security and the Civil
Service Loyalty Review Board, which previously per-
formed this function, will be abolished. The new “test-
ing” will take nearly a year to conclude; some 18,901
cases which had received the full “field treatment” under ~
the old- program will now be reopened.
A year from today this latest test will doubtless be set
aside in favor of some new method of checking loyalty.
And so on, suspicion without end, doubt everlasting.
“Fear,” wrote Wordsworth, “hath a hundred eyes that
all agreed to plague her beating heart.’
Korea and Indo-China
No more reckless decision has been made by the Eisen-
‘ hower Administration than to link the Indo-Chinese war
with the Korean struggle as parts of a crusade for “free-
dom” in East Asia. In Korea the United Nations voted
“military sanctions to stop Communist aggression across a
recognized boundary line fixed jointly by the Soviet and °
_ American occupying powers. Whatever has happened
ene ea 8s ie
Pen sit. an te at. ee
Vation
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
since to blur the meaning of the U. N. action, that was
its cause.and its justification. The war in Indo-China had
a totally different origin. It began as a struggle by the -
Indo-Chinese people to end the colonial rule of France.
It had the same purpose as the Indonesian rebellion
against Dutch colonial rule. The Indonesians won their
freedom with the backing of the United States and the
United Nations.
By right and precedent the U. N. should similarly have
offered its services to bring about a settlement—and self-
rule—in Indo-China. Why has it failed to do so? The
reason is simple. From the beginning the Indo-Chinese
rebellion has had Communist leadership; and France is
one of the “Big Five,” a permanent member of the Secu-
rity Council. In the seven bloody years since French nego-
tiations with Ho Chi-minh’s regime broke down, the
rebels have inevitably depended more and more on Com-
munist China for backing and arms. Whether the bonds
created by this partnership would remain firm if peace
were made nobody knows. But they exist today, and be-
cause they exist the Indo-China rebellion has become in
American eyes part of Moscow’s drive to overrun South-
east Asia, and France has become a defender of “free-
dom.” By the same token the Communist thrust into Laos
is being treated as if it were an invasion of a separate and
sovereign state. But Laos, like Vietnam and Cambodia, is
neither separate nor sovereign. The three are ‘associated.
states of the Indo- Chinese. union, equally subject to
French rule.
The Price of Intervention
These elementary facts should be kept in mind as Mr.
Dulles and the Pentagon rush American planes to help
the French stem the Communist advance, and as France
debates whether or not to refer the attack on Laos to the’
United Nations. The people of Laos, as the week began,
were reported to be digging in to resist the invader, but
there is real doubt whether either they or their King have
much interest in being defended, The King is counting
on the Golden Buddha to protect the capital and has
firmly refused French requests that he depart for a safer
place. Some close observers believe he would be ready at
the critical moment to come to. terms with the rebels,
hoping that he might continue to perform his rather cir-
=
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 385
The Press Meets McCarthy 387
ARTICLES
Churchill the Peacemaker
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 389
How to Say No to the Demagogues
by Philip Wittenberg 390
Edge of Violence:
Malan’s Dangerous Victory
by John Hatch 392
Russia's German Card:
Unity Plus Rearmament
by Mark Gayn 394
New Day Dawning:
The Negro and Medicine
by Alfred Maund 396
Two Poems for Spring
There Is a Dark River
by Jean Garrigue 398
by Theodore Roethke 398
Pastorale
BOOKS
Understanding India
A Review by Keith Hutchison 399
Guide to Robert Flaherty
A Review by Robert Hatch 400
New Books in Brief 400
THEATER by Harold Clurman 402
RECORDS by B. H. Haggin 403
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 514
by Frank W. Lewis 404
AROUND THE U. S. A.
Vigilantism Plays the Villain
by Hannah Bloom opposite 385
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey
Carey McWilliams
Lillie Shultz
Victor H. Bernstein
J. Alvarez del Vayo
Editor and Publisher
Edittortal Director
Director, Nation Associates
Managing Editor
Foretgn Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
=
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, N. ¥.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
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386
‘ Ss ae SO
: ! yg oe ee, + Ok aie ae
cumscribed kingly functions by grace of the Communists
rather than of the French. The King of Cambodia has a
publicly announced that his people will go over to the
Communists if the French continue to exercise all real
power in the country.
If the United States is committed to intervening in this
particular war, we should at least recognize what sort of
quarrel it is, and how vague are the definitions of “free-
dom” and “aggression” under which we shall act. It
would be foolish to deny that a rebel victory in Indo-
China would threaten the precarious equilibrium in
Southeast Asia, but it would be even more foolish to
dream that United Nations or United States intervention
would silence the demands for an end to foreign rule.
We should realize, too, that nowhere in the Arab-Asian
bloc at the United Nations should we find support or
thanks for a move in behalf of the French in Indo-China.:
Line at the Tariff Trough
The line at the tariff trough is lengthening, now that
the House Ways and Means Committee has opened hear-
ings on the Simpson bill to extend the Reciprocal Trade -
Agreements Act. Spokesmen for a variety of industries,
including glassware, tuna fishing, fine chemicals, and
dairy products have already told of their sufferings at
the hands of foreign competitors and demanded more
protection. Other claimants are pressing to be heard.
The Simpson bill, it should be noted, goes a long way
beyond the President’s request for a simpie extension of
the present act for one year; so far beyond, indeed, that
Mr. Etsenhower said at a recent press conference he
“couldn’t possibly accept” it in its present form. His -
clearly implied threat of a veto has induced Representa-
tive Simpson to indicate that he is willing to withdraw
one new feature—a clause which would make Tariff
Commission proposals for increased duties mandatory on
the President instead of advisory as at present.
Even without this clause the bill consorts ill with the
Administration’s avowed policies. It includes, for in-
stance, two particularly dangerous new sections—one —
sponsored by lead and zinc interests, the other by a coali- ~
tion of independent oil producers and coal operators.
The first provides for a sliding-scale tariff on lead and
zinc which, under present conditions, would raise prices
by 40 or 50 per cent; the second imposes a quota system
limiting oil imports to 10 per cent of domestic consump-
tion. These proposals are slaps in the face for foreign
suppliers who are also important customers. “Some
people in the United States,” complains J. A. Byrne,
Canadian Liberal M. P., “are trying to use Canada as a
marginal supplier. They want to take our lead and zinc
in times of shortage, and they want us to absorb the grief
.when supplies become adequate and prices are reduced.”
Considering our increasing dependence on foreign raw
materials, this is an outrageously stupid policy.
The NATION ©
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In the French municipal elections, several predictions
went wrong. For instance, a considerable Communist de-
cline had been expected as the result of the recent crisis
in the party. But the Communist candidates, even
including several who had been expelled from the party,
fared remarkably well. In Paris they obtained more than
27 per cent of the votes in comparison with 25 per cent
in 1947, They lost ground in the rural districts, but kept
their strength or even inched ahead in the industrial
areas. The Socialists also gained. The Catholic M. R. P.,
which is represented in the government, did not succeed
in capitalizing on the strength of the Catholic unions. As
a whole the workers voted against the government,
against high prices and low wages, against military ex-
penses and the rearmament of Germany.
If De Gaulle was the heaviest loser, René Mayer cer-
_tainly did not pick up any strength. Those who supported
the right, turned again to M. Pinay and his Independents.
The gains of Pinay’s group make him a likely choice to
- succeed Mayer when the economic crisis now developing
reaches its peak. But it is doubtful that even Pinay will
be able to produce a remedy. One of the most serious
men in public life, a man with real economic vision,
Pierre Mendés-France, who has refused to participate in
any of the recent Cabinets, is holding himself in reserve.
Should the crisis become very grave he may step in—if
it is not then too late.
The Press
Meets McCarthy
THE appearance of James A. Wechsler, editor of the
New York Post, before Senator McCarthy’s investigating
committee last week and the scheduled appearance of
Cedric Belfrage, editor of the National Guardian, before
the House Committee on Un-American Activities would
be disturbing omens in themselves; but this crass effort to-
intimidate editors who have criticized Messrs. McCarthy,
Jenner, and Velde is one of several developments point-
ing to the conclusion that the American press is now
confronted by a danger without parallel in its history.
Only those unfamiliar with McCarthy’s tactics will ques-
tion the accuracy of Mr. Wechsler’s prediction that he is
“merely the first of a long line of editors who are going
to be called . . . because they refused to equate McCarthy- —
ism with patriotism.” :
Few men in public life have better reason to be grate-
ful to the American press than McCarthy; nevertheless he
has long reserved his bitterest enmity for the handful of
editors and publications that have consistently opposed
him. One recalls his unsuccessful attempt to intimidate
a ~~ — oe
ae : ,*
Drew Pearson and subsequent campaign to drive Pearson
from the networks, not to mention his current demand
that the army hand over the Pentagon files “on a certain
columnist”; his attempt to influence the Luce publications
by appeal to their principal advertising accounts; and his
long-standing feud with the Madison Capital-Times and
the Milwaukee Journal. When Jack Steele of the New
York Herald Tribune interrupted the cosy routine of a
recent radio forum to ask-McCarthy a few sharp ques-
tions, the Senator was immediately threatening—“If we
were not on the air, I would treat this question [about
his finances} in a different fashion”—and later forced
the station to delete the passage from the tape recording.
One recalls, too, the clumsy attempt of the inquisitors
to drag the names of Alan Barth and Herbert Elliston,
both of the Washington Post, into the record at a recent
session, and the still cruder attempt to smear Mrs. Agnes
Meyer, wife of the publisher. Indeed, the inquisitors,
from Martin Dies to McCarthy, have consistently con- -
tended that any criticism of them was tantamount to
subversion, but until quite recently a formula was lacking
by which they could threaten American editors without
appearing to attack the freedom of the press. The Voice
of America hearings provided the formula.
THE COMMITTEE McCarthy heads is authorized to
investigate not only the entire government structure but
every industry, business, school, and charitable organiza-
tion which receives money, subsidy, or tax relief from the
government. The purchase of a book is a slender peg on
which to hang an investigation of the press, but McCarthy
is not the man to quibble about jurisdictional niceties. On
April 14 the Senator announced that he intended to de-
termine whether government agencies were paying sub-
sidies to informational media, including the press,
television, and radio, and a questionnaire was promptly
dispatched to them requesting such information as the
amounts paid for advertising, lists of newspapers and
magazines purchased for use in the overseas libraries,
the fees paid commentators for broadcasts, and so on.
Once Wechsler was before him, McCarthy cynically ex-
plained that he was being questioned not because he was
an editor but because the State Department had purchased
one or more of his books for use in its overseas libraries;
the man, not the publication, was being investigated. Yet
we have Mr. Wechsler’s word that the New York Post
—its policies, its staff, and its opposition to McCarthy— .
was the principal target of the investigation. In fact,
McCarthy frankly admitted that Mr. Wechsler had been
called mainly because he was an author but also because
he had led “the fight against everyone who is exposing
the Communists in the government.”
The pattern of the attack on the press that. is nuw
taking form is perfectly clear. Just as Velde contends that
any number of clergymen may be haled before him
387
without violating the First Amendment's guaranty of
- freedom of conscience and belief, and just as Jenner
argues that any number of university instructors may be
pilloried under his direction without impairing academic
freedom, so McCarthy would now have us believe that
he can summon newspaper and magazine editors and
question them not only about their political beliefs but
also about editorial matters without in any way impinging
upon the guaranty of a free press!
It is high time that the American public grasped the
full implications of this new wholesale application of
the ad hominem fallacy. Currently the State Department
has been conducting a witch hunt of American writers,
journalists, scientists, and artists on the ground that a
directive forbids the use of material by “known Commu-
nists” in its overseas libraries or elsewhere in its informa-
tion program. In carrying out this directive the State
Department has used name checks based on “unevalu-
ated” material gathered by the House Committee on
Un-American Activities. According to Ferdinand Kuhn,
writing in the Washington Post of April 24, name checks
were recently ordered on 150 American musicians and
composers whose photographs were to be shown in an
American picture exhibit in Europe! A security officer
ruled that four names were verboten and that nineteen
were “doubtful.” As a consequence of this witch hunt,
Mr. Kuhn reports, “the flow of books and reprinted
magazine articles has dried to a trickle.” Normally the
State Department sends about 3,000 books each month
to its overseas libraries; today it is sending only standard
reference works, government documents, and books by
“American statesmen”! Ludicrous? Certainly. But pre-
cisely this type of censorship—not of the book but of
the author, not of the composition but of the musician,
not of “Night Fishing at Antibes” but of Picasso—can
dry up the sources of culture here at home.
“THE BEGINNING of defense,” as Alan Barth wrote
in The Nation a few weeks ago, “is the recognition of
danger.” In this instance, the danger of the new censor-
ship may not be recognized in time; every editor not
subpoenaed will be encouraged to believe that he enjoys
some special immunity, and the public may foolishly con-
clude that since only a few editors are being catechized,
the press is still free. But McCarthy does not need to
silence more than a dozen dailies and half a dozen
monthly and weekly publications in order to “coordinate”
the press. Only a few hostages need be taken to silence
the host. A large section of the press indorses his ob-
jectives if ‘not his methods. Another section not only
approves his methods but has shown the inventiveness of
a Torquemada in suggesting still more drastic techniques.
Howard Rushmore, who writes a column for the Hearst
papers, is now a member of McCarthy’s staff; in fact, he
participated in the interrogation of Mr. Wechsler.
388
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McCarthy must have been encouraged no end ie
craven appeasement of a handful of West Coast crackpots
who demanded the dismissal of Bucklin Moon from the
staff because they did not like an article for which Mr.
Moon was in no manner responsible. As a measure of his
confidence, McCarthy is now “‘offering” a free weekly
column to the press. The public did not buy his book
because it did not have to; but how many newspapers will
refuse his column?
IN GREAT BRITAIN the Church of England and Rec-
ord, independent weekly, recently charged, and not with-
out reason,* that the American press is largely responsible
for McCarthyism. Here and there editors with a con-
science have belatedly acknowledged a measure of guilt
and, more important, have attempted to guard against the
demagogue’s exploitation of the press. Recently, for
example, Palmer Hoyt, publisher of the Denver Post,
instructed his staff to evaluate the source of loose charges
against individuals, including those made by “official”
agencies; to weigh such stories carefully and determine
how they would be handled if official immunity were
lacking; to withhold publication where possible until
proper proof or a qualifying answer could be obtained;
to ask themselves whether, of their own knowledge, they
knew a charge to be false and to apply any reasonable
doubt they might have to its treatment; and, finally in
connection with headlines on this type of story, to de-
termine whether the wording was necessary in order to
summarize facts or was merely intended as “shock treat-
ment.” At the‘ recent meeting of the American Society
of Newspaper Editors, forty-three of seventy-five editors
polled by a professional journalism fraternity said they
thought Congressional inquiries of the type sponsored
by McCarthy did more harm than good. But how many of
them have invoked the elementary safeguards suggested
by Mr. Hoyt? And will the press as a whole recognize in
time the clear danger to its freedom that “is implicit in
McCarthy's campaign to silence his critics? Now, at long
last, those eloquent editorials on “freedom of the press,”
_which have consumed so much good newsprint these_
many years, will be put to the test. Will the great dailies
capitulate, or will they decide that now is the time to
bring to an end an ignoble witch hunt which in a time
of crisis and great danger has divided the nation and held
it up to ridicule abroad, and now threatens to undermine
three basic institutions of a democratic society—the
churches, the schools, and the press? If the big dailies
hesitate at the outset, if, as the universities seem inclined
to do, they open the gates to the barbarians, they will
not only have destroyed the spirit and purpose of a free
press; they will have invited their own destruction.
*“Witch-Hunting, 1952: The Role of the Press’ by Dozier C.
Cade, Journalism Quarterly, December, 1952; ““A Moral Challenge
to the Press’’ by Alan Barth, the Colorado Quarterly, Autumn, 1952.
See also the Fifth Annual Memorial Lecture at the University of
Minnesota School of Journalism by Elmer Davis, November 3, 1951.
he
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The NATIO N \ ius
J. Alvarez del Vayo
Churchill the Peacemaker?
Paris
THE eleventh session of the North
Atlantic ‘Council reflected better than
any other event the complexities of the
present international situation. For three
days the Ministers of the NATO na-
tions struggled to harmonize their
numerous incompatible ideas. They were
confronted for the first time since the
signing of the pact with a Russian
attitude that made many of the argu-
ments on which the entire Atlantic coali-
tion was based sound increasingiy un-
convincing. It was difficult to maintain,
as Secretary Dulles did until the very
moment when the final communiqué was
drafted, that nothing was changed, that
the threat of Russian aggression had not
diminished in the slightest.
The situation is so fascinating and in-
tricate that it encourages all kinds of
Sophisticated interpretations. The game
has been going on ever since Stalin’s
death and is revived with every new
conciliatory gesture from Moscow. But
never was there greater need to try to
reduce, without sacrifice of truth, the
many conflicting aspects to one that
offers a Key to the solution of the puzzle.
Mr. Dulles’s attempt to do so here in
Paris was made at the risk of his popu-
larity with the French. He threw his
entire weight against any action that
could endanger the future utilization of
a German army as the most important
element of Western strategy. This con-
firmed again the view that Germany—
not Korea or Indo-China or any other
issue—is the point in which the contest
between the two opposing blocs centers.
Mr. Dulles was not so much interested
in obtaining from the NATO nations
greater contributions in the form of new
- divisions or a larger economic effort as
in salvaging the principle that the West
must continue to rearm, and that its
rearmament would be wholly inadequate
if a half-million Germans were not in-
corporated in the European army. Since
war does not ‘seem to be around the
corner, it -did not matter so much
whether, by the end of 1953, the West
9, 195
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May
European forces would be stronger or
weaker by a few divisions—though Gen-
eral Ridgway, of course, disagrees. For
Mr. Dulles the essential thing was to
prevent any prospect of a Big Four con-
ference or any other form of negotiation
with Moscow from spoiling the West's
plans for Germany. Once the idea of the
European army, including German con-
tingents, was abandoned, there would be
little chance of organizing the military
strength upon which he depends for his
policy of “liberation.” It is not in terms
of today but of tomorrow that the
attempt to force ratification of the Euro-
pean army treaty is being pursued with
such vigor and with so little concern for
other countries’ feelings.
IN FRANCE the whole plan is terribly
unpopular. After even a brief survey of
the political terrain I am more doubtful
than ever that ratification of the Euro-
pean Defense Community treaties can be
voted in the French Parliament before
October, if then. Chancellor Adenauer
is also facing difficulties in Bonn. But
Mr. Dulles is convinced that the Euro-
pean army can be cteated if only he can
succeed in winning the other Western
leaders to his own total distrust of Mos-
cow. He did succeed in obtaining a final
communiqué in which the NATO Coun-
cil declared its intention of strengthening
Western military power until Russia
matched its “peace offensive’ with an
authentic effort to end world tension.
The firm tone of the communiqué
could not hide the fact that present goals
have been reduced far below those set in
December. This is mainly due to eco-
nomic considerations—the menace of an
impending financial crisis in France, the
desire not to discourage the British, who
are enjoying their first relaxation of re-
strictions and a little better daily life. But
the impact of the recent Soviet proposals
to settle the most controversial issues
through negotiation was also evident.
Apparently the 1953 goals add no more
than eight divisions, the majority of
them Italian, to 'the European command.
Everything now depends on how far
Russia is ready to go in the direction
of conciliation and how the European
powers react to its next moves. The
Pravda editorial is generally regarded
here as an indication that, without mak-
ing spectacular retreats which its position
of strength does not oblige it to make,
it is ready to yield at many points both in
Europe and in Asia in exchange for an
agreement that would free it from the
nightmare of a rearmed Germany. And
it is precisely there that the aims of
Moscow and of Paris coincide. Any
Russian proposal that would rescue the
French from the dilemma of having
either to accept the new Wehrmacht or
displease Washington is most attractive.
Paris. counts on Churchill to lend
strength to its desire. It has been interest-
ing to see the enthusiasm with which
the London correspondents of the French
papers have been reporting the activities
of the Prime Minister, who during the
past week, in and out of Parliament,
has displayed a vitality that would be
astonishing in a man of fifty. He is seen
as having taken over the entire direction
of British foreign policy in Eden’s ab-
sence. His intimates represent him as
realizing fully that one cannot go on
forever saying that one is ready to meet
the Russians halfway without making
some move in their direction. There have
already been two meetings between
Molotov and Gascoigne, and there is a
rumor in official circles here that a third
meeting will soon take place at which
the British Ambassador will discuss
with the Soviet Foreign Minister the
possibility of a visit by Sir Winston to
Moscow. Churchill’s plan is said to be
conceived in two stages: first, personal
contacts between the heads of govern-
ments; second, a series of conferences
that would deal one by one with the
major problems dividing East and West.
With the NATO meeting over, interest
here has accordingly shifted to London,
where diplomatic efforts in the next few
weeks may produce a further step toward
negotiation.
389
HOW TO SAY NO -
To the Demagogues . . by Philip Wittenberg
A CLEAR and present danger threatens
the continuance of our constitutional
democracy as a government of limited
powers. Invasion of one of its branches
by either of the others could produce a
tyrannical executive, an overbearing
judiciary, or an irresponsible legislature.
Only by maintaining the purity of the
constitutional system of checks and
balances can the citizenry be assured
against the rise of a monolithic govern-
ment.
The investigatory committees of Con-
gress have been increasingly trespassing
upon the judicial and executive branches.
One of these committees recently entered
into the field of foreign relations, which
is the exclusive jurisdiction of the
Chief Executive, and precipitated a
conflict of constitutional jurisdiction.
There was a time when a President who
felt that the judiciary was going be-
yond its constitutional limitations could
say as President Jackson did: ‘Well,
John Marshall has made his decision.
Now let him enforce it.’ But today
when Congress oversteps, neither the
executive nor the judicial, department
seems to have the strength or vision to
compel it to observe constitutional
manners.
For several years Congressional in-
vestigatory committees have been in-
vading the citizen’s right to privacy in
his political opinions. They have com-
pelled him to take refuge in the
protection of the Bill of Rights and the
constitutional amendments to such an
extent that they have brought that very
protection into disrepute. They have
created a situation in which a citizen who
invokes the Fifth Amendment is thereby
deemed guilty of disloyalty, if not by
deed, then by association. They have
done this by demanding replies to ques-
PHILIP WITTENBERG, a_ distin-
guished New York lawyer, is the author
of “Dangerous Words’ and other
books. He is now lecturing at Columbia
University.
390
tions which constitutionally they had no
power to ask,
The right to inquire into individual
political beliefs is a judicial function, if
any. Under our form of government
such questions should never have been
asked by any official of the government.
The constitutional limitations should
have been self-imposed, so that the
prerogatives of the citizens might not
be infringed. Justice Frankfurter has
said: “A constitutional democracy like
ours is perhaps the most difficult of
man’s social’ arrangements to manage
successfully. Our scheme of government
is more dependent than any form of
government on knowledge and wisdom
and self-discipline for the achievement
of its aims.’’ He added that there was
a need for limitations ‘on the power
of governors over the governed. . . . The
accretion of dangerous power does not
come in a day. It does come, however
slowly, from the generative force of un-
checked disregard of the restrictions that
fence in even the most disinterested as-
sertions of authority’ (Youngstown
Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer).
When President Truman in the
Korean emergency attempted to seize
the facilities of certain steel companies.
Congress criticized him severely for
having exceeded his authority, and the
matter reached the Supreme Court for a
decision. The court, as late as 1951,
reaffirmed the historic necessity for the
limitations and separation of the powers
of government. At least two of the
judges quoted the impressive words of
Justice Brandeis: ‘The doctrine of the
separation of powers was adopted by the
Convention of 1787 not to promote
efficiency but to preclude the exercise of
arbitrary power’ (Myers v. United
States).
There can be no doubt of the right of
Congress to investigate, through com-
mittees, matters which may be the basis
for legislation. There is the gravest
doubt whether such investigation may
reach into the private lives, the political
opinions, and the religious beliefs of
American citizens. Yet so brash have
these Congressional committees become
that the chairman of one of them ven-
tured to suggest an inquiry into the po-
litical beliefs of ministers of religion,
as if religion should not be as free from
the state as the state is separate from
religion. \
In at least two cases the Supreme
Court has considered the question of
how far investigatory committees may
go in their inquiry into private affairs.
In Kilbourn v. Thompson the court said
that neither the Senate nor the Hotse of »
Representatives “‘possesses the general
power of making inquiry into the pri-
vate affairs of the citizens.” In McGrain
v. Daugherty it reafirmed this doctrine.
Its decision agreed with a remark attrib-
uted to John Quincy Adams: ‘“Non=>
official conduct of a citizen is immune
from Congressional scrutiny.”
Among the private affairs of the
citizen, nothing is more private, if he
wishes it to be so, than his political
belief. The secret ballot is one of our
most sacred privileges. To compel a
citizen to confess his personal political
beliefs is to violate a cherished American
principle; and the wrong is all the
greater if his beliefs might tend to de-
grade or incriminate him. Certainly
nothing in the history of American
institutions warrants the notion that any
official has the right to summon a citizen
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before him and to inquire into matters
which the citizen has a personal right to
reveal or withhold.
This right to privacy, this right to be
free from compulsion, has been scruti-
nized many times by the Supreme Court.
It is good to know, even though Con-
gress seems to have forgotten, that the
court has always spoken against such
compulsion and has noted that it is a
source of despotic power. The court has
said, “And any compulsory discovery
by extorting the party's oath . . . to
convict him of crime or to forfeit his
property is contrary to the principles of
a free government” (Boyd v. United
States). And again: “The exemption
from testimonial compulsion, that is,
from disclosure as a witness of evidence
against oneself forced by any form of
legal process, is universal in American
law, though there may be differences as
to its exact scope and limits. At the
time of the formation of the Union the
principle that no person could be com-
pelled to be a witness against himself
had become embodied in the common
law and distinguished it from all other
systems of jurisprudence. It was gen-
erally regarded then, as now, as a
privilege of great value, a protection to
the innocent though a shelter to the
guilty, anda safeguard against heedless,
unfounded, or tyrannical prosecutions”
(Twining v. New Jersey).
OUR CURRENT Congressional investi-
gating committees have not observed
these limitations of their power. They
have forced people to express their
views; they have forced people to con-
fess their adherence to political beliefs;
they have disregarded the American
concept that freedom of speech includes
freedom not to speak. Many citizens,
whether to protect themselves or to
protect others, have taken refuge in the
Bill of Rights, particularly in the pro-
visions of the First and the Fifth
Amendment. Witnesses who refused to
answer without invoking their constitu-
tional privilege have been subjected
to contempt proceedings. Under the
guise of investigating communism, they
have investigated personalities and have
intruded upon the right to privacy to the
point where a witness who seeks the
assistance of the Constitution thereby
incurs legal disabilities. He is stigma-
tized as un-American because he has
| May 9, 1953
a ae
“relied upon the protection afforded by
the Constitution.
Individual aberration, individual
criminality have’ been reserved to the
courts for investigation. In the process
the courts have developed many safe-
guards to protect the innocent. There
is no presumption in our law so strong
as the presumption of innocence. If in
the course of investigation a person is
brought before a grand jury, he is auto-
matically given immunity from prosecu-
tion. He does not have to state publicly ~
his refusal to incriminate or degrade
himself. The proceedings before the
grand jury are secret; members of the
jury and others are admonished not to
make public any testimony given before
it. These precautions are taken so that
no citizen may incur unjust or unprov-
able disability.
The Supreme Court indicated the line
of demarcation between the legislative
and judicial powers when in both the
Kilbourn and Daugherty cases it said:
“The House of Representatives not only
exceeded the limits of its own authority
but assumed power which could only
be properly exercised by another branch
of the government because it was in its
nature clearly judicial.”
Congressional committees know no
such safeguards as does the judiciary.
On the contrary, with an exhibitionism
aided by radio and television they have
made a public show of their forensic
ability to demolish the personalities of
the witnesses summoned before them. °
There can be no end to this condition
so long as the witness is obliged to take
refuge in the Bill of Rights. If these
committees are to be stopped in their
trespass upon the domain of the judi-
ciary, it can only be done by the wit-
nesses challenging the authority of the
inquisitorial body. The Supreme Court
has spoken in the Jones case: ‘The
citizen when interrogated about his
private affairs has a right before answer-
ing to know why the inquiry is made;
and if the purpose disclosed is not a
legitimate one, he may not be compelled
to answer” (Jones v. Securities and
Exchange Commission). To the same
effect is the statement in the Daugherty
case that “‘a witness rightfully may re-
fuse to answer where the bounds of the
power are exceeded.”
In so speaking the court has laid
down a rule of conduct for the citizen.
He must yield to the committee’s right
to subpoena him. He must answer until
4
Herblock in the Washington Post
“Let's See—W hat'll I Look into Next?”
it appears that the investigation involves
examination into his personal political
belief. At that point he has the right,
indeed the duty, to refuse to answer,
giving as his reason that the committee
has exceeded its constitutional authority
and is invading his rights as a citizen.
This would raise the clear issue of the
committee’s offensive conduct and make
invocation of the Fifth Amendment un-
necessary. Indeed,
vasion of a citizen’s rights ought not to
the committee’s in-
be the occasion for pleading the amend-
ment.
IN THE STRUGGLE for law it is the
duty of the citizen to refuse to be curbed
by any display of overweening authority.
But it has been said by the lower courts
that in the present emergency—that is,
the conflict between democracy and
communism—one must weigh the public
necessity against the private interest
and conclude that public necessity re-
quires the surrender of this constitu-
tional right. Here we have another in-
stance of the type of logic which throws
out the baby with the bath water. It is
always crisis or emergency that gives
rise to the test of power.
In the seizure of steel, when the
Korean emergency was involved, Justice
Douglas said: “But the emergency did
not create power; it merely marked an
occasion when power should be exer-
cised. And the fact that it was necessary
that measures be taken to keep steel in
production does not mean that the
President, rather than the Congress, had
the constitutional authority to act.”
Similarly, in the constitutional question
here raised, the emergency, if any, does
not create power in Congress. If power
must be exercised, then the true question
is where. Under our form of govern-
ment the power of inquiry into personal
political belief can only be exercised by
the courts. This does not make the
country powerless. On the contrary, it
makes it the more powerful because it
keeps alive the strength of its institu-
tions instead of permitting an emergency
to sap them.
For instance, in the current inquiry
into communism in the schools. and
colleges the Association of American
Wnireniies ea fal
should cooperate with the coca aus ‘
Fifth |
conceded that invoking the
Amendment was “an indication of prob-
able guilt.” No one in this country need
or should cooperate with any official in
violating the Constitution.
We are not concerned with a single
witness or with any number of wit-
nesses. Our concern is the preservation
of. our democratic institutions. The fight
against communism must not be at the
expense of Americanism. The right not
to have a despotic or autocratic govern-
ment is a dear one. If we are to fight
tyrants and autocrats by suffering tyrants
and autocrats to govern us, then we have
fought in vain. The great American
right of freedom of belief was achieved
by the struggle for law which character-
izes democracy. If we are to- remain
democratic, we must now remind the
Congress that it is a constitutional body,
that it enjoys only legislative power, and
that this legislative power is a limited
power which does not include the right
to indict or prosecute individuals for
their political beliefs. .
EDGE OF VIOLENCE
Malan’s Dangerous Victory
THE eight and a half million African
inhabitants of the Union of South Africa
took no part in the recent elections.
Only the 1,500,000 Europeans and the
48,000 colored people were entitled to
vote. Yet the fate of the Africans was
at stake.
Five years ago the National Party
fought its way to office with the slogan of
Apartheid (segregation). Since then the
government has concentrated its efforts
on carrying out this pledge, enforcing
rigid segregation in post offices, in pub-
lic vehicles, stations, and waiting rooms,
in places of entertainment and sport,
JOHN HATCH, lecturer at the Uni-
versity of Glasgow, has traveled widely
in Africa. He is the author of “The
Dilemma of South Africa’ and broad-
casts for the B, B. C. on African affairs.
392
in restaurants and hotels. Segregation
has always been the rule in the schools,
and the Nationalists have tried hard to
force the two universities, which still
admit both races, to change their policy.
They have also obtained the passage of
laws defining the racial status of every
inhabitant of the country, making mar-
riage or sexual intercourse between
European and non-European illegal, per-
mitting the division of all areas into
racial zones, and requiring municipalities
to expel Africans from their precinets _
so far as is possible. The government's
attempt to remove the last of the non-
Europeans—the colored—from the elec-
toral rolls was blocked’ by the courts.
Through its Suppression of Commu-
nism Act and two more recent measures,
the Public Safety Act and the Criminal
Law Amendment Act, the Nationalist
by Jobn Hatch
government has arrogated to itself power .
to suppress all dangerous opponents, de-
clare a state of emergency, and greatly
increase the penalties for opposition to’
its policies, It appealed to the electorate »
Jast month on the basis of these achieve-—
ments and promised to pursue the same
policies until all danger to the privileged
position of the white community had
been removed.
The opposition—a combination of the
United Party, the Labor Party, and the
ex-servicemen’s Torch Commando—of-
fered no clear alternative. Recognizing
the paramountcy of the white voters”
fears and prejudices, it was forced to
approve the purposes of the government
and could urge only that they be carried —
out with greater regard for the constitu-
tion and humanity. The Torch Com-
mando, which had come into existence
7
The NATION
solely to oust the Nationalists, took no
part in the election campaign so as to re-
move any tinge of extremism from the
Opposition forces. The liberal members
of the United Party, knowing’ that their
supporters would vote anti-Nationalist
anyway, allowed the party to favor the
maintenance of white supremacy in the
hope of competing with the Nationalists.
The contest, therefore, was between the
unrepentant and unconditional Apart-
heid policy of the Nationalists and a
vague anti-nationalism. The issue was
made crystal clear in Dr. Malan’s final
broadcast: ‘‘The “election is South
Africa’s last chance to remain a white
man’s country. The government’s Apart-
heid policy may point the way to the
salvation of white communities from
the Cape to Kenya.”
IN THE 1948 election 53 per cent of
the votes were cast for the United and
Labor parties and only 40 per cent for
the Nationalists and their allies. A shift
of 744 votes in an electorate of a million -
and a half would have given the opposi-
tion a majority of seats in the Assembly.
This year the government increased its
proportion of votes cast to 45 per cent
and more than doubled its majority
in the Assembly. A minority of the
electorate is enabled to control the
Assembly by the fact that the rural con-
stituencies, where the Nationalists are
strongest, have smaller electorates than
the urbang where the opposition has its
main strength,
The white community of South Africa
consists of Afrikaners and British—the
antagonists of the Boer War. Most of
the Afrikaners are farmers, and national-
ism is their traditional creed, though it
has never been embraced by all of them.
The British live-usually in the towns and
- support the United Party. Many of them
. take little interest in politics; of about
20,000 British immigrants eligible to
_ register for this election, only 5 regis-
~ tered, partly, no doubt, because the Na-
tionalists had made it so difficult and ex-
pensive to do so. The election results
show that this pattern of life is changing.
Many of the younger Afrikaners, unable
_ to make a living on the land, “have
moved into the towns. They are usually
unskilled or semi-skilled and thus open
to the Apartheid argument, which
promises them protection against the
competition of non-European labor. Un- ©
| May 9, 1953
ee: bs
doubtedly the votes of this group account
for Nationalist gains in the towns.
The people of South Africa and of the
rest of the world must face the fact that
nationalism has established itself firmly
and probably permanently in power. In
the words of a Johannesburg evening
paper, “Liberal critics in the Union and
overseas bogies like Mr. Nehru, the
Indian Prime Minister; the United Na-
tions; and the Reverend Michael Scott
have been told that the Afrikaner Volk,
1,750,000 strong, propose to run their
country of 12,500,000 people their own
way.” These are unrelenting, defiant
words, reminiscent of another Volk
with similar racial ideas. What ‘‘way’’ is
it likely to be?
In the first place, of course, rigid
segregation will be enforced in every
area of national, local, and personal life.
Tremendous pressure will be brought to
bear on the two universities to make
them practice it and on municipalities
which have not got rid of as many non-
Europeans as the Nationalists would like.
The Group Areas Act will be imple-
mented, with the best areas reserved
for the whites. During the election the
Nationalists made great play of a court
decision that segregation on the railways
was unconstitutional unless equal ameni-
ties were provided for non-Europeans:
legislation will certainly be introduced
to alter the situation. No doubt,’ too,
the almost unlimited powers of the
government will be used to outlaw and
destroy any incipient movements which
threaten Nationalist supremacy. It can
even be expected that the government
will go so far as to slow up economic
development if it tends to break down
the barriers between the races. The
Minister of Native Affairs, Dr. Ver-
woerd, has stated that if -industrializa-
tion brings an influx of Africans to the
towns, as it has been doing for the past
half-century, the pace will have to be
slackened.
Secondly, the Nationalists will try
to devise some means of overcoming the
opposition of the courts to their desire
to remove the colored voters from the
electoral rolls. According to the South
Africa Act, this can only be done by a
two-thirds’ majority of both houses of
Parliament. All attempts to circumvent
this constitutional provision have so far
been blocked by the judges. During the
election campaign the Minister of the In-
terior, Dr. Donges, stated that, if neces-
sary, judges would be chosen who agreed
with Nationalist policy; but it may be’
that Dr. Malan, with his increased ma-
jority, will decide to pack the Senate
with his supporters.
Finally, the constitutional status of
the Union may be changed. The Na-
Prime Minister Malan
tionalists would like to establish a repub-
lic either within or outside the Common-
wealth. Their increased majority has
weakened those moderate elements who
still respect some degree of constitu-
tionalism and strengthened the fanatical
group led by Messrs Strydom, Swart,
Louw, and Verwoerd. Mr. Strydom will
almost certainly eventually succeed Dr.
Malan as Premier and insist on creating
a republic in which the Afrikaners will
be a privileged Volk. Such a republic
would be likely to follow the example
of Eire rather than of India. Even if
it does not, the strains upon Common-
wealth unity caused by this new dose of
South African racialism will make the
rest of the Commonwealth nations doubt
whether they want South Africa as a
member. 2
IT IS AMONG the opposition groups,
however, that the election may produce
its most significant reactions. The ap-
peasement policy of the United Party is
now discredited, and that loose collec-
tion of forces, all hoping to get back into
power, is near disintegration. The leader
of the most cautious group, Colin Steyn
from the Free State, has Jost his seat, and
some of his followers may join the
Nationalists, with whom they have few
differences. The liberals will probably
form a new party, which must expect te
remain in the wilderness for many years
but may finally do something to bridge
393
the widening gulf between whites and
non-whites. A third group, led by Harry
Oppenheimer and his business friends,
is in a quandary. For economic develop-
ment they need a relaxation of the color
bar in industry, but all their efforts to
accomplish this through the United Party
have failed. It will be interesting to see
whether they will support, even secretly,
a new liberal party.
The effect of the Nationalist victory
on the Africans, and also on the Indians
and colored, will be to convince them
that only by a united effort can they re-
lease themselves from bondage. The
passive-resistance campaign can be ex-
pected to start up again—already more
than 8,000 resisters have gone to jail.
The struggle will be watched with sym-
pathy by Africans throughout the con-
tinent, and it will not be long befo
the sympathy takes a practical form.
Violent methods will be used by the
government to crush all opposition, but
such. methods tend to strengthen resist-
ance. Everywhere in Africa it is believed
that the South African whites have de-
clared war on the natives from the Cape
to Cairo. The outcome may shake not
only Africa but the whole world.
ae
RUSSIA’S GERMAN CARD
Unity Plus Rearmament . . by Mark Gayn
CHANCELLOR ADENAUER’S Amer-
ican tour had all that he could have de-
sired of pomp, good-will, and oratory.
In Washington he was given renewed
promises of help in equipping a Ger-
man army. And on his triumphal return
home his foes conceded that the trip
had reinforced his bid in the coming
federal elections.
It was at San Francisco, commenting
on the possibility of new Soviet over-
tures to Germany, that the Chancellor
made the most significant remark of his
tour. “Germany,” he said, “will not
give up its role in the European Defense
Community in the event of reunification
of our country.”’ This probably reflected
the Chancellor’s own faith more truly
than the mood of his country. For if
there is any fact on which all observers
in Germany are agreed, it is that to the
German people, east or west, national
unity is far more important than rearma-
ment; every other issue is emotionally
and politically subordinated to that of
unity.
Since his return to Bonn the Chancel-
lor has repeated his declaration a number
of times. But as every politician in
Europe knows, the new Soviet “peace
offensive’ may make it meaningless. In
fact, if vigorously and successfully
pressed, the “offensive” could make hash
of all established European policies, as
MARK GAYN is a well-known foreign
correspondent who has spent many years
in Germany.
394
well as of Adenauer’s own program and
coalition. And the reason lies in the
mood of the German people, which a
high official in the German Federation
of Trade Unions (D. G. B.) described
to me recently as ‘‘a mess of fears, hopes,
and uncertainties.”
The slogan ohne mich (without me),
coined in reply to the remilitarization
campaign, was the ultimate in propa-
ganda magic. But it has been misin-
terpreted in the West as a sign- of
universal German opposition to rearma-
ment. Actually even the Social Demo-
crats are not opposed to rearmament in
principle. A representative of Herr
Blank, who presides over the inner
kernel of the German War Ministry,
tells me Blank’s office received more than
fifty thousand applications from men
who aspired to be soldiers before it
issued a plea that no more write in until
the hour was -ready. Even the trade
unions, which have more than once
shouted down their own leaders when
they were backing rearmament, are un-
certain. One officer has said, “If we in
the D. G. B. said no to rearmament, 70
to 80 per cent of our membership would
object. If we said yes, 60 to 70 per cent
would walk out on us.” What the West
Germans fear is not a new army; most of
them would probably welcome it. They
fear that the creation of another
Wehrmacht will forever divide the
land into hostile halves, hasten the re-
armament of East Germany, and eventu-
ally bring dreadful Soviet retaliation.
The way things are going now, a new
world war would be a civil war for
Germany.
It is within Moscow's power to. meet
most German hopes and soothe most
German fears. Moscow can allow Ger-
Man unity, a national army, and free
national elections. It can sign with this
new united Germany a pact of non-
aggression that would seemingly make
all West European entanglements un-
necessary and even dangerous. And it
can dangle beforé the Ruhr industrialists
the promise of orders that would make
the Hitler rearmament boom leok pica-
yune. Just as East Germany today pro-
vides chemicals and machinery for all
the Soviet satellites, so a united Ger-
many may be given the irresistible pros- -
pect of the entire Communist market,
from Albania to China. Washington
would do well not to underestimate the
attraction of such an offer to both the
industrialists and the workers of West
Germany.
If and when it comes, the triple-
barreled Soviet offer of unity, rearma-
ment, and markets is bound to have an
explosive effect on German politics. If it
is well timed, it might throw the federal
elections in September to the Social
Democrats, who have long made na-
tional unity their main plank. In any
elections held throughout the whole
country the Social Democrats would be
almost certain to win a majority, since
the Protestant east has always been a
Socialist stronghold. A good deal of
; The NaTION
ar res
_ May 9, 1953
Se. pein: ,
Mi
West Germany than over a united Ger-
many in which the Protestants of
Prussia would disturb the present polit-
ical balance.
MOSCOW has not yet gone beyond gen-
eralities. But if a genuine unity offer is
made, it will almost certainly destroy the
unstable West European defense struc-
ture. If the Social Democrats are brought
to power, they will emasculate the
European defense treaties beyond all
recognition. If Adenauer, by some proc-
ess of political black magic, manages
to retain power in a reunited Germany,
even he may hesitate to create a
Wehrmacht hostile to the Soviet Union
when the Red Army is just across a
narrow river.
Nor would the Chancellor find it easy
to resist the neutralist tendencies among
- his wealthy backers. Two years ago a
Ruhr industrialist told me that he and
his kind saw no sense in taking sides:
“For us, taking sides can mean only a
Soviet invasion, and we all know what
that means.” One of the notable books
published in West Germany last year,
“Deutschland am Rande Zweier Welt-
en,” by Wilhelm Wolfgang Schutz,
argued that only armed neutrality would
save Germany from becoming a battle-
field. The author was at the time an
adviser to the Minister for All-German
Affairs. *
Neutralism is not confined to a few
individuals. I found its champions
among the miners of the Ruhr and the
shopkeepers of Bavaria. And 1 got per-
_ haps the most lucid expression of it
‘ from a member of the D. G. B.’s eleven-
man council. “You ask me what will
__ be the policy of a united Germany,” he
said. “I don’t imagine that this policy
* will be 100 per cent like the policy you
expect from West Germany. A united
, Germany will be tied to the West, but
we happen to have a common border
with Russia and we can’t always keep
our finger on the trigger. Every party,
including the Social Democratic, is pro-
Western, but we can’t antagonize Rus-
sia. Moscow's first objective is to*avert
the immediate military danger of a re-
armed West. After that it will depend
on lucrative trade offers to bind the
_ new united Germany to the‘East. There
Paik is mixed’ with ‘dee lie a the
‘Soctali at Pese ag heeaer would
_ rather preside over a truncated Catholic
not if the West maintains normal rela-
tions with us.”
What this all means is that if the
_ Russian-American conflict ever develops
into a shooting war, most Germans want
to sit it out. In other words, ohne mich.
The price Moscow would have to pay
for neutralizing Germany is high, but it
is not prohibitive. The West is inclined
to think that Moscow would hesitate to
hold free elections in Germany, or to
throw overboard the present East Ger-
man regime, or to allow the creation of
a national Germany army. All these
assumptions are wrong. There is every
reason to believe that Moscow would not
hesitate to abandon the East German
government. There is also good reason
to believe that the Communist Party, so
thoroughly organized in the Soviet zone,
would get 10 to 15 per cent of the
national vote. This would give it enough
of a foothold in the national parliament
to be able to advertise its philos-
ophy and grievances. (It is noteworthy
- that in the elections to works councils
in the Ruhr coal mines a few weeks ago
the Communists, in the face of powerful
Social Democratic pressure, retained
roughly 17 per cent of the places.)
The Soviet Union, it is true, would
risk the revival of the traditional fears
of Germany's eastern neighbors, espe-
cially Poland and Czechoslovakia. When
Moscow first aired its proposals on Ger-
man unity early last year, the satellite
press and radio launched a campaign of
unusual intensity to persuade the people
in these countries that they had nothing
to fear. The argument was that Germany
had reformed, that the Red Army would
always safeguatd peace, and that any-
way one should have faith in Stalin's
wisdom. Now there are some signs that
public opinion in Poland and Czecho-
slovakia is being prepared for new |
shocks, When the Bundestag ratified the
European Defense Community treaty in
March, both Russian and Polish com-
ment was unusually mild. While sharply
attacking Chancellor Adenauer himself,
Warsaw, for instance, insisted that
“every honest German” was opposed to
the treaty. If a decade ago the only good
German was a dead German, today
nearly all Germans are good because they
are opposed to the ‘Adenauer rearma-
ment.”
Part of the price asked would be the
restoration of large chunks of lost Ger-
man territory. The lands beyond the
Oder-Neisse, now belonging to Russia
or Poland, are historically German. In
fact, there are few worse post-war mon-
strosities than a Polish Silesia, or a
Konigsberg known as Kaliningrad. Feel-
ing in Germany on the subject is fairly
high. But one factor cannot be ignored.
While there is German soil beyond the
Oder-Neisse, the Russians saw to it that
there are no Germans. “‘It is not a situa-
tion,”’ a Dtisseldorf editor told me, “that
calls for a German Panmunjom.” And
Russia could always persuade Poland to
- give up, say, the port of Stettin to a
reunited Germany.
THUS, CONSIDERING the interna-
tional disruption their offer could
cause, the Russians would not have to
pay too much. It is not the purpose of
this article to discuss the effects of such
a move on our own European policy,
especially on the concepts of “‘contain-
ment” and “‘liberation.’’ But it should
be noted that if a united, armed, and
neutral Germany ever comes into being,
it will inevitably seek to expand. This
it cannot do eastward, for the Red Army —
bars its way. It can only expand in the
direction of the vacuum of power—to-
ward France. And we should be naive to
imagine that Moscow and Paris do not
realize it. That is what makes French
ratification of the European defense
treaties so doubtful. The Soviet “peace
395
offensive’ has already given a tremen-
dous boost to French neutralism, and if
Moscow follows through with a specific
and generous offer on German unity,
France, like the United States, will have
to cast about for a new foreign policy.
There are solid reasons for the ex-
pectation that Moscow will make new
peace overtures on Germany and that
they will follow the lines outlined above.
The first signs have appeared in Pravda
and in the East German press. General
Chuikov has had some relevant things
to say on the subject. The East German
radio has some intriguing
broadcasts beamed at England. What is
more significant, the general contours of
the Soviet proposals were displayed in
the clumsily handled series of Soviet
notes early last spring. Moscow at that
a united, re-
initiated
time proposed in effect
armed, and neutral Germany, with a war
industry of its own and with former
Nazis reinstated in public life. :
Such proposals have good precedents
in Soviet diplomacy. Entries in the Soviet
“Diplomatic Dictionary,” edited by no
less a personage than Andrei Vishinsky,
indicate that the Soviet government from
its earliest days has sought a neutral
or friendly Germany, regardless of that
country’s political coloration. This pur-
pose appeared in ‘the Rapallo treaty,
which broke the World War I model of
“containment,” as it did in the Molotov-
Ribbentrop pact. The policy changed
briefly after the last war, when Russia
appeared determined to have Germany
disarmed and de-Nazified, but it did not
take the Kremlin long to realize that a
power vacuum in Germany was even
worse than a rearmed Germany with
which a deal could be arranged. A dra-
matic reversion to the traditional policy
came with the first Soviet note on Ger-
man unity on March 10, 1952.
Memories of Rapallo weigh heavily
on German minds. Chancellor Adenauer
himself referred to it in a speech before
the National Press Club in Washington:
~ = , tae er
. in f =
. . te e wr _ —_—
24 forthe
al
“The era of the ree of ree ie:
not come again. At that time Russia —
was weak. It sought and found as a
partner a still powerful Germany. Should
we attempt such a partnership, we should
soon find ourselves reduced to a satellite
of Soviet Russia. I know no one in Ger-
many who would want this.’’ However
persuasive this argument, it can hardly
counterbalance the appeal = unity to
- most Germans.
If still more proof of Moscow’s in-
tentions is needed it is spelled out in
eleborate detail in two Soviet documents
—Stalin’s thesis of last fall and Malen-
kov's speech before the Nineteenth Party
Congress last October. Both forecast new
dissension in the Western camp, with a
seeming accent on a revived Germany
and Japan. What then—as seen from
the Kremlin battlements—could procure
a prettier capitalist wrangle than a united
and rearmed Germany thirsting to get
back the Saar and push into the great
military nothingness beyond it?
NEW DAY DAWNING
The Negro and Medicine .
Livingston, Ala.
I believe in strekt segregation. It is
better for bothe races. The average negroe
is incapable of competing, mentally, with
the average white person. Neither is the
average white person capable of compet-
ing, physically, with the average negroe.
Each will do better when associated with
his own race. A few extry smart negros
and a few low minded whites would like
to amalgamate the two races and that is
really what non-segregation means.
When a white doctor in Oklahoma
sends you this comment, with its quaint
spelling, it is hard not to think he is
kidding. But serious or not, his views
appear charmingly naive in comparison
with the following statement from an
internal-medicine specialist in the Dis-
trict of Columbia:
ALFRED MAUND is on the faculty of
State Teachers College at Livingston,
Alabama. .
396
How about the health needs of our
racial germ plasm? Do we know enough
in this direction to be leaping into the
dark, literally as well as figuratively? Non-
segregation on the social level . . . will
provoke miscegenation and hasten the
fusion of two widely distinguished races.
Does anyone know just what this might
mean? No one does. I shudder before the
possibilities.
The letters of both physicians were
comments on a questionnaire mailed to
the 42,500 white doctors listed in the
A. M. A. Directory for seventeen South-
ern. and border states and the District of
Columbia by the Southern Conference
Educational Fund, an anti-discrimination -
organization with headquarters in New
Orleans. These were the questions:
1. Which of the following plans do
you think best serves the health needs
of the entire community? (A) Admit
patients to hospitals without segregation.
(B) Admit Negro and white patients
by Alfred Maund
to the same hospital with segregation.
(C) Maintain separate hospitals for
Negro and white patients.
2. Would you favor the admission of
Negro physicians to your county medi-
cal society ?
3. Would you favor granting hospital
privileges to Negro physicians in hospi-—
tals in which you practice?
Replies were received from 5,750
physicians, of which 3,928 were signed.
Racial segregation of patients was
strongly supported. Plan B was favored
by 64 per cent of the voters, Plan C by
11 per cent, Plan A by 17 per cent.
The other-8 per cent either did not an-
swer the question or suggested other ar-.
rangements. A Delaware doctor summed
up the sentiments of a sizable num-
ber of his colleagues when he wrote: “In
theory I favor Plan A. However, in ac-
tual practice admission without segrega-
tion in this locality would meet with
The Nee
pare
ag
Th e vote on the admission of Negro
> doctors to county medical societies and
| hospital staffs was overwhelmingly af-
4 firmative—71 per cent in favor, with an-
i
i other 3 per cent giving qualified ap-
_ proval.
a
THIS FIGURE indicates a grass-roots
sentiment directly counter to the general
§ practice of the medical societies in the
states surveyed. Too often, even where
Negro doctors are admitted to member-
e ship, they enjoy only the privilege of
attending scientific meetings and are not
eligible for appointment as hospital staff
members. It should be noted, however,
| that Florida has had full integration for
more than two years; the District of
Columbia society opened its ‘rolls last
| July; and in the past few months county
‘} societies in Charleston (S. C.), Macon
- (Ga.), and Little Rock (Ark.) have
accepted Negroes as full members.
What motivated this group of South-
ern doctors, with their strong concern for
regional mores, to vote so consistently
for liberalization of their organizations ?
The counsel of a district medical society
| in Arkansas wrote: ‘As a medical society
is a scientific organization and not a
social organization, I see no reason to
| limit its membership on either race,
| color, or creed; it should be limited only
by character, moral standing, educational
background, etc.’’ (One of his colleagues
in the state queried: “If you admit
colored people, what about the auxiliary ?
When the auxiliary has a party, would
_ you want your wife to dance with a
| colored doctor?”) ‘
| $ A Texas surgeon declared: “A Negro
physician is usually a well-qualified gen-
tleman; regardless of the color . . . I
‘had rather have a fine Negro doctor than
.the jealous jackass that we so often con-
tact.” (A Mississippian countered: “In
so far as I know, none-of the Negro
_ physicians practicing here are eligible
for membership . . . because of their in-
adequate training. I have a number of
good colored patients. All tell me the
colored doctors are ‘plain no-count.’’’)
“Although I am of the opinion that
the admission of Negro physicians will
be bitterly opposed,” said an Alabama
doctor, “‘unless we admit them volun-
tarily they can go to court and force
us to admit them, since they will have
| May 9, 1953
l Slt ae 1 j
I
' om
7 -
eae tS
to gain admission for qu
members of various specialty boards, so-
cieties, etc.”” Another Alabamian added,
“I do believe that in order to raise the
standards of practice of Negro physi-
cians and encourage migration of com-
petent Negro physicians and surgeons to
a given community, some sort of hospi-
tal affiliation is in order.”
These doctors are working in states
which have the worst public-health rec-
ords in the United States. The national
average of rejections in Selective Service
examinations is around 30 per cent; in
only three of the states polled is the rate
less than 40 per cent, and all are above
the average. Local Selective Service offi-
cials will admit, privately, that the great
majority of those rejected are Negro. ,
Conditions in Atlanta were described
succinctly by one doctor: ‘There are
twenty Negro physicians to help serve
a Negro population of 100,000. Mortal-
ity rates are unreasonably high in our
local Negro hospitals. The medical back-
ground of many of these Negro physi-
‘cians is shallow.” In Baltimore, said
another, ‘‘there is a great shortage of all
types of hospital beds for Negro pa-
tients, but particularly obstetrical beds.
Yet there are ‘white’ beds empty which
could be used for them.”
Southern laymen who believe that
medical facilities ought to be shared ac-
cording to need regardless of race should
be aroused by these returns to take direct
action. They should encourage the lib-
eral minority in the medical profession
and bring pressure to bear on its con-
servative leadership. Some Southerners
have already taken up the gauntlet.
The Southern Conference Educational
Fund has begun a series of projects de-
ese
alification as
Bret
ee
Gg
signed to alert the public to the inequi-
ties of segregated medical care. Aubrey
Williams, Alabama publisher and writer,
is president of this organization, and six
college presidents and deans are on its
board. Its funds are supplied by some
3,000 individual contributors over the
country. Besides taking the poll de-
scribed above, it has investigated other
aspects of the subject.
The Interracial Hospital Movement
of Kentucky has presented to the gov-
ernor a petition with 10,000 signatures
demanding that equal hospital facilities
be made available to all citizens. As a
result, the last session of the Kentucky
Senate passed unanimously a bill to
rescind the operating license of any in-
stitution denying treatment to a patient
because of race or creed. Although the
House later modified the measure to read
“denying emergency treatment,” the law.
is a big step forward.
BUT AS IN THE CASE of the public
schools, the ultimate solution may lie
with the courts. If integration of tax-sup-
ported hospital wards were enforced by
judicial edict, the various religious de-
would be shamed into
adopting similar policies in their hospi-
tals—just as they are now opening the
doors of their seminarigs. The Veterans’
Administration would be emboldened to
adopt a consistently democratic attitude
toward its patients. Congress might even
put teeth in the Hill-Burton act, which
gives federal funds for the construction
of hospitals and allows the states to set
up the rule of Jim Crow.
Then, perhaps, a Fourteenth Amend-
ment would be appended to the Oath of
Hippocrates. .
nominations
H |
ede ‘
Ben Shahn
397
TWO POEMS
There Is a Dark River
There is a dark river flows under a bridge
Making an elbowed turn where the swallows skim
Indescribably dark in rain.
You think of the Floss, drifting down
To the boyhood of the implacable maelstrom
And a boathouse rotting in shadow.
The grapes of Concord are thick with hawthorn
And the old manse is ripe with the sprung rain.
There is a dark river under the bridge
Though beyond, grasses stand up—
Most English lone at the wide bend.
The aged spirits of when they wrote
Memorable words on the window pane—
What but the diamond’s firmness gives them fame?
And yet because they did -it
The field is thick with spirit.
Across from this rich running a crop
Under the pines of black-toothed stones.
Happy the lilac; happy each stem
By the troughs of the green sunk down.
Something other than animal dread
Made us pray when we stood on them
That this same love with the full of thought
Go down and touch at the base of the root
The unutterable, which is unmortal.
There is a dark river flows under a bridge
Where the reeds stand in the come and go
Of a boathouse black in the shadow.
Here swallows fly over its swirl.
A wild gyre of midges below.
Specters sweet-fleshed in the water
Specters whom we might know
Stand chanting of that which we no longer
May read the text for, in the shadow.
And yet the color of their tears is over the water
And the air is plunged into echo
Of their long eyes in the mirror.
Do we not see this, do we not know— a
Ah! in the gliding below
Is not the sight slanted with thought
Of this same willow from which they drank—
398
*- ; we
FOR SPRING © em
Rich-running water, indescribably much
Emblackened by redolent wild-running years
As at nightfall when clamor thickens
All the night over with sleeping things,
Invisible footfalls and murmurings—
Here where the swallows drink from the bend
Shadows our shadows stir—
Ah! to feel is to understand
Under the dark down-reaching rain
What glides over and ‘what looks in,
Deep in its depths contained—
And we are heavy with history,
Under the boughs to play
In the -consubstantial come and go
Of games, at eternity, :
Your light voices here wedding here, over all.
JEAN GARRIGUE
Pastorale
The bank swallows veer and dip,
Diving down at my windows,
Then flying almost straight upward,
Like bats in daytime, ‘ :
And their shadows, bigger,
Race over the thick grass;
And the finches pitch through the air, twittering;
And the small mad siskins flit by,
Flying upward in little skips and erratic leaps;
Or they sit sideways on limber dandelion stems,
Bending them down to the ground;
Or they perch and peck at larger flower-crowns,
Springing, one to another,
The last-abandoned stalk always quivering
Back into straightness;
Or they fling themselves against tree trunks,
Scuttling down and around like young squirrels,
Birds furious as bees.
Now they move all together!—
These airy hippety-hop skippers,
Light as seed blowing off thistles!
And I seem to lean forward,
As my eyes follow after
Their sunlit leaping.
THEODORE ROETHKE
The NATION
es
4
er
y a
| THE UNITED STATES AND INDIA
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
e
AND PAKISTAN. By W. Norman
Brown. Harvard University Press.
$4.50.
MISSION WITH MOUNTBATTEN.
By Alan Campbell-Johnson. E. P.
Dutton and Company. $5.
By Keith Hutchison
ANY Indians and _ Pakistanis,
writes Professor Brown, suspect
the United States of ‘‘playing its own
game, and any other nation making an
alliance with it, they often say, should
walk carefully . . . and look out for
sudden unilateral action that could be
embarrassing to an unprepared compan-
ion. Conversely, the British, who were
viewed in India as ogres before the war,
are now admired for political liberalism
and realistic conduct in the face of
adversity.”
“In the last chapter of his book—an
admirable guide to the recent history
and current problems of the Indian sub-
continent—Professor- Brown reviews
very judicially the reasons for this sus-
picion of America. Alan Campbell-
Johnson, in his fascinating diary of
' the Mountbatten mission which brought
British rule to a close, provides impor-
tant clues to the contrasting improve-
ment in Anglo-Indian relations.
Implementation of the British Labor
- government's promise to free India was
: being obstructed by furious controversy
between Hindus and Moslems, when in
February, 1947, Prime Minister Attlee
- issued an ultimatum. The Indian parties,
: he said in effect, must agree by June,
1948, whether independence was to be
, on the basis of union or partition: on
that date the British intended to hand
over to whatever successor government,
or governments, was in being. History is
likely to record this bold cutting of
the Gordian knot as a master-stroke
KEITH HUTCHISON, a contributing
editor of The Nation, 7s the author of
“The Decline and Fall of British Capi-
talism.””
Pee BAAN
e= BOOKS ~~
Understanding India
of statesmanship. Its success was assured
by an equally unorthodox move—the
appointment of Lord Mountbatten, a
young man with a great reputation as
a war-time commander but no political
experience, as Viceroy and liquidator of
the Indian Empire.
CAMPBELL-JOHNSON, Mountbatten’s
press attaché, viewed the whole drama
from a vantage point in the wings. His
diary, he explains with an unnecessary
apology, provides “a hurried, breathless
narrative.”’ But-it is just because this
story was slapped red-hot on to paper,
instead of being written after sober re-
flection, that it combines vivacity with
genuine historical value.
Most readers, no doubt, will detect
the color tones of hero-worship in the
author’s portrait of his chief. But after
discounting this element they will hardly
fail to be convinced that Mountbatten is
a man of formidable charm, great pa-
tience,- and lightning intelligence—in
short, a diplomat of the highest order.
“His gift for friendship has triumphed
over everything,” said an Indian to the
author on Independence Day.
Freedom won, both Indians and Pakis-
tanis came quickly to realize that Britain,
in partial compensation for past exploi-
tation, was leaving behind a valuable in-
heritance, particularly in the form of
political ideas, judicial standards, and
administrative techniques. Most of the
leaders of the two countries knew Eng-
land well—many had been educated
there—while a goodly number of
Britons have acquired a wide knowledge
of Indian problems and a sympathetic
appreciation of Indian culture.
As Professor Brown points out, there
is as yet no similar basis for mutual
understanding between Americans and
Indians. Contacts between the two
peoples have been limited, and only a
handful of men in this country have ex-
pert knowledge of some aspect of
Indian life and history. Thus opinion
about India is woefully uninformed:
until independence the views of most
Americans, to quote Dr. Brown, “were
determined almost entirely either. by an
unreasoning Anglophobia or an unin-
quiring Anglophilia.”’
Both American ideas about India and
Indian ideas about America tend to be
stereotypes. Many Americans think of
India “‘as a land of meditating omphalo-
psychites, hypnotic swamis, naked as-
cetics, bejeweled princes of fabulous
wealth and incomparable harems, bare-
skinned, poverty-stricken, famine-ridden
masses,” and so forth. Largely from
Hollywood, Indians and Pakistanis have
derived a picture of America as a coun-
try of easygoing, gun-toting dollar-
chasers, possessing an envious efficiency
but devoid of morals or ideals.
American prestige in India rose dur-
ing the last war when President Roose-
velt was visibly prodding Churchill on
the independence issue. After that, it
tended to decline until Ambassador
Bowles supplied a restorative. But
Indians and Pakistanis continue to feel
that Americans do not understand the
nature of Asia’s current revolution, and
they resent suggestions that they should
enlist as unquestioning allies in the
cold war. Their skepticism about the
great Western crusade in turn infuriates
some Americans, and all too many of
our journalistic black-and-white artists
depict India as a Soviet stooge.
PROFESSOR BROWN, a life-long stu-
dent of India, provides a useful correc-
tive to such crudities and pleads the ur-
gent necessity for greater understanding.
The United States cannot afford the en--
mity of these two great new nations,
comprising one-fifth of the world’s popu-
lation. In turn, India and Pakistan need
American technical and financial assist-
ance if they are to fulfil the promise of
independence. They need, and need
quickly, large amounts of capital not
merely to create industries but for such
basic investments as communications,
schools, water supply, public health, and
land improvement. With the vast ma-
jority of their peoples on a subsistence
standard of living they cannot, by demo-
cratic methods, squeeze the requisite .
savings out of internal resources. Thus,
lacking financial aid from the West,
they have only two alternatives: resigna-
tion to economic stagnation varied by
famine, ot adoption of Communist tech-
niques for lifting the economy by its
bootstraps.
°
399
Sloan and Pearce—Little, Brown. $5.
By Robert Hatch
OU might call this book a pleasant
sightseeing tour around a vivid and
creative personality. Richard Griffith, cu-
rator of the Museum of Modern Art
Film Library, has taken excerpts from
the diaries, letters, and published books
of Flaherty and his wife and from Pat
Mullen’s chatty history of the making
of “Man of Aran.” He has written
passages of his own to connect these
fragments into a narrative that follows
the sequence of the Flaherty documen-
taries: from “Nanook of the North” to
“Moana” and “Tabu” to ‘Man of Aran”
to “Elephant Boy” and home at the end
to “The Land” and “Louisiana Story.”
Flaherty’s memoirs are warm with ad-
miration and affection for the people he
filmed; his wife’s notes and letters home
are lively comments on the circumstances
of movie making on the frontiers; Mul-
len has almost too aware an eye for the
rough excellence of his native island.
These scrapbook items are attractive
footnotes on Flaherty, but you learn
from them surprisingly little that is
central to the man or his aims or his
working methods. Flaherty was appar-
ently not given to reflecting on paper
about himself and his ambitions; and the
other two writers step around these
subjects as if by prearrangement.
Griffith realized, I think, that his ma-
terial was peripheral and tried to supply
a focus in his own comment. But since
he appears in the modest role of guide,
he must confine himself to broad pro-
nouncements: Flaherty was an open and
generous man, he made a new kind of
picture, he sought the spirit of human
aspiration in primitive societies, he was
not—and is not—sufficiently appreci-
ated. All this is true but too sweeping
to provide insights. Why, if he was such
a whole and healthy man, did Flaherty
find it necessary to seek virtue in virginal
societies? It appears that he carried the
Garden of Eden with him, for he was
always urging his subjects back into
ROBERT HATCH is on the staff of the
Scientific American.
400
worlds: of moral beauty that no longer
existed except as folk memories. It is
teasing not to have the matter opened
up more fully, and this is only one point
among many.
Griffith gives us to understand that he
i 2 >. > ee
Guide to Robert Flaherty
THE WORLD OF ROBERT FLA-
HERTY. By Richard Grifhth. Duell,
» on eo) Fd
hg ey aed ee
knew Flaherty ee as calls h him Bok
even in print—and chet he has a com-
prehensive theory about his work and —
relationship to the broad field of the
movies.
elusive glimpses of this volume in a
biography solid enough to be called
“The World of Robert Flaherty.”
New Books in Brief
Art of Dead Actors
SHAKESPEARIAN PLAYERS AND
PERFORMANCES. By Arthur Colby
Sprague. Harvard. $4.50. Imhis previous
“Shakespeare and the Actors,” Professor
Sprague showed how research can dis-
count the familiar opinion that the art
of a dead actor is something we can
know nothing about. By the eighteenth
century newspaper and other first-hand
reports become available, and so do
prompt books and other forms of evi-
dence on the basis of which it is possible
to know not only the general effect
created but a good deal about stage
business, the emphasis put upon words
and phrases, and so on. By patiently
collecting such bits of information and
putting them together Professor Sprague
tells us a great deal about how Betterton
played Hamlet; Siddons, Lady Macbeth;
and Kean, Othello. Eight such accounts
are included in the present volume, and
the general conclusion is that though
styles have certainly changed drastically
we would still find such pérformances
intelligible and impressive.
High Cost of Welfare
TAXATION AND INCENTIVE. By
Lady Rhys-Williams. Oxford. $3.50.
Like many other sociologists, Lady
Rhys-Williams is concerned about the
effect upon the incentives to work and
to invest of the crushing burden of
taxation the financing of English wel-
fare benefits has made necessary. Unlike
many other critics, she desires to con-
tinue social security at its present level.
What to do? Her solution is in two
parts. In the first place she suggests a
merger of social-welfare contributions
and ordinary income-tax payments into
one tax schedule. The second part of
this program includes payment of cash
payments to a// Englishmen, employed
or not, according to family size. In this
way she hopes to restore incentives,
since the difference between the income
of the employed and the unemployed
would be the full amount of wages re-
ceived. A choice is offered of five rather
complicated tax schemes. Like most
other devices which purport to solve
intricate social questions, this one fails
to carry conviction.
The Ante Bellum South
THE COTTON KINGDOM. By Fred-
erick Law Olmsted. Edited, with an’
Introduction, by Arthur M. Schlesinger.
Knopf. $6.75. If Frederick Law Olm-
sted is remembered generally atall now-
adays, it is as the landscape architect who
Jaid out New York’s Central Park and
many other fine public pleasure grounds.
Social historians, however, think.of him
as perhaps the ablest reporter of social
and economic conditions in the ante
bellum South, through which he made
two extended journeys in 1853 and
1854. His observations first appeared as
letters to the New York Times which
formed the basis for three separate
books. The present work is a revised
and abridged version of these earlier
volumes which Olmsted prepared in
1861 at the suggestion of a London
publishing house. Its reissue in the
Borzoi Editions of Books on America’s
Past is a boon to all students of the Civil
War period.
Olmsted was no emotional Abolition-
ist. He approached the problem of
slavery objectively, and although he did
not neglect its moral aspects, he stressed
its economic consequences. With a
wealth of telling facts he demonstrated
that the dependence of the South on
A reader must wonder if he .—
intends some day to incorporate the —
—- «em @ see
The NATION,
Ct
ee Se a ee
e
success to chronicle the events and re-
far frot m giving
commerce
claimed, was a prime cause of ‘lazy
ona ‘stranle hold, on the world’s
as Southern _ politicians
poverty” and an insuperable barrier to
any kind of broad economic develop-
ment. Time ha§ proved the accuracy of
this diagnosis.
Florence Kelley
IMPATIENT. CRUSADER. By Jose-
phine Goldmark. Illinois. $3.50. In his
foreword to this biography of Florence
Kelley, Felix Frankfurter says: ‘The
pages that follow give an account of
the life of a woman who had probably
the largest single share in shaping the
social history of the United States during
the first thirty years of this century.” He
goes on to characterize the book as “the
From the Latte Legend
LORENZO IN SEARCH OF THE
SUN. D. H. Lawrence in Italy, Mexico,
and the American Southwest. By Eliot
Fay. Bookman Associates. $2.75. A syn-
optic version of the Lawrence legend
compiled chiefly from the gospels ac-
cording to Mabel Dodge, Dorothy Brett,
Witter Bynner, Frieda Lawrence, and
the rest. Taking his subject’s greatness
for. granted, Mr. Fay remains otherwise
neutral, attempting with considerable
create the atmosphere of Lawrence's
restless wanderings as well as of his re-
lations with a group of possessive wo-
men. Readable and interesting but just
because it is concerned exclusively with
the hours when Lawrence was not being
a writer, probably doing less than justice
to a man whose inconsistency, irritabil-
ity, and vague yearnings after he knew
not what are displayed at full length.
Lawrence may have been a genius,
but he had his full share of littleness as
Encyclopedia of.
exciting story of her undaunted efforts
to eliminate what she helped to reveal as
the ugly concomitants of our stupendous
ABERRATIONS |
A PSYCHIATRIC HANDBOOK
industrial development—child labor, un- Edited by EDWARD PODOLSKY, M.D. i 5
ai pees eee pationanly State University of New York Medical College
for women, exploitingly low wages, a .
shockingly high rate of infant and ma- With a Foreword by ALEXANDRA ADLER, M.D.
ternal mortality, neglect of safeguards New York University College of Medicine
against occupational diseases.’ Florence
Kelley was the most militant of that
This is the first systematic exposition of human aberrational behavior.
In this volume over fifty eminent psychologists and psychiatrists discuss
all types of aberrations, with particular emphasis on their psychody-
namics. The material is arranged in alphabetical sequence for easy
| remarkable group of dedicated social ;
. a rererence.
| reformers which included Jane Addams, SOME OF THE ENTRIES:
{ Julia Lathrop, and Lillian Wald. This Abasia Claustrophobia Hashish, addiction Narcolepsy
" Ablutomania Cocaine, addiction Head banging Necrophilia
fine record of her indefatigable work and Abulia Crime, neurotic Heroin, addiction Negativism
A “ Acalculia Criminality Heterolalia Nudism
| extraordinary accomplishments 18 a. rev- Acataphasia Homosexuality Nymphomania if
| S Aggression Depression Hysteria
elation of the fierceness of the fight that Alcoholism Devil worship Ochlophobia
. Amnesia Dream murders Iconolagny Onanism
had to be waged for measures now Anal eroticism Dysprosody Musions Opium, addiction
Anancasm Inferiority feelings
taken for granted. Anti-Semitic Ecouteur Intellectual Pavar nocturnus
attitudes Ecstasy, artificial malfunctioning Passimism
Anxiety, dental Erotographomania i 7 Pethidi ti et
Aphasia and Exhibitionism Kainotophobia e Phobias” aeigion >
i 7 linguistics Kakorrhaphiophobia P h |
, Escape Story Autism, infantile Family tension Kleptomania paveheaiee y j
} > Auvto-punishment fellatio Language frustration Puberty, aberrational
3 2 Fetishism L iar! Ais ior
9:15 TO FREEDOM. By Martin Fiala. pe eedriac Folie a deux Povohioye fisis aise
} aa - 4 iction Frigidity i A
| ‘ British Book Center. $2. This little mc Frottage ponereea Sc heeprrenics
. . ‘
volume deals with the unforgettable es- alles bie Gambling uciteelnes Sophomania
5 , Boredom Masochism
cape, back in September, 195i; of an Brontophobia = fbi sweating Menge anomalies ath aba i
' oddly assorted group of twelve Czechs Cacodaemonomania Talal “infoxtecition “i
. i : Chloral delirium Hair-plucking Murderer, mind of Xenophobia ee
1‘ k who appropriated a local train and ciecasteonta Hallucinations Mutism
/ Clairvoyance Haptodysphoria Mysophobia Zoophilism j
S M. y ay 90 1953
dashed across the border to Germany at
,sixty miles an hour. They were later
joined by twenty-seven passengers, de-
lighted to fnd themselves caught in this
unexpected venture. In preparing this
book Mr. Fiala—a pseudonym—inter-
viewed the original twelve plotters, and
the stories of what made them flee their
native land make for instructive reading
on life under communism. Though
marred by melodramatic—and at times
plain foolish—writing, this turns out to
ae a chilling and esciting tale.
re
OVER HALF A MILLION WORDS
Distributed to the book trade by Citadel Press
A AT THIS
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY, Inc.
Please’ send. 232 = =
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Zone. State
401
well. One who knew him and his friends
only through this account might well
exclaim with Matthew Arnold, “What
a set!” and let it go at that. Since Mr.
Fay’s book will probably be read chiefly
by those who are already committed to
hero-worship, this does not matter too
much,
Theater
Harold Clurman
F THE two readings from Dickens
that Emlyn Williams gives (Bijou
Theater) I prefer the more varied one,
“Mixed Bill.’ The other—‘Bleak
House’—is expert, entertaining, and
slightly strenuous. The novel itself, even
that digest of it Mr. Williams is able
to pack into two hours and some minutes,
has descriptions,~characterizations, and
commentary of genius—and a crazy plot
in which all is fascinating, mysterjous,
picturesque without always being rele-
vant; so that finally we are left with an
ending which is not a clarification.
While Mr. Williams is an admirable
actor, his readings, though they reveal
certain facets of his histrionic ability, do
not really constitute acting but forms of
public address, imitation, and showman-
ship. What the difference is, is a subject
I shall probably have occasion to discuss
at another time.
What I propose today is to revert to a
question which has come up in regard
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for exhibitions.
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AMERICAN SAINTS
SHAKERS * SPANISH-AMERICANS
PAINTINGS BY
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MAY 11 thra 23
JACQUES SELIGMANN 5 £.57
ALFRED DRAKE
in
RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN’S
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A New Musical Play ae
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER _
§T. JAMES THEATRE, West 44 St.)
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
Wednesday & Saturday at2:25: $4.20to1.80, ,
402
to certain criticisms of “Camino Real,”
a recurrent question apropos of plays
every season or so. It concerns the issue
of “pessimism” in drama.
The word is a vague one, and the
author of “Camino Real’’ might easily
argue, if he cared to, that his play is not
pessimistic. As -I inferred in my own
review of the play, the nature of its
“philosophy” is somewhat beside the
point. No matter what its stated or im-
plied ideology, it is immature art and,
in my opinion, inferior to the author's
other plays. What is in dispute now is
the implication that a play is bad when
it is pessimistic—a hypothesis I believe
to be pernicious as well as false.
Some of the world’s greatest dramatic
literature (to go no farther)—‘King
Lear’ and “Oedipus the King’’—might
reasonably be set down as pessimistic. It
is well known, as a French poet once
said, that some of the most beautiful
poems are pure sobs. And there are
others, plays and poems, which amount
to curses and imprecations. There have
also been plays which might properly be
described as “‘sick’”—many of Strind-
berg’s, for example—but which certainly
claim our attention and deserve our
respect. .
Why, then, do we tend in our Amer-
ican theater to feel that designating a
play as “pessimistic” is almost tanta-
mount to complete condemnation? The
usual explanation is that Americans are
reared in a tradition of optimism. The
historically happy circumstances of
American life make us shy away from the
tragic view of life as from something un-
healthy as well as distasteful. This is
truer of the theater than elsewhere.
Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, even —
Hemingway are certainly not sanguine
figures. But in our theater of recent
years, despite the example of Eugene
O'Neill, whose work is tormented by his
effort to reconcile himself to the anguish
+ yee 7 2
and disorder he has felt and witnessed,
there is rarely anything but a grudging
or resistant attitude to the play that sug-
Scests deep-lying tragedy. Shaw wrote
plays pleasant and unpleasant; Anouilh
writes “black” plays and “rosy” plays.
We insist on sunshine in all our plays
just as we recoil from “unsympathetic”
characters.
As I am not myself of a gloomy turn
~ of mind and do not accept the rationale
of philosophic pessimism, I must hasten
to make clear that I believe a certain
(unconscious) part of the theater pub-
lic’s, objection to the “unhappy” play is
justified on aesthetic, intellectual, and
moral grounds. For the state of being
a man and the state of negation—what
might be called the affirmation of
nothingness—are incompatible. But there
is in our present aversion to the “‘pessi-
mistic,” our insistence that we always
look on “the bright side,” a profoundly
dangerous element.
We want to protect ourselves from a
somber or disturbed view of life not
because we cherish life so much but be-
cause we fear it. A large part of our
program of optimism is dread in dis-
guise. Our faith in life too often
depends on our blinding ourselves to
misfortune and making ourselves deaf
to complaint. The present social atmos-
phere induces us to seek safety above
all by cutting ourselves off from every-
thing contradictory, difficult, untoward.
The result is culturally stultifying,
morally debilitating, aesthetically an-
nihilating.
There can be joy in life only through
contact with it. There can be hope only
through the recognition of what may be
hoped for in the real world. There can
be strength only by the confrontation
through intelligence, spirit, and love of
everything that life is; no one but an
imbecile thinks it is supposed to be noth-
ing but beer and skittles.
There are only two valid objections
to ‘“‘pessimism” in a play: that it is a
trivial pessimism—many of our “pessi-
mistic’” plays give off the sound of a
baby crying because its candy has been
taken away—or that it includes too little °
of the stuff of life. The heroic pessimism
which, so to speak, scoops up vast
chunks of human experience makes great
drama because the acceptance of experi-
ence, the painful as well as the pleasant,
is the ultimate and real “good” of life.
Our unwitting censorship of the “pessi-
The Nation _
a ry to cee ce may
do it privately with a novel—that life is
: real and life is earnest and that comfort
and a streamlined “good time” are not
its goals.
Just as the fulness of experience is
the true source of happiness in living,
so a fulness of life is the basic criterion
of excellence in drama. There is more
| vigor in Hamlet’s doubts, more solace in
| Cordelia’s tears, more nobility in Othel-
_ lo’s crimes, more dignity in Mephis-
topheles’ denials, more tenderness in
Uncle Vanya’s frustrations, more relish
‘in the monsters‘ of Webster's “White
| Devil’ than-there is gaiety or uplift in a
| host of our ‘‘optimistic’” comedies. The
| man who cries out, “Take him away,
| he’s breaking my heart,” ninety-nine
times out of a hundred is neither a
a cheerful nor a kind person.
: Records
B. H. Haggin
O of Mozart’s Violin Concertos—
| the fine K.218, and the less fre-
| - quently played K.216 with its delight-
| fully high-spirited first movement and
| wonderful slow movement—are played
with engaging warmth and purity by
| _ thirteen-year-old Gerard Poulet with the
( Austrian Symphony under Gaston Poulet
| (Remington). Instead of the two con-
: certos on one record we are given K.216
i with an ineffective performance of the
| Handel-Harty Water Music by the same
ia orchestra under Gustav_ Koslik, and
| K.218 with their acceptable perform-
BR ances of Mozart’s Overtures to “Don
Giovanni,’ “Die Entfithrung,” and
“Titus.” K.216 has noisy surfaces.
Von Karajan’s performance of Schu-
- bert’s Symphony No. 9 with the Vienna
Philharmonic is poor and badly repro-
i duced (Columbia).
= What ~=is offered as the “complete
| orchestral score” of Berlioz’s “Romeo
® and Juliet” (Columbia) is actually only
| an assemblage of all the purely instru-
f mental movements. They comprise the
three that are usually played—Romeo
_ Alone, Sadness, Festivities at the Capu-
lets’; Love Scene; Queen Mab—preceded
_ by the Introduction and followed by one
i of the most remarkable and impressive
Beats of the work, Romeo in the Vault
Oo
,
*
e
of the Capulets. The performance in
which Mitropoulos conducts the New
York Philharmonic-Symphony is violent,
insensitive, poorly fitted together, and
coarsely executed.
Of the four Bach arias sung by Kath-
leen Ferrier with the London Philhar-
monic under Boult (London) I find
only “All Is Fulfilled’ from the St.
John Passion moving; and of the four
Handel arias I like the two from ‘‘Sam-
son” and “Judas Maccabeus”’ better than
the two from “Messiah.” Ferrier’s voice
is sumptuous but the performances are
dull.
Urania, which issued a good German
"The Juggler" is a Jew. The
story of what Nazi Germany did
to him is the story of a million
Jews. But "The Juggler" is
different—he got another chance!
Filmed in the actual locales...
the streets of Tel-Aviv, the
sands of the desert, the
waterfront of Haifa... "The
Juggler" isea story of our times,
played by a star who gives the
performance for which he
will always be remembered.
It is the drama of a man who, in
the birth of a:‘new nation, finds
the re=-birth of his own soul!
Produced by STANLEY KRAMER,
maker of ‘High Noon,” and starring
the man he brought to the screen in “Champion”
. gives one of the great performances
with
MILLY VITALE - Paul Stewart - Joey Walsh ana Oscar Karlweis
Screen Play by MICHAEL BLANKFORT + Based on His Best-Selling Novel
Directed by EDWARD DMYTRYK » A COLUMBIA PICTURE
] / e i e
‘way & 46th St.
403
performance of Smetana’s richly melo-
dious and in all ways delightful “The
Bartered Bride” has now
issued an excellent
Czech by soloists, chorus, and orchestra
of the Prague National Theater under
Jan Vogel’s direction. The tenor voice of
Ivo Zidek (Jenik) is a little dry but
otherwise good; the soprano of Milada
Musilova (Marenka) is fresh and
lovely; the light tenor of Oldrich Kovar
(Vasek) and the rich bass of Karel
Kalas (Kecal) are exactly right for their
are good
a year ago,
performance in
parts; and the other voices
except for the perhaps suitable tremolos
of the two The overture is
taken a little too fast for clarity, but
otherwise the work is pac ed effectively;
and the well-balanced recorded sound
allows the orchestra to be heard clearly
with the voices. The Czech text and an
English translation are provided; but
again there are confusing discrepancies
with what is on the records.
mothers.
WRITING ABOUT the Fairchild cart-
ridge last fall after a first hearing, I
spoke of the refinement of its sound as
against the coarseness of the Pickering’s;
but further experience has revealed other
remarkable characteristics. One listens to
the new G. E. and hears what seems to
be as good sound as anyone could want;
one listens then to the Fairchild and is
amazed not only by the new purity of
the sound, its clarity and cleanness of
definition, but by what is like an addi-
tional bloom on it, and by the greater
distinctness of the inner strands of the
orchestral texture—all of which add up
to something fabulously beautiful. I
should, however, also report a friend’s
experience. Having acquired a Fairchild
cartridge on my recommendation he
found its sound to be superb except for
a sharpness whose cause he eventually
discovered with the aid of a meter: the
cartridge had a rising characteristic—
5 db. up at 9,000 cycles, if I remember
correctly. Or rather, it had this charac-
teristic with the Fairchild transformer
my friend was using (the cartridge re-
quires a transformer); I hadn’t had this
trouble because the Brociner transformer
I had used flattens out the cartridge’s
response.
I can also report on my experjence
with a Brociner equalizer, which I ac-
quired primarily for its series of de-
emphasizing treble roll-offs by steps of
404
Crossword Puzzle No. 514
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
.
1 I
10
ual
12
13
14
16
19
20
22
23
25
26
27
aor, © WO
devil.
ACROSS
Plumber’s executive committee, as
you might say “bored”? (8, 5)
One could have thought it a deed
which needs revision. (7)
Is in the way, as a proposition. (2,5)
Slight intention to speak so. (9)
Soa less than a friend of the
Starts out in wrath, but is alto-
gether peaceful. (6)
Given up to practice. (8)
Referring to a reward, it takes a
dime call to reach it. (8)
The spirits of blindness? (6)
Apparel of a very specific hue. (5)
Look in sundry surrounds for what
pertains to smallpox. (9)
Firm and fresh in the make-up of
one who guides the shoemaker. (7)
Is steam radical in the treatment of
light? (7)
Turner’s bank account? (9, 4)
DOWN
Prophetic, when men are extremely -
bony? (5)
Natty-appearing character, less
formally Hawkeye. (9, 6)
Early D. P. (6)
A girdle’s necessary for such a model
of meekness and patience. (8)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
The Nation, 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, New York.
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
6 and 9. Blind and dumb”
(3, 2, 5, 3, 2, 4)
7 If your office is new, you can’t have
been. (9)
8 Doctrine of the 4, perhaps. (8)
9 See 6.
15 Done nicer on the inside! (9)
17 Quit. (8)
18 50 before it, and half-a-dozen after,
with a short 30 days for the
diplomat. (8)
21 Drink in the effect of the sun—he
was 7 when he ran. (6)
22 You left this in the army, saeneees
(Some like to save it.) (4)
24 Leon’s alter ego? (5) _
Me
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 513
ACROSS :—i and 13 down CONTINENTAL
SHELF; 9 HANDBALL; 10 RELAYS: 12
WITNESS; 14 PATOIS; 15 HIGH JUMP;
17 FULL WELL; 20 -CALLOW; 22 ISO-~
TOPE; 24 and 11 BURY THE HATCHET;
26 REVIEW; 27 IDAHOANS; 28 STERN
SHEETS.
DOWN :—2 and 25 OLD SCHOOL TIES; 3
TRACERS; 4 NELL; 5 NURSING; 6 ALL
IN; 7 MANANA; 8 GYPSUM; 16 JOLLY
BOAT; 18 UNSEEN; 19 EMPOWER; 20
COURAGE; 21 ON HAND; 23 TWIST.
“ground rules."' Address
The NATION
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4 Novel of Life in Soviet Estonia
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wath db, and in addition for its 300-cycle
basis turn-over to reduce the heavy bass
of old European 78s. The treble roll-
offs proved even more valuable than IJ
had anticipated, revealing the need of
additional smaller steps between posi-
tions 3, 4, and 5 of my Brook amplifier.
On the other hand the old European 78s
remained heavy even with the 300-cycle
turn-over; and I found again that the
usefulness of the equalizer was not that
it provided the right reproducing char-
acteristics to match the companies’ differ-
ent recording characteristics. The com-
panies haven’t adhered to their alleged
recording characteristics; further varia-
tions in each company’s recordings have
resulted from changes*in microphone
placement and ‘differences in acoustic
conditions; one therefore uses for a_par-
ticular recording whatever treble roll-
off or bass turn-over makes it sound
right—more often a “wrong” than 4
“right” one, and most often the 500-
cycle bass turn-over, the single compro-
mise turn-over of my Brook. The use-
fulness of the equalizer, then, is that of
a special type of tone control; and the
Brociner, with separate controls for
treble roll-offs and bass turn-overs, is
more useful than those—like the new
Brook—with a single control providing
a number of combined treble-and-bass
characteristics.
LN ST FATE
“The Quaker Approach to Contemporary
Affairs” —a one-week Institute in Avon,
Connecticut, June 21-28, 1953. Round-table
discussions with Quaker leaders Henry J.
Cadbury, A. J. Muste, Elmore Jackson, Ira
Reid; guests Chester Bowles and Norman
Thomas. Also swimming, tennis, golf, good
food, all for $55. For information, write:
Avon Institute, American Friends. Service
Committee, 130 Brattle Street, Cambridge,
Mass. F
FINAN GIN G
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LECTURE
* Friday, May 8, 8:30 P.M. *
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in a witty, penetrating analysis:
SLANDERS AGAINST WOMEN
IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
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alae . . MY 13'5
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THE S (PUBLIC LIBRARY) |
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May 16, 1953
20¢ ; = oh
Indo-China:
lhe Black
Market War
: ) By Claude Bourdet
‘Teacher as Rebel Honard K. Beale —
EVERY Give It Away! 2 Michael Straus
_ WEEK
nee Kingsley Martin’s “Laski” Robert Lynd
A
Letters
Some Pros and Cons on
Alan Barth’s Article
Dear Sirs: I have greatly admired Alan
Barth and fully appreciate his castigation
of Congress on the Campus in the April
18 issue, an unusually good number.
However, as one who early this month
had to invoke the Fifth Amendment be-
fore the irresponsible Committee on Un-
American Activities, using other and
loftier grounds, in order to escape the
very penalties Barth has so well de-
scribed, I bitterly resent the sentence:
“For my part, I think that teachers who
plead the privilege against self-incrim-
ination are. neither admirable nor
astute.”
Will he kindly tell those who do not
need to use the amendment how they
may be ‘‘admirable and astute’ without
doing so? The alternative, it seems to
me, is to strike a pose and go to jail or
else to crawl and cooperate in the public
rape of the Bill of Rights. If only Com-
munists use the amendment, it will soon
be gone; if those who assert their rights
are destroyed, will the rights survive?
Barth subtly stands aside as if the appe-
tite of the agents of American reaction
could be satisfied, with his approval,
on a diet of 25,000 American Com-
munists.
Barth . . . must see that the undermin-
ing of the “‘self-incrimination” part of
the Fifth Amendment weakens the more
important ‘due process’’ part, which the
un-Americans are already bypassing by
legislative trials that mock judicial pro-
cedure. He must know that one federal
court has said that it is one’s duty before
a legislative inquisition to stand on the
Fifth Amendment.
I am finishing an analysis of this mat-
ter and a report of my experience with «
the anti-democratic committee which
friends are bringing out in pamphlet
form under the title “I Decline.” In-
quiries should be addressed to me at
3518 Union Street, San Diego 1.
HARRY C, STEINMETZ
San Diego, Cal.
Dear Sirs: Mr. Barth’s piece in the April
18 issue on the investigation of univer-
sities by Congressional committees is as
complete and wise a statement on the
universities’ responsibilities as any I have
seen. JACOB FINB
Boston, Mass.
Dear Sirs: I believe that The Nation has
performed an unusually timely public
service in publishing Alan Barth’s article,
Congress on the Campus, in the April
18 issue. E. EVERETT AUER
East Orange, N. J. P ;
Dear Sirs; 1 have read Alan Barth's
article, Congress on the Campus, with
much interest. Although his objective of
attacking the Congressional assault on
liberal college professors is highly laud-
able, there is in my judgment a fun-
damental weakness in his basic ap-
proach. .
I see only one effective ‘Bite on
actment of a law, or a Constitutional
amendment if necessary, which will
specifically define and regulate [the Con-
gtessional]} power of inquiry and restrict
this right to the sole purpose of ascertain-
ing facts to be utilized in the preparation
of valid legislation. As it is, the Con-
stitution is silent on the subject, and the
power of Congress to inquire, for limited
purposes, —
judiciary to exist by implication. .. . I
understand that Senator Kefauver has
introduced a bill which attempts to regu-
late, inadequately, the Congressional in-
vestigation. I have written to him- about
it, suggesting a much broader bill.
HENRY MULLER
Oakland, Cal.
Un-American Spectacle
Dear Sirs: A few days ago I dropped in
on the Un-American Activities Commit-
tee’s public hearings. What I saw was a
revolting display of intolerance and
cruelty. It isn’t pleasant to see a young,
man bullied, humiliated, and insulted be-
cause he is idealistic, and indignant that
tomorrow morning in our city of Los
Angeles he will be a pariah among his
fellows, denied his right as an American
to earn a living for himself and his
family. ...
It was no less painful to_hear a suc-
cessful composer . . . state that on the
morrow he would be at a loss to pay his
rent and feed his family. It is difficult to
believe that I or anyone else was seriously
endangered by this elderly, frightened
little man who had come to this country
for ‘freedom’ and whose family had
died in German gas chambers. Or by
the middle-aged bafber who was hesitant
about giving his address aloud for fear
has been asserted by the,
a €
his ees hos a stone “as he] a
pened i in similar cases in Los Angeles.
“Unfriendly’’ witnesses were booed by
the audience, but when my friend next to
me applauded such a witness, he was
immediately admonished by a deputy
marshal. . . .
Mr. Doyle of the committee seems
basically to be an honest and sincere
man...
mittee counsel presented the questions
in a courteous and gentlemanly manner.
But the acting chairman, Mr. Jackson,
was boorish and insulting, banging his
gavel in such frenzy as to leave no doubt
of the persecutory nature of these in-
quiries. I agree with the young witness's
reply to the Jacksons of the world:
“You'll never pound the truth into dust ©
with that gavel.”
ARTHUR E. ROBSON, JR.
Los Angeles, Cal.
Book Contest for Poets
Dear: Sirs: 1 have just announced the
annual Swallow Poetry Book Award for -
the best book of poems, of any length
. It must be stated that the com-
and without restriction upon form or °
subject. The award will be book publica-
tion, at usual royalty terms, and a prize
of $250, of which $200 will be outright
award and the other $50 an advance
against royalties.
Closing date for the competition will
be September 15 of each year, the first.
contest closing September 15, 1953. The
committee of judges for the award con-
sists of John Nerber, Alan A. Stephens,
Robert Greenwood (secretary), and Alan
Swallow, ex officio. Manuscripts sub-
mitted to the contest must be addressed
to me at 2679 South York Street,
Denver 10. ALAN SWALLOW
Denver, Colo.
Correction a
Dear Sirs: In my article, The Mess in
Indo-China, which appeared in your
issue of April 25, my statement on
Franco-American expenses in Indo-China
should have read: “Since 1946 the
French have spent about $5,700,000,000 °
on the war in Indo-China. For the past
. few years the United States has supplied
up toa third of French expenditures.”
New York HELEN MEARS
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a eee
ete eae
eer es
og
a a a ye re
ay e* i
ae cee,
eee
Trapt
Volume 176, Number 20
New York, Saturday, May 16, 1953
The Shape of Things
Retreat at Hell’s Canyon
Nobody who followed Republican campaign oratory
has much reason to be surprised that Secretary of the In-
terior McKay is backing away from the Hell’s Canyon
project. General Eisenhower had made the position his
Administration would take quite clear. His complaints
against the power-hungry bureaucracy, his demand for
' more local control of the big power projects, his petulant
remark that the federal government has been trying to do
everything but come into the home and tell the house-
wife how to wash her dishes—all this was the power-
lobby line.
Nevertheless, Secretary McKay’s action is profoundly
dismaying. The issue in the Hell’s Canyon case is ex-
tremely simple: should the federal government proceed
with a great multi-purpose project that will aid flood con-
trol, navigation, and irrigation and add more than a
million kilowatts to the nation’s power supply, or should
it be kept from doing so in order that a private company
may make a profit by generating half as much power
without any supplementary benefits whatever? If the
nation’s rivers should be used primarily for the advan-
tage of the people who own them, there can be only one
answer to that question. The Eisenhower Administra-
tion has given a wholly different answer.
Neither Hell’s Canyon nor any similar project will
ever be built unless the national government makes a
really determined fight for it. This Administration has
chosen not to fight. That the decision was only to be
expected does not make it any less shocking.
Man Without a Party
General de Gaulle’s R. P. F. has reverted to the form
and purpose with which it began; no longer a party, it
becomes a “rally” or movement aimed at arousing senti-
ment for a drastic reform of the government of France.
But when the General founded his Rassemblement in
- 1947 he had behind him almost 40 .per cent of the
voters; then he had reason to believe that the people, sick
_ of factional politics, might put him in office as a national
_ leader, above parties and endowed with strong executive
Ve a ee Se
&
ee Vationn
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
powers. What he seemed to be aiming at was a corpora:
tive state ruled by a one-party government constitution-
ally elected.
The idea was not potent enough to defeat the parties
or the old French fear of the man on horseback. De
Gaulle’s organization became a party like the rest, but
cursed with ultra-nationalist policies and a disproportion-_
ate number of Vichy left-overs. Today his following,
measured by the vote in the recent local elections, has
dwindled to about 10 per cent. So the reconstitution of
the R. P. F. as a non-party movement occurs under aus-
Pices of defeat, with th® General's war-time prestige un-
able to provide any of the necessary plamour or élan. Its
practical effect may be little beyond augmenting the
power of the “traditional” right, already strengthened by
heavy defections from the R. P. F.
Fourth Down and Three to Go
Judge Luther Youngdahl’s opinion dismissing four
counts in the perjury indictment against Owen Latti-
more, including the outrageous first count, which based
a charge of perjury on Lattimore’s denial that he had
ever sympathized with or promoted Communist interests
(see Perjury or Heresy? in The Nation of February 28),
makes good reading in this season of heresy hunts. Only
the claque of professional witch-hunters which has en-
listed in McCarthy’s drive for the Presidency in 1956
will question Judge Youngdahl’s good faith or the co-
gency of his reasoning. “Communism’s fallacy and
viciousness can be demonstrated,” he pointed out, “with-
out striking down the protection of the First Amendment
of discourse, discussion, and debate.’’ Already, however,
the snipers are at work: David Lawrence, writing in the
- New York Herald Tribune, which gave editorial indorse- -
ment to the ruling, questions the Judge’s “fitness” to
preside at the trial, darkly intimating that he may be one
of those heretics who believe in free speech. Celebration
of the decision, moreover, should be tempered by the
realization that Judge Youngdahl is the rare case among
District of Columbia judges of a man who was not
trained by the F. B. I., schooled in the Department of
Justice, and given judicial appointment as a reward for |
- services rendered the Administration in power.
Now, of course, is Mr. Brownell’s opportunity to
Tia this lesa
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 405
Tidelands Oil and the Political Tides 407
ARTICLES
The French Workers Wake Up
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 409
Indo-China: Black-Market War
by Claude Bourdet 410
Teacher as Rebel: His War for Freedom
by Howard K. Beale 412
The Teacher
A Poem by Marcus B. Christian 414
Journey to India:
Revitalizing the Land
by Aneurin Bevan 415
Give It Away! Ike’s Great Crusade
by Michael W. Straus 416
BOOKS
Glory and Heartbreak by Robert S. Lynd 418
New Books in Brief ~ 420
THEATER by Harold Clurman 421
ART by S. Lane Faison, Jr. 422
RECORDS by B. H. Haggin 423
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 515
by Frank W. Lewis 424
LETTERS opposite 405
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Associates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman “Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
dhe Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, x x
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New Ycrk, N. ¥., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising
and Circulation Representatives for Continental Europe: aoa
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Thr
years $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian 31.
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Information to Libraries: The Nation 13 indexed in Readers’ Guide to
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Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index.
406
demonstrate that he is not to be Spciraiiened e McCattl thy
and McCarran. Acting on Judge Youngdahl’s remark
that the materiality of the remaining counts is very ques-
tionable, he should restore public confidence in the inde-
pendence and integrity of the Department of Justice by
moving their dismissal. But given the timidity of the
Eisenhower Administration, it is more likely that he will
order the department to appeal the decision. Even so,
Lattimore’s ultimate vindication has been advanced sev-
eral yards; it is now fourth down and three to go.
~
Wagner and His Work
Regret over the death last week of Senator Robert F.
Wagner gains poignancy from the fact that in his four
years of illness and retirement so many of the political
gains he helped to win were swept into the discard. A
calm man and a philosopher for all his reforming zeal,
he surely knew that this era, too, would pass; but he must
also have realized with sorrow how long it would take
to restore what was being recklessly destroyed—safe-
guards laboriously built to protect the nation’s resources,
the welfare of its people, and their civic freedoms.
Tributes published since the Senator’s death have
taken pains to point out that the famous Wagner act
formed the basis of the Taft-Hartley law that succeeded
it; and technically this was true. But the profound dis-
tortion of the meaning of the National Labor Relations
Act that was embodied in the new law might serve as a
symbol of the fate that has overtaken many of the re-
forms for wltich Senator Wagner fought. It és sad to
have him go, but far worse to see how few there are left
to carry on his work,
Danger of Retaliation ;
.
A spokesman for one branch of the chemical industry
told the Ways and Means Committee on April 28 that
implementation of the “trade—not aid” theory could
prove “ruinous to many branches of industry.” But a
Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act weighed down with
clauses designed to raise trade barriers instead of lower-
ing them would not only handicap American exports but
could easily “prove ruinous” to American foreign policy.
Already the hardening of tariff sentiment in Congress
since the last election, together with such Administration
actions as the rejection of a British manufacturer’s low
bid for the supply of electrical machinery at -Chief
Joseph Dam, has aroused the indignation of our allies.
Talk of retaliation is growing. The Canadian Parlia-
ment on April 28 loudly applauded a member who
proposed that, if the United States raised lead and zinc
duties excessively, Canada should impose export taxes on »
nickel and asbestos—two strategic materials for which
this country is absolutely dependent on Canada. Vene-
~ guela, which buys half a billion dollars’ worth of goods
The NaTION
ee Pes
neeRy
ee ee ed
o . o ae mist ‘ *
, Ae Fy a
here each yeat, also threatens to hit back if its shipments
of oil are restricted.
Again, we should remember that we have recently put
pressure on our allies to reduce their sales to the Eastern
bloc to a minimum, What response do we deserve if we
place new obstacles in the way of their goods? Can we
_ say to Britain: We won't buy your generators because they
are too competitively priced, but don’t you dare try to
sell them to Russia or China? It is not surprising that
Western European countries are actively seeking trade
outlets behind the Iron Curtain, or that, as Michael Hoff-
man reports in the New York T7mes, “the Russians and
their allies are playing a shrewd game designed to
capitalize on the growing frustration . . . over United
States trade policy.”
Knowledge for What?
In his recent address to the Association of National
Advertisers meeting at Hot Springs, Virginia, Dr. Ernest
Dichter, president of the Institute for Research in Mass
Motivations, failed to clarify the issues raised in Ralph
Goodman’s provocative and widely read piece Freud
and the Hucksters (The Nation, February 14). Social
scientists, he said, should stop “sneering” at the hucksters
—Mr. Goodman implied that they were flirting, not
sneering—and the hucksters should cease regarding so-
cial scientists as “long-haired idealists” with no real
understanding of human nature. In short, Dr. Dichter,
one of the social scientists mentioned in Mr. Goodman’s
article, feels that the growing collaboration between so-
cial scientists and hucksters should be encouraged.
It is doubtless true, as he suggests, that social scientists
should show more interest in soap operas, comic strips,
and popular magazines. Nor will it be denied that the
hucksters’ technique can be used to “sell” better race
relations and induce a higher percentage of voters to turn
out at the polls. What disturbs us about this budding
. collaboration between the heirs of Veblen and the heirs
of Barnum is the assumption that the goals toward which
their effogts point are always worthy and desirable. Who
determines what is to be sold? Is the product to be
Eisenhower or Stevenson? inflation or deflation? war or
peace? the United Nations or a star-spangled American
, empire?
We are immediately suspicious and not a little ‘irate
when we are told that the social scientist should concen-
trate on understanding “the forms of resistance . . .
which interfere with the smooth and intelligent function-
ing of, human behavior.” Do we need smoother func-
tioning automatons or more citizens who do their own
thinking? Why should social scientists concentrate on
drilling the masses so that they will march smoothly and
efficiently toward goals about which they have not been
consulted? Everyone will agree with Dr. Dichter that
the study of motivations is important; but Robert S.
_ May 16, 1953
ST .
‘Lynd's haunting query—knowledge for what?—deserves
- an answer from the hucksters and the growing number
of social scientists who are collaborating with’ them.
Now The Students
Until recently college students felt only at second-
hand the effect of the witch hunts on the campus. But on
April 8 the readers of Spectator, the Columbia under-
graduate daily, learned that Dean Nicholas D. Mc-
Knight's office not only furnished prospective employers
with a student’s grades but with a “loyalty report” as
well. Just a week before that the Senate Internal Security
subcommittee had subpoenaed its first two student wit-
nesses, Jonathan W. and David L. Lubell, both enrolled
at the Harvard Law School. When the brothers refused
to testify on the ground that they might incriminate
themselves, Samuel P. Stears, president of the Massachu-
setts Bar Association, branded them “unfit for admission
to the bar in any of our states” and demanded their ex-
pulsion. Although Dean Erwin N. Griswold announced
that no disciplinary action would be taken against the -
Lubells, they were dropped from the editorial board of
the Harvard Record after the Alumni Association of the
Law School threatened to withdraw its financial aid from
the weekly.
The Lubell brothers are not the only students who will
find it hard to get a job when they graduate. At a recent
meeting of the New York Board of Higher Education
four students who had protested against the dismissal of
six municipal-college teachers for refusing to testify be-
more the Senate subcommittee were warned by a member
of the board, Gustave G, Rosenberg: ‘Your names are
being taken down. Some day you may want to apply for
admission to the bar or to some other place. .. . Why
don’t you watch what you say?”
Tidelands Oil and
the Political Tides
THE valiant fight in the United States Senate against.
the offshore oil grab went down to defeat, as everybody
knew it would. The vote was 56 to 35. As sad as the
result was the manner in which it was achieved. Nearly
half the Democrats—all but two of them Dixiecrats— _
voted for the grab. Not unexpectedly, the gentlemen
who were bribed not to walk out of the Democratic
Party in Chicago have made good on their first oppor-
tunity—since Eisenhower became President—tg walk
into the Republican fold in Washington.
Yet on the basic issues involved it was a battle that
was lost, and not the war. The victory forced through by
the forces of privilege and states’ rights may yet turn out
to be one of the most expensive in many years.
407
f
The fight was an eye-opener—for members of the
Senate, and for the public at large. It compelled the
Eisenhower Administration to show its hand, Here was
the first consequential piece of legislation put through
by a new Administration which has been extraordinarily
dilatory about setting the legislative machinery to work.
The fight showed this legislation up for what it really
was—a naked give-away to the oil barons, the all-impor-
tant first step in an unadorned program to plunder the
people of their infinitely valuable basic resources (see
the article by Michael Straus on page 416).
More important, the fight broke the newspaper block-
ade and let in a bit of light on the program itself and on
the forces and the motives that lie behind it. From the be-
ginning, the insuperable problem facing the opponents of
this unblushing give-away was the simple fact that it
was all but impossible to get anybody very excited about
it. The very name adopted by proponents of the give-
away—‘tidelands oil” —worked in their favor. No citi-
zen of New England, the Middle West, the Far West or
anywhere else was due to take very much interest in what
might happen to the tidelands of Louisiana, Florida,
Texas, or California. A publisher whose paper follows
the line that this noble Administration is simply trying
to “clean up the mess in Washington”—and what pub-
lisher’s paper doesn’t?—had the best of excuses for fail-
ing to enlighten his readers about the oil steal. They
just did not care about it.
As a result the overwhelming majority of newspaper
readers had no reason to suppose that this immense
swindle was anything more than what its proponents
called it—a simple business of returning to the states cer-
tain properties which a wrong-headed federal govern-
ment had unjustly taken away from them.
THIS MEANT that the Senate opponents of the steal
were all but helpless. All the pressure came from the oil
interests. A Senator could make important enemies by
opposing the grab, but as far as anyone could tell he
could make no enemies of any consequence by going
along with it. So the skids were greased and the give-
away was foreordained.
But the fight broke the blockade: that is, it compelled
the newspapers to present the people’s side of the case.
It did that simply by its intensity and its semi-filibuster
qualities. Senator Morse’s twenty-two-hour speech, for
instance, was news. Something had to be printed about
it. No matter how stout an effort might be made to por-
tray Morse, and the other Senators who were opposing
the grab, as a publicity-mad species of flagpole sitter, in
the end something of what the Senators were actually
saying had to be printed.
It took a long-drawn-out fight to accomplish this. A
debate of three or four days would never have done it. A
debate that ran through a month did it by sheer weight.
408
The opponents of the oil grab said quite ae
lee Te
they were not conducting a filibuster. They were trying - ;
to educate the public: which is to say, they were trying to
break through the barrier erected by a one-party press
and give the public the facts about a matter of vital
public concern, In that effort they succeeded, For the one
time since the Eisenhower Administration took office, the
daily press found itself obliged to give a certain amount
of space to arguments in opposition to something which
the Eisenhower Administration was trying to do. That
was a tremendous achievement.
NOR WAS it an achievement that simply hangs in a
vacuum, as something to be admired in the abstract. Peo-
ple have been alerted, and succeeding give-aways will
come much harder than this one. Senator Morse, for in-
stance, received some 2,500 letters shortly after he made
his long speech—letters, be it remarked, that did not
come from Oregon, but were written by people living all
across the country. Not more than a dozen of these letters
took him to task for his speech. All the rest praised the
speech and its objective.
For another illustration, consider the case of a certain
Eastern Senator who was opposed to the oil grab but
who had not planned to speak on it at all, figuring that
nobody in his state cared about it. He found himself on
the floor, one afternoon, with the speaking program
coming to a sudden pause, so that more or less against
his will he got on his feet and spoke against the give-
away. To his utter amazement his office was flooded dur-
ing the following week with letters from back home—
letters indorsing his stand and urging him to keep up the
good fight. “My God!” he said. “I’ve struck a political
bonanza!”
A number of the Senators who voted for the give-
away are beginning to be tormented by doubts. The busi-
ness does not look quite as innocent now as it looked a
month ago. The simple fact is that the people of the
United States are quite as firmly attached to their national
property as they ever were. All they need is te be told _
when someone is trying to lay hands on it. In this in-
stance they were at last told something of the truth about
what is going on in Washington.
The next fight will be a little different. There will ‘be
a “next fight,” of course, and several more after that: the
success of the oil grab has only whetted the big interests’
appetite. But it-won’t be quite so easy from here on in.
There does exist in the Senate a solid core of men who
will stand up and battle about things like this. They have
learned how to compel the newspapers to present both
sides of the story. They have shown that when that hap-
pens the people react vigorously. It may not be going too
far to say that in-its victory on the offshore oil case, the
Eisenhower Administration fook the first long step
toward its ultimate downfall.
The NATION |
ig sal
co
Ve
Paris
AFTER many months of calm an epi-
demic of strikes has broken out. The
most talked-about has been the strike in
the Renault plants, where the workers,
traditionally militant, have always been
a cause of concern to the Ministry of the
Interior. But the special importance of
this walk-out is that it followed close
upon other like demonstrations in certain
public services of the Paris area and that
it is evidently not to be the last. Only a
few days ago, on the eve of the great
May 1 celebration, a strike of the French
Line’s ships’ officers prevented the sailing
of all the line’s ships. Twenty-four hours
later the majority of bank employees,
including some 60 to 80 per cent of the
organized workers in the biggest banks,
walked out during the morning hours,
simply as a warning. Similar partial
strikes, limited to a few hours each, have
been called on several of the railroad
lines, while various industrial concerns
and business offices report a growing
“strike atmosphere.” :
All this «is a clear indication that the
workers of France are becoming restive
and angry. There has not been any sub-
stantial increase in wages since 1951; in
the meantime prices have been going up.
_If it were not for the “family compensa-
: tions’ —state subsidies for each child—
the workers would be actually hungry.
But even with the allowances nobody
‘knows how the majority of Frenchmen
.manage to survive. Almost every earned
franc must go for food. To buy a shirt
,or a pair of shoes is a serious matter.
The workers are angry, but of course
few tourists, and even fewer correspond-
ents, have occasion to talk to them.
The strikes we are witnessing are not
only an answer to the hardships of to-
day but an anticipation of the gf¥eat
economic crisis now in the making,
which the workers correctly feel will hit
them hardest. Yet it would narrow the
problem unduly to relate it exclusively
to economics. At the bottom there is a
political element—the bitterness of the
May 16, 1953
workingman who sees reaction every-
where again in control, whe watches the
war in Indo-China move from disaster
to disaster, who regards with dread the
prospect of a new German army.
SINCE THIS awakening has both a
political and an economic character,
its significance should not be minimized.
It has created a climate favorable to
unity of action on the left—at present
the main objective of Communist
strategy. We are still very far from a
return to the People’s Front. The
wounds inflicted during the long Com-
munist-Socialist feud will be slower to
heal than the Communists imagine. The
Communists offered the Socialists a deal
whereby in the run-off either party
would withdraw its own candidate in
favor of the other, depending on which
had the best chance to win. The offer
was rejected. The Socialists said that the
tone of the proposal “confirmed that for
you [the Communists} to promote the
foreign policy of the Soviet Union is
still more important than to secure gen-
uine unity of action.” (None the less, in
a number of instances Communists did
combine at local level with the Socialists
to put a Socialist in office.) A Socialist
leader to whom I talked said, “What can
one expect? Personally, I am inclined
to examine their proposals, but most
of my comrades~do not wish to be em-
braced today and then called ‘traitors,’
‘Social Fascists,’ or ‘Social Democrats’
in a contemptuous way the very moment
our party fails to identify itself 100 per
cent with each Communist initiative.
They must change a good deal before
we can march together again.” But he
admitted that if the situation continues
to deteriorate, the demand by the Social-
ist workers for unity of action ‘‘might
become almost irresistible.”
If inter-party cooperation is still im-
possible, in the unions the tendency is
developing more rapidly. In many fac-
tories unity of action among Commu-
nist, Socialist, and Catholic workers is
_ Jj. Alvarez del Vayo
| The French Workers Wake Up
already a fact. The Communists are per-
sistently trying to bring about a degree
of collaboration among the leaders of the
three great organizations—the C. G. T.,
predominantly Communist; the Force
Ouvriére, non-Communist, headed by
Léon Jouhaux; and the C. F. T. C., the
Christian workers’ federation. Several
actions in the Renault factories were
jointly fought, with responsible elements
of both the C. G. T. and the C. F. T. C.
displaying impressive unanimity. But
high-level agreement is not yet in view.
REAL UNITY of action will require
more elasticity on the part of the Com-
munists. Gradually the most “sectarian”
leaders have been put on the shelf: some
have been sent to East Germany or
shifted to subaltern positions where they
cannot endanger the policy of rapproche-
ment. The Communists hope to break
the isolation in which they have existed
since their departure from the govern-
ment by devoting their main effort to.
political work rather than to immediate
goals. They want to regain their war-
time credit as defenders of the true in-
terests of France. I have heard them,
these days, praise not only a man of the
moderate and consistent insight of Pierre
Mendés-France but Edouard Daladier, —
whom they attacked bitterly when he
reappeared in the Assembly after the
war. Daladier is now against German re-
armament and the Indo-China war, and
that is enough to rehabilitate him!
It would be silly, however, to devote
too much irony to these changes of
front. Behind all the party maneuvers
is something much more important—the
reappearance of the workers in the polit-
ical arena. This could have a profound
effect on future political developments
in Europe. We are only at the beginning
of a new trend, and I shall be much sur-
prised if the time-tested tactics of stress-
ing the danger of a Russian invasion, in
which fewer Frenchmen believe with
each day that passes, will succeed in
sending the workers back to sleep again. .
409
_INDO.CHINA 7
Black-Market War . . by Claude Bourdet
Paris
IN THE NATION of April 25 Helen
Mears called the war in Indo-China “a
mess.” For France and Indo-China it is
worse than a mess. ‘“‘Cancer’’ or “ulcer’’
is the word used by writers of all shades
of opinion in the French press. Not only
has the war cost France more than twice
the total amount of American aid for all
purposes, civilian and military—as the
President*of the French Republic stressed
in a famous speech last year—but the
loss of life has been appalling. It is gen-
erally admitted that at least as many
officers as are graduated yearly from
Saint-Cyr, the French West Point, have
been killed or disabled every year. If
France cannot produce an army worth
speaking about in Europe, it is because ~
of the war in Indo-China.
The moral effect is even worse. The
difference between the official and the
actual value of the Indo-Chinese cur-
rency—until a few days ago the piastre
was equal officially to seventeen.francs
but brought only nine on the free mar-
ket—has given rise to financial specula-
tion on a huge scale by both commercial
firms and political parties, taking advan-
tage of their official connections. Last
year the director of the powerful bank of
Indo-China, M. Laurent, told me a few
months before he died that black-market
deals in the piastre certainly amounted
to more than ten billion francs a year.
The whole of French political lifé is in-
fected. Last week M. Jean-Jacques Ser-
van Schreiber, a French -journalist who
achieved some notoriety in America
when he broke with Le Monde because
he considered it not sufficiently pro-
American but has recently returned to
that paper, wrote an article which caused
a sensation in Paris. On the basis of the
report of the parliamentary committee
which has just come back from Indo-
CLAUDE BOURDET is a distinguished
French journalist-who began his career
as editor of the Resistance paper Com-
bat. He is now editor of V Observateur.
410
China, he said that the truth about the .
Indo-Chinese war was worse than any-
body suspected, that the main reason
why it continued was that it brought
such huge profits to powerful integests.
He even hinted that certain groups have
assiduously sabotaged, year aiter year,
all attempts at a peaceful settlement. M.
Servan Schreiber’s evidence doubtless
helped influence the government to put
through a long over-due downward re-
vision of the piastre from seventeen
francs to ten.
It should be emphasized that after Ho
Chi-minh had been recognized by
France as head of the Vietnam Repub-
lic in 1946, he made a real effort to
reach an understanding with France. He
sat down with the French at a round-
table conference in Fontainebleau, but
the negotiations were wrecked by the
French High Commissioner in Indo-
China, Admiral d’Argenlieu, who, in
the absence of Ho Chi-minh, tried to
organize Vietnam in three separate
states. Later the French gave up this idea
and put Bao Dai back as emperor.
PEACE might still have been preserved
if in November, 1946, after a dispute
between French and Vietnamese customs
officials in Haiphong over one of the
numerous financial questions left un-
solved at Fontainebleau, the French
army and navy had not opened fire on
the town of Haiphong, killing, according
to the admiral commanding the fleet,
6,000- Vietnamese-civilians—men, wo-
men, and children. These facts were not
disclosed to the French people till years
afterward, when Professor Paul Mus,
then head of the French Colonial School
and later professor at Yale, and Philippe
Devillers published exhaustive surveys
of the Indo-Chinese situation. Neither
of these men have the faintest leaning
toward communism,
The Haiphong incident was: very
meagerly reported, but when a month
later a Vietnam attack in Hanoi killed
forty Frenchmen, the Paris press ran
huge headlines on the scandalous and
unprovoked “‘aggression.”’ And the war
began. Even then Ho Chi-minh tried for
an agreement, appealing to the French
Socialist Minister of Colonial Affairs
for a truce and a treaty and being told
that there could be “no talks with the
aggressors.”
In 1947 he made a second appeal.
The government's answer, transmitted
by Professor Mus, was utterly unrealistic
in the light of subsequent events. It
asked for the disarmament and concen-
tration of Vietnamese troops, which
were yet unbeaten, and for the delivery
to the French authorities of all non-
Vietnamese in the republican army—a
condition whose only precedent in recent
history is found in Hitler’s demands on
the Vichy government. Ho Chi-minh re-
plied, says Professor Mus, that he had
accepted the principle of the French
Union (a less liberal equivalent of the
British Commonwealth) and ‘that “he
understood there was no room in the
French Union for cowards, and he would
be a coward if he accepted ‘the French
terms.”
The war went on. But. it turned into
something very different from what the
military optimists in Paris and Indo-
China foresaw in 1946. The republican
army—generally known in France and
Western countries as the Vietminh
army, Vietminh being ‘one of the for-
mer names of Ho Chi-minh’s National
Front—developed into a powerful and
extremely mobile instrument, well
trained, well disciplined, well equipped. |
Its arms are either obtained by lend-
lease or purchase from the U. S. S. R.,
Communist China, and the People’s
Republics or are bought from Western
armament firms in one of the neutral
markets of- the Far East. M. Laurent,
whom I mentioned above, told me he
believed Ho Chi-minh’s government
was able to buy most of its war material
with the funds brought in by its very
efficient taxation system; taxes are: paid
promptly even by French firms, which
The Nation
cS
pee ne LN
O ‘.
7 Pe ee eats
bombs or other reprisals if they
‘are not “nice” about it. Incidentally,
the huge sale of piastres against dollars
by Ho Chi-minh in Hongkong and else-
where explains the two currency rates.
Against the Vietminh army the French
have used every possible weapon, every
possible species of mercenary or volun-
tary soldier except French recruits, which
the government could not possibly send
to Indo-China, the war being so un-
popular in France. But although these
troops—French volunteers in quest of
adventure, German Nazis making a new
start, African mercenaries, and a grow-
ing number of Vietnamese soldiers pos-
sibly attracted by high pay and other
advantages—fight well, and although
the continuous flow of American mate-
tial gives the French army ever-increas-
ing power of destruction, the situation is
developing every year and every month
to the advantage of Ho Chi-minh.
Now the Vietminh army has come
down from the north and invaded the
Indo-Chinese state of Laos with the help
of native partisans. The extreme com-
plexity of the political situation is in-
dicated by the fact that the Laotian
allies of Ho Chi-minh are commanded
by the brother of the king’s Prime
Minister. ‘ie
THE EVIDENCE shows that the mili-
tary successes of the Vietminh would be
impossible if it were not supported by the
major part of the population. Since 1947
this truth has been slowly dawning on
the ‘reactionary minds of French colo-
nialists. When the ex-emperor Bao Dai
was called back by the French and made
_ the head of an “independent” Vietnam
‘ state, the French granted him, at least
theoretically, a larger degree of inde-
. pendence than Ho Chi-minh had asked
for in vain in 1946. But they granted it
‘ grudgingly, and the Vietnamese and
other Indo-Chinese always had the im-
: pression that the French tried to take
back with one hand what they gave with
the other and, moreover, that what they
did give was due to Ho Chi-minh’s
military successes. Many French jour-
nalists have been asked in Vietnam, “If
you really managed to beat Ho Chi-
minh, wouldn’t you immediately try to
set up the old colonial system again?”
‘This feeling is not of course very help-
ful to the moral consolidation of the
Bao Dai regime. Moreover, Bao Dai’s
May 16, 1953
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NS ae fee “ee
use.
= eee =
wes or.
we
ne
“te ‘ ;
ministers are generally considered cor-
rupt and inefficient, while there is
nearly universal respect for the ability
and moral integrity of the men around -
Ho. Chi-minh, whether Communist or
non-Communist.
Bao Dai’s failure, however, may have
other causes than the small-mindedness
of French colonialists and the lack of
decent leaders in his camp. Vietnam is
largely an agricultural country and most
of the people behind, Bao Dai are those
who own big (100 acres) or medium-
sized (10 acres) farms; in the north
these men own 40 per cent, in the center
25 per cent, and in the south 80 per cent
of the land. This means that there is a
huge proportion of almost landless fam-
il?es; 98 per cent of the landowners in
the north, 99 per cent in the center, and
72 per cent in the south own on the
average but one acre. As in China, the
strength of the Ho Chi-minh regime
derives from its lowering of rents, distri-
bution of large estates, and protection of
the small peasant.
If it is asked why the Bao Dai regime
does not follow the same policy, the
answer is, of course, that never in mod-
ern or ancient history has a landed
aristocracy or bourgeoisie voluntarily
sacrificed its wealth for some higher
purpose. If we are going to wait for
_ this miracle, the war may well go on
forever—or until France is totally ex-
hausted or has suffered a major defeat.
Is there, then, some other solution?
Many people even in the French busi-
ness world have begun to realize that
the Asian Communists seem to be, at
least in China and Indo-China, the only
political group able to solve the crucial
agrarian problem, which is the source
of the tragic poverty of these lands. They
feel that it would be better to find some
basis of agreement with these regimes
than to bind them together by trying
forcibly to eradicate them, thus pushing
China into Russia’s arms and the Viet-
nam Republic into China’s, The Vietnam
Republic, or Vietminh, is not as yet a
one-party state, like Mao’s China, but
contains a large proportion of demo-
cratic nationalists, and even the Com-
munists are afraid of too much Chinese
influence. It may be assumed, therefore,
that if a truce could be negotiated, if
peace could be secured, some sort of un-
derstanding could be reached between
the West and Indo-China. It might even
be that under Communist or semi-Com-
munist leadership Indo-China would be
far more amenable to cooperation with
the West than is China or Russia, even
the new post-Stalin Russia.
These have representatives,
Open or secret, on the most anti-Com-
munist benches in the French Parlia-
ment. But every French government has
come to think of the Indo-China war as
the major source of American dollars
and good-will. No government yet has
had the courage to tell America that
this war is a liability for the whole
views
Ho Chi-minh
Western world. Moreover, the ‘“Indo-
China lobby” in Paris is at least as
powerful as the China lobby in Wash-
ington. Its present aim is to interna-
tionalize the war while keeping the
“piastres’”’ profits for itself. Its latest
trick is to try to coax the French gov-
ernment into asking the U. N. to inter-
vene because of the Vietminh invasion
of Laos. But some French Ministers
have pointed out that this might be ex-
ceedingly risky. The Vietnam Republic
is at war with France; the Laotian
authorities have little real existence and
anyhow no power to maintain their in-
dependence; the French army has the
free use of the Laotian territory, and it
would be very difficult to explain in the
U.N. that the Vietminh was committing
“aggression” when pursuing French
troops through Laos. Moreover, the
position of the Laotian “king” and
government is not at all clear, and in
any case it is pretty certain that the
whole of the Arab-Asian bloc would
denounce French colonial policies in
Asia and elsewhere.
411
“TEACHER AS REBEL
His War for Freedom .
“FREEDOM”
versities is often attacked, frequently de-
fended, rarely defined. Many who have
insisted upon it for themselves -have
not believed in it for persons in other
fields. There has always been a struggle
between those who sought security for
their possessions and beliefs and those
who wanted the progress and growth
that come through, the activity of the
free and inquiring mind.
Educational freedom’ today
(1) that no religious, political, social,
racial, or other non-educational factor
shall influence the appointment of teach-
ers; (2) that teachers shall be protected
against dismissal for religious, political,
racial, or social views or for membership
in any religious, political, racial or na-
tional-origin group, while remaining
liable to dismissal for incompetence,
neglect of duty, moral turpitude, viola-
tion of the freedom of others, or convic-
tion of crime under the laws of the land;
(3) that teachers have the right to a fair
hearing when accused; (4) that their
freedom of conduct, both public and
private, shall be no more restricted than
that of other citizens; (5) that students
shall be allowed to hear all points of
view on controversial subjects fairly
presented, and to formulate their own
opinions. Those who have fought for
this concept of freedom have believed
that the best, indeed the only sure, way
to inculcate and support sound views is
by persuasion and discussion. They have
been convinced that in a free forum the
truth will prevail.
The case for freedom was perhaps
never better stated than when Charles
Evans Hughes, Chief Justice of the
in our schools and uni-
means
HOWARD K. BEALE, professor of
history at the University of Wisconsin,
is the author of “Are American Teachers
Free?” and "A History of Freedom in
American Schools,” both written for
the American Historical Association's
Commission on Social Studies in the
Schools.
412
New York schools at another time of
public alarm in these words:
Freedom of learning is the vital breath
of democracy and progress. I trust that
. our public schools—for the mass of
our young people can know no other—
. may enjoy the priceless advantages
of courses . . . designed to promote the
acquisition of all knowledge and may not
be placed under restrictions to prevent it,
and that our teachers and professors may
be encouraged, not to regard themselves
as the pliant tools of power, but to dedi-
cate their lives to the highest of all pur-
poses, to know and to teach the truth,
the whole truth. . . . This is the path of
salvation of men and democracy.
CURRENT ATTACKS upon the free-
dom of American schools and universities
can best be understood against the back-
ground of earlier struggles. In colonial
days we had neither religious nor aca-
demic freedom. Schools were originally
set up to promote the religious views of
the dominant element in the community.
Religious soundness was the chief crite-
rion of fitness to teach. The first presi-
dent of Harvard College, for instance,
was driven from his post and from the
colony when he accepted the Baptist view
of infant baptism. As late as the end of
the colonial period President Clapp of
Yale made the interesting ruling:
“Though every man has a right to ex-
amine and judge for himself according
to truth; yet no man has a right to judge
wrong.” Teachers, however, were scarce;
suppression of heresy proved difficult.
In communities that needed more peo-
ple economic prosperity was promoted
by tolerating men of unorthodox, even
dangerous views.
The men who founded our nation in-
cluded freedom of religion among the
fundamental freedoms. An established
church was abandoned. Gradually, the
idea of separation of church and state
was accepted. In our early national pe-
riod advocates of freedom won removal
of legal penalties for wrong views and
practices even in the field where error
oe
Sian oe ae
by Honard K. Beale
United States, condemned loyalty tests in
was considered most dangerous, pro-
vided always that the offender was a
Trirtitarian Protestant Christian. Legal
discrimination against Jews, Catholics,
Unitarians, and atheists was also finally
abolished. Public schools were protected
against control by religious pressure
groups.
For a time during the Revolution po-
litical as well as religious conformity
was required of teachers. All states
established test oaths for civil officials;
New Jersey had one that applied specifi-
cally to teachers. Since a large propor-
tion of the educated people were loyal
to England, a good many teachers were
affected, President Cooper of King’s
College, now Columbia University, not
only lost his job but fled half-clad over
a fence to a British sloop to escape in-
dignant “‘patriots.”
Then came the French Revolution
and the struggle in this country between
the Hamiltonian men of property and
the Jeffersonians who acclaimed the
“French” ideas of liberty and equality.
A sedition act passed by the Hamilton-
ians imposed severe restrictions upon
criticism of the government. While the
fear of dangerous French ideas was at
its height, Harvard dropped its courses
in the French language and literature.
But in the end those who sought to re-
strict free speech were overwhelmingly
repudiated by the voters. The Jefferson-
ians repealed the sedition act and re-
established our freedoms. Harvard, after
eight years, restored French to the cur-
riculum.
IN THE mid-nineteenth century slavery
became the most bitterly contested issue
before the American people. Southern
slaveholders were the greatest proper-
tied interest in the country. Northern
manufacturers and other men of wealth
sympathized with the slaveholders’ de-
sire to protect their property. The anti-
slavery agitation threatened not only the *
property and labor system, but the very
social stability of the South. Abolition
The NATION — |
|
- anti-slavery
5 ri P %
A, an EX. avg Ne.
os" eS ,
see Ay ,
ow as as frightening to Southern whites as
communism is today to Americans in all
parts of the country. Southern states
made it a crime to teach Negroes.
Throughout the South teachers were dis-
missed and often driven from the com-
munity for asserting that to hold men in
bondage was wrong. Among them were
President Partridge of Mississippi Col-
lege, “Professor Birney of Centre Col-
lege, and the whole faculty of Berea.
At the University of North Carolina
Professor Hedrick was dismissed for
supporting a subversive organization—
the Republican Party.
Since Abolitionists were Northerners,
the principle of guilt by association
made all Northern teachers and books
suspect in Southern schools. At one time
even Northern schools and colleges sup-
pressed criticism of slavery. Connecticut
and New Hampshire mobs attacked
schools that accepted Negroes. Miami
University, Kenyon College, and Lane
Theological Seminary banned student
societies as subversive.
Anti-slavery professors were dismissed
at Lane and Harvard, and Harvard stu-
dents threw rotten eggs at the college’s
distinguished alumnus, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, when he gave an anti-slavery
_ lecture. On the other hand, the President
of Franklin College was forced out be-
cause of his pro-slavery views. Harvard
_ dismissed Judge Loring from a law lec-
tureship because he had enforced the
Jaw and returned a fugitive Negro to
the South.
After war broke out, the presidents
of Bowdoin and Dartmouth and teach-
ers in many places were dismissed for
defending slavery and secession. Then,
for fifty years after the war ended, its
issues were refought. The United
Daughters of the Confederacy in the
South, the Grand Army of the Republic
in the North attacked teachers and text-
books and tried to replace sound history
‘ with the version they preferred. -Pub-
lishing houses and textbook writers had
to put out one kind of history for the
South and another for the North.
MEANWHILE SCIENTISTS were mak-
ing new discoveries and presenting the
hypothesis of evolution to the world. In
many places teachers who introduced
the new knowledge in their classrooms
and professors of theology who applied
it to their religious teaching were fired:
~ May 16, 1953
for example, at the Baptist Seminary in
Louisville, the Presbyterian Seminary
in South Carolina, and at Vanderbilt in
Tennessee. The appointment of Har-
vard’s great president, Eliot, was op-
posed on the ground that a scientist
could not maintain sound education;
powerful members of the Board of
Overseers tried unsuccessfully to pre-
vent Eliot’s having John Fiske lecture
at Harvard on evolution. At Yale, Presi-
dent Porter conducted a course discredit-
ing Herbert Spencer's evolutionary
teachings.
Andrew White, president of Cornell,
on the other hand, defended the right of
scientists to teach the truth as they saw
it. Efforts of religious pressure groups to
suppress academic freedom, he warned,
did far more harm to religion than to
science, “for thereby suspicions are
widely spread, especially among open-
minded young men, that the accepted
Christian system demands a concealment
of truth, with the persecution of honest
investigators, and must therefore be
false.’’ The Women’s Christian Temper-
ance Union was powerful enough, how-
ever, to force. schools all over the
country to adopt physiology textbooks
containing “‘scientific’ information that
medical men denotinced as untrue but
that these devoted and determined ladies
wished inculcated.
IN THE NINETIES, with the growth
of industrialization, social and economic
questions began to cause the most trou-
ble. President Harper at the new Uni-
versity of Chicago stood ready to defend
freedom of science and religious teach-
ing but was caught off guard by the de-
mand that he dismiss an economist for
criticizing the practices of the Pullman
Company, whose founder was one of
Chicago’s leading citizens. From then
until our own day schools ‘and colleges
have been under attack for their teach-
ings on race relations, slum clearance,
labor problems, security legislation, pub-
lic ownership or even control of utilities,
regulation of industry, and any other so-
cial or economic question the community
feels strongly about.
In the 1920's religious groups again
attacked the teaching of evolution, this
time in the lower schools too. Books
were banned, or mutilated by having the
pages on evolution cut out. Teachers
were cowed into avoiding any mention
of the doctrine. State laws in Missis-
sippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee forbade
its discussion.
An extreme brand of patriotism also
took possession of us in those years. The
schools were attacked by the American
Legion and the D. A. R. Teachers were
dismissed for not distorting history “pa-
triotically” to show that Britain had
been solely to blame for the American
Revolution and our other disagreements
with it. Eminent historians, faced with
the blacklisting of their books, changed
them to please the politicians. In the
thirties books were condemned because
Catholics or Jews did not like their
contents, and the excellent history of an
eminent Catholic historian was barred
from the New York schools by a Pres-
byterian superintendent on complaint of
an obscure Episcopal clergyman until
the author changed certain statements
about the Reformation that non-Episco-
pal Protestant historians regarded as
entirely sound.
AFTER WORLD WAR I a “red scare”
developed. Loyalty tests were imposed.
Powerful forces sought to brand as ‘‘radi-
cal” and hence as “‘disloyal”’ all unortho-
dox opinions. In New York, Governor
Alfred E. Smith protested that the Lusk
Jaws permitted “one man to place upon
any teacher the stigma of disloyalty.”
“No man,” he said, “is so omniscient or
wise as to have intrusted to him power
not only to condemn any individual
teacher but to decree what belief or
opinion is opposed to the institutions of
the country... . Within the limits of the
penal law every citizen may speak and
teach what he believes.” Three years
later, when the hysteria had died out,
the people of New York repealed the
laws setting up the loyalty tests. Sheets
like the Hearst papers and the Chicago
Tribune continued to attack democratic
freedoms in the schools and colleges,
but as the twenties passed into the thir-
=
ties fewer and fewer people supported
their campaign.
Though the desire of politicians for
votes and of newspapers for subscribers
has sometimes motivated attacks upon
the schools, more often the attackers,
like the opponents of abolition and evo-
lution, have sincerely believed they were
combating a dangerous development.
Their sincerity, however, has not made
their threat to freedom any less menac-
ing.
IN MANY RESPECTS the present at-
tacks arte the same old story set in
another period of tension. But this time
the danger is greater, for several reasons:
1. The panic is more acute than usual;
one is reminded of the hysteria in
Salem in the 1690's.
2. The problem of political dissent at
home has got mixed up with the threat
to powerful churches abroad and to the
spiritual values of religious people gen-
erally. .
3. One group of the politically unor-
thodox is closely allied to a hostile for-
eign nation; in consequence we confuse
military danger from without with the
small group at hpme who, in so far as
they are foreign agents, can be handled
under existing laws and, in so faf as
they are propagandists, are failing mis-
erably.
4. Loyalty checks, purges, and accusa-
tions by the national government are
something: new to the American way;
government attacks on free education
are more dangerous to our freedom
than the attacks of local and unofficial
pressuré groups in other crises have ever
been.
5. The abandonment of traditional
Anglo-American and democratic safe-
guards of freedom makes its defense
more difficult than ever before. Judicial
proceedings—the right to a fair hearing,
to defense counsel, to confront accusers,
to cross-examine - witnesses—are too
often denied teachets. Men forget the
definition of treason placed in the Con-
stitution to protect our freedom: in
place of overt acts with two witnesses,
ideas now constitute treason. The “‘clear
and present danger’’ test of thirty years
ago has been reworded as a “clear and
imminent’ danger. The age-old doc-
trine that a man is innocent until proved
guilty seems no longer to hold.
6. The effect of attacks and penalties
414
has been to cow teachers and students
alike until they are afraid to express
opinions, to teach the truth, or to join
organizations of their choosing, even
soundly democratic ones. One is re-
minded frighteningly of German schools
under Hitler or of the once free and
great University of Prague under Com-
munist rule.
7. Liberalism, to which democracy
and freedom of the mind have been
tied, has become negative; it has lost the
drive and force that led to progress in
the nineteenth century.
8. Many Americans have lost their
faith in democracy and in the power of
truth to overcome error. Without faith
in democracy, they turn easily to the
suppressions used by totalitarianism. We
need leaders who can defend freedom
and win others to defend it—men like
Roger Williams, William Penn, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes, Louis Brandeis.
Because teachers are afraid to explore
new ideas and to teach students the un-
restricted truth, the schools are losing
their capacity to turn out citizens capa-
ble of considering all ideas and sifting
the false from the true. When students
meet communism and other dangerous
ideas later in life, they will not have
been fitted, as only free universities
could fit them, to detect and combat
false ideas. They need to hear commu-
nism debated and learn its fallacies.
The effort to control thought is making
students indifferent, fearful, cynical. At
home and abroad there is a growing
suspicion that democratic principles can-
not be sound or they would not have to
be imposed on youth by force in the
land where democracy has flourished
most gloriously.
The whole world. is watching Amer-
ica to see how democracy works. Mil-
lions of people will choose between de-
mocracy and communism not only as our
foreign policy affects them favorably
or unfavorably but also as democratic
freedom in America seems to them
genuine or phony. Students in India,
where the fate of the world’s freedom
may be decided, are watching the strug-
gle to keep our universities free. Mon-
signor O'Grady said recently that main-
taining the McCarran restrictions is the
surest way to turn Italy Communist in
the next election.
We need, then, to nourish our free-
| v as Sti p a
dom at its roots. We need to recall the
dictum of Justice Holmes uttered in an —
earlier period of hysteria: “We should
be eternally vigilant against attempts to
check the expression of opinions that we
loathe and believe to be fraught with
death unless they so imminently threaten
immediate interference with the lawful
and pressing purposes of the law that
_immediate check is required to save the
country.” We need to remember that
this freedom of teacher and student
from fear or compulsion is particularly
important to our society in time of crisis
if wise policies are to be formulated.
We need above all to realize that schools
and universities whose teachers are still
free are superbly meeting the challenge
of communism in the only way it can _
be effectively met—through free discus-
sion.
THE TEACHER
Teacher, Teacher, burning bright,
Lighting up the dismal night,
What immortal hand and eye
Depict thy fearful fate—or try?
What wide halls, what campus skies
Framed stark terror in thine eyes?
Came you here by whose desire?
Whose hands dared to light this fire?
What investigator’s art
Rent the sinews of thy heart?
When fierce flames about you beat,
Fell thy hands at whose dread feet?
What the bludgeon? What the chain?
Forged to shackle fast thy brain?
What the questions? What dread grasp
Inquisition’s terrors clasp?
When they, threw their Red charge
spears, hi
And made you water earth with tears,
Did they smile their work to see?
Did they who make the laws make
thee? ;
Teacher, Teacher, burning bright,
You are wrong, if wrong or right;
What immortal pen and eye
Depict thine end—or even try?
MARCUS B, CHRISTIAN
The NATION
Seen alah
, —¥
ee Ra
JOURNEY TO INDIA
Revitalizing the Land . Z by Aneurin Bevan
London
I WAS walking in the early dawn in
the garden of my hostess, the Indian
Minister of Health, when another Minis-
ter with whom I had been anxious to
have a long talk joined me. I had met
him a few nights earlier at the Prime
Minister's home, and even before I
knew what his work was, the vigor and
eagerness of his personality had made a
marked impression. He was the Minister
in charge of Community Projects;. that
is, it was his job to ignite, direct, and
assist the village communities in the
work of building New India.
These community projects are the
most exciting feature of the New India.
The democratic stability and future prog-
ress of the country will depend on the
measure of success they achieve. They
start with a recognition of two facts
that are central in Indian life. The first
is the supreme importance of the Indian
village community. The second is that a
considerable time must elapse before the
programs undertaken by the central gov-
ernment ean make much impact on the
life of the rural worker.
The theory is the reverse of the cen-
tralism which has distinguished. the
Soviet approach to rural life. It is an
attempt to make democracy work where
it can be expected to be most vigorous
and self-reliant, at the bottom of the
social scale. It sets out four guiding prin-
ciples: first, self-help and mutual serv-
ice; second, mobilization and develop-
ment of local community resources;
third, organized and cooperative action;
and, fourth, minimum state assistance.
A project area comprises roughly
about 300 villages with a total area of
about 130,000 acres and a population of
200,000. Technical advisers and a cer-
tain amount of equipment are provided
by the state and central governments,
ANEURIN BEV AN, leader of the left
wing of the British Labor Party, has
just returned from an extended trip to
India and adjoining countries.
“May 16, 1953
ei ci
Se oe,
and pilot schemes of sanitation and
simple health practices are initiated to
show the villagers what can be done at
once to improve their condition. Seed
selection, better methods of cultivation,
communal development, and utilization
of local water supplies are especially
emphasized, as is also the making of
roads by voluntary labor.
It is not my intention to exaggerate
what is being done or to underestimate
the almost heart-breaking distance that
has yet to be covered before the verdict
“success” can be written for these com-
munity projects. During my stay it was
made clear to me that the Indian gov-
ernment has been too timorous in deal-
ing with the absentee landlord and the
problem of agricultural credits; it has
failed to rid rural India of the age-old
curse of the money-lender. That Nehru
is conscious of this there can be no
doubt. If the spirit of practical service
and self-help that is typified by the com-
munity projects is carried through the
whole Administration, ‘the time may
come when the Taj Mahal and the mud
huts of those who built it will not con-
tinue to gaze at each other in mutual
reproach.
I HAD SET my heart on seeing the
Himalayas. It is a natural desire in a
Welshman, brought up in the moun-
tains, and conscious of an irresistible
longing to return if he is away from’
them too long. But I could not satisfy
my wish unless something more im-
mediately useful than sightseeing could-
be included. Fortunately my hosts
wished me to see a state farm won from
the jungle, and as this lay to the north
of New Delhi, within distant sight of
the Himalayas on a clear day, our mu-
tual wishes could be gratified.
It must be understood that the state
farm is not an example of how the In-
dian government envisages the future of
Indian agriculture. It is an illustration
of what can be done, intended mainly
to show farmers the results of applying
modern agricultural techniques to Indian
conditions. It is not a collective in the
Soviet sense, nor is it a cooperative. The
workers are employees working for the .
state, although under more favorable
conditions than generally prevail.
Terai in the United Provinces was se-
lected deliberately for the site on -ac-
count of its ill-favored character. The
area was malarial swamp, infested by
leopards and tigers, foraged by herds of
wild elephants, and notorious for the
high incidence of deaths from malaria.
Those who survived the disease suffered
from the low production and physical
lethargy which are the secondary conse-
quences of malaria.
The area included comes to approxi-
mately 16,500 acres. The decision was
taken in 1949. To date 14,500 acres
have been brought under cultivation,
and an additional 500 will be taken up
this year. The remaining 1,500 acres are
not suitable for cultivation. The farm
will provide pedigree buffaloes and
cows, pedigree seeds, and pedigree poul-
try for sale to farmers in the state in
order to raise progressively the standard
of farm stock and increase the quality
and yield of crops.
An interesting feature of the scheme
is the conversion of low-lying land into
fish ponds for commercial fishing. These
ponds are also used by the buffaloes to
wallow in. This, I learned, is essential
for their good health. A vast variety of
fruit trees have been planted, and 500
bee hives will be kept for pollination.
Sixty-nine villages, housing 2,613
families, have already been established.
We were shown over the modern hospi-
tal and a well-planned primary school. ~
The assignment of the villages to dif-
ferent categories of people throws a re-
vealing light on contemporary Indian
conditions: political sufferers, that is,
refugees, 16 villages; ex-servicemen, 5
villages; settlers, 16 villages; landless
laborers, 3 villages; displaced persons,
29 villages. .
Production from the Terai state farm
415,
has already begun to repay the original
capital expenditure, quite apart from the
indirect benefit to the farming popula-
tion, which has already caught the con-
tagion and is increasing its own yield
from the soil and from the animal stock
to an extent undreamed of in the past.
It was impossible to travel the miles of
new roads through this freshly created
farm without feeling a certain exaltation
of the spirit. The age-long tyranny of the
jungle is being beaten. As
what needs to be done accomplish-
» ment is pitifully small. But I saw it as
an example of the unconquerable spirit
of man in his struggle against recal-
citrant nature and the adversity of cir-
against
cumstance, reinforced by the weight of
a tradition of docile acceptance.
Here in the Terai were dedication and
~
a fierce, practical energy. The manager
of the enterprise, a tall, bearded Sikh,
saw all the difficulties, for he had grap-
pled with them from the early begin-
nings. ‘“We must make a start,” he cried.
“We must aim at better crops, better
animals, better birds, better trees, better
health, better education, better food, and
better homes.”’ Well, he had made the
start, as the sleek animals, fruiting trees,
and rich harvests bore witness.
From the Terai we made our way
north to realize my more selfish ambi-
tion: Our destination was a small town
named Ranikhet, 7,500 feet up, where
we were told we would see one of the
best views of the Himalayan peaks. The
news of our journey had gone ahead of
us, and when we reached Ranikhet we
were welcomed by a large gathering of
ter >
all the notabilities. I was festooned by
so many garlands that I blush to think
what I looked like. This custom of hang-
ing garlands round the necks of visitors
has its drawbacks, especially when the
flowers are saturated in water. It is not
easy to maintain one’s dignity with
trickles of cold water running down
one’s back.
The sight of the Himalayas from the
verandah of a mountain lodge above
Ranikhet was all I could wish for and
more. All the high peaks unfolded their
chaste whiteness before us with the ex-
ception of Mt. Everest, which ‘was too
far to the east. The mountains worked
their old magic with me. They smoothed
the fretfulness from my spirit like wrin-
kles from a worn garment. I went to my
most refreshing sleep in India.
*
GIVE IT
AWAY!
Ike’s Great Crusade . . by Michael W. Straus
Washington
IN A give-away program that dwarfs all
others the sixty-four (billion) -dollar
question will be answered when President
Eisenhower signs legistation “returning”
the scarcely appraised underwater oil to
states which the Supreme Court says
never owned it. With that precedent
clearly established, the “Big Deal” can
go ahead with the regular double-or-
nothing procedure, and a goodly portion
of the remaining public resources—graz-
ing lands, mineral rights, power sites,
forests, fishing privileges, the real wealth
of our national heritage—will be headed
for the political auction block.
So far, in this process of taking apart
a country laboriously put together and
defended and preserved for more than
150 years, it has not been necessary to
practice any sleight of hand or tricks
with mirrors. Everything has been done
MICHAEL W. STRAUS was appointed
First Assistant Secretary of the Interior
for resource development by Franklin
Roosevelt, and ended his twenty years in
federal office as Commissioner of Recla-
mation by appointment of Truman.
416
right out in public by those who put
both ears to the ground at the last elec-
tion and heard a ‘mandate’ to give
away the ground itself. Their hearing
was helped of course by the well-heeled,
determined lobbies in the Capitol which
knew just what they wanted before
they made their campaign contributions.
Senator Hugh Butler, the Taft en-
thusiast from Nebraska, indicated what
we must expect when the preliminary
incantations were performed in the com-
mittee over which he presided. “I would
like to say,” he remarked, “that when
the tidelands oil is settled—and I hope
that will be rather definitely before too
far in this session—there are plans for
the introduction of a bill that will make
the same thing applicable ‘to public
lands now held by the federal govern-
ment.’”’ Senators Barrett and Hunt of
Wyoming were delighted. Bills were
flipped into the hopper forthwith. From
the opposite pole of political philosophy
came the confirmations Adlai Stevenson
paused in California, en route to the
Orient, to say: “There are powerful in-
terests who interpret the election as
heralding an open season for retail
and wholesale transfer to the states of
our great national assets—the forests,
the grazing lands, the water, and the
minerals.”’
When Stevenson returns he will have
seen “‘have-not’’ Asians who gave away
their public resources decades ago and
are now on the brink of communism,
violently striving to repossess their heri-
' tage. In most countries he will have noted
minor or major efforts at land reform.
In Japan he has already seen that under
American direction feudal corporate
agriculture has been broken up by re-
distribution of the land into family-sized
farms on the United States pattern; this
was done while Congress was debating
abandoning the anti-monopoly require-
ment in our Reclamation law. In
many countries he will find that food
ptoduction has priority over “‘defense’”’
activities. Everywhere he will see re-
source developments going full blast, in
contrast to our cutbacks for “economy.”
In no foreign country will he encounter
the equivalent of our public-vs-private-
power fight; public power won years ago.
Indeed, when he completes his global
circuit, he will have collected many
The NATION
1
“a
ei
ae eee
nti, re nr
his seks warning that “our de-
© scendants will pay the price if we do not
= re their heritage for them.”
WE ARE again starting down the prim-
rose path. Even if the offshore oil of all
the people is given away—-at a time
when the United States, the world’s
greediest consumer of petroleum prod-
ucts, has just begun to be a natural oil
importer instead of exporter—America
will still be a land of comparative milk
and honey. In our national larder there
still remains sufficient of most basic re-
sources to support a larger population
a long, long time in a superior standard
of living. But a political. symptom like
the tidelands-oil donation telegraphs the
news that the lid is loose on the honey
pot, and the flies are buzzing around.
Whether they get their fill now and our
descendants get only the leavings re-
‘mains to be seen. It will not happen all
at once. It took millions of years for
nature to fill that pot. Nobody wants
to empty it merely. for pleasure. The
urge comes because we live in a fiercely
_competitive economy and the honey is
getting scarcer and going up in price.
The fight to preserve our national
wealth will be confused by distracting
byplay. But if citizens keep their eyes on
the prize money and see where that
goes, they will be able to understand
the game and pretty well know the score.
One of the favorite, time-tested gambits
of confusion is to raise the issue of
states’ rights. Those who engineered the
tidelands transfer never advocated any-
thing like a steal. They were simply
defending a sacred, and ego-satisfying,
principle of state sovereignty and prov-
ing their sturdy independence of an all-
powerful and enveloping federal gov-
erament. The fact that forty-five states
lose and only three states win in this
_ deal is simply an awkward phenomenon
that must be overlooked.
The oil lobby and its statehouse col-
leagues make much of the fact that
probably the same drillers would exploit
the submerged oil regardless of whether
it was for the account of three state gov-
ernments or for all the people ‘of the
United States. That is true, but the
question of who gets those multiple
millions of dollars is a large one. In the
matter of the submerged oil fields the
faithfulness of the federal government
- May 16, 1953 ©
ee eS
astrations 0 what he meant
as a trustee cannot be directly compared
with the faithfulness of Louisiana,
Texas, and California. Presumably fed-
eral administration would be under
policies and procedures specified in some
law yet to be passed. But comparisons
are possible with respect to water de-
velopment, grazing lands, and forests.
Here Uncle Sam, despite some short-
comings, has done a superior job in the
public interest. Also the federal govern-
ment is required actually to conserve oil
for defense and has done so. The states
acknowledge no such responsibility.
There exists, moreover, some “expert
opinion”’ on the subject that nobody can
challenge. It comes from the big oil
companies which would do the exploit-
ing under leases they would negotiate
with either the states or the federal:
government. These parties-of-interest
prefer to do business with the states—
they know how to get what they want.
THE STATES’-RIGHTS device is being
used and will be used in the contest
for power as well as for land and min-
erals. The machinery is already in gear
and has plenty of grease. It is operated
by assorted governors’ associations. Re-
gardless of the fact that no federal law
prevents the states from developing their
own water power, no state has done so.
Nevertheless, all gatherings of the gov-
ernors’ associations are replete with res-
olutions that the federal government
should stay off the few remaining God-
given hydroelectric power sites on this
continent. As an alternative Uncle Sam
could turn over title to the money-
making power dams he has already
built. Good politicians do not like to
mention words like expropriation; they
refuse to be crass enough even to discuss
price. But obviously a write-off of, say,
99 cents on the dollar would go far to
indemnify the states for the injury al-
ready done to their sovereign rights by
the federal government’s provision of
low-cost power to their citizens. And
guess who would turn up with a strangle-
hold on those kilowatts—the publicly
owned or the privately owned utilities?
Some voters who are also consumers
have drawn their own conclusions. As a
result the utility corporations’ fight
against low-cost public power did not
seem to be making much headway a few
years ago. The people seemed to like
cheap electricity. The organized utilities
then decided it would be more fruitful
to campaign against something people
did not like. So they hired a professional
public-opinion survey to tell them that
what people don’t like is socialism. And
promptly the dailies, the slicks, and the
pulps began to blossom out with full- _
page advertising, suitably echoed ‘over
bought radio time, contrasting the creep-
ing, crawling, or galloping socialistic,
tax-spending, cool, weak kilowatt with
the tax-paying, business-managed, rug-
gedly individual white-hot, strong, pri-
vate-enterprise kilowatt. There wasn’t a
dry eye in the house—certainly not
among the utility spokesmen in the
House of Representatives. A lot more
tears will be shed on this subject before
the Eighty-third Congress adjourns.
The world’s record give-away program
is off to a fast start under the new man-
agement in Washington. Tidelands oil
was the first bill up. One fascinating
thing about the program is that nobody
knows just how much is being given
away. Some conservative government
estimates make it around forty billion
dollars, but a guess by a respectable
group of technicians hired by Texans
is eighty billion. To say tidelands legis-
lation is the answer to the sixty-four
(billion-dollar question may be a con-
servative statement.
Now stand by for the big DOUBLE-
OR-NOTHING feature on this favorite
program:
Item—456,000,000 acres of public
land. 3
Item—161,000,000 acres of national —
forest.
Item—160;000,000 acres of federal
grazing lands.
Item—52,000,000,000 kilowatt hours
a year of federal power that produce
real cash.
As is said in the Congressional barber- _
shop, “Next!”
417
BOOKS
Glory and Heaeereal
HAROLD LASKI (1893-1950): A
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. By
Kingsley Martin. The Viking Press.
$4.
By Robert S. Lynd
HIS has been a rich year for biog-
raphies—and they badly
needed. For deception, intimidation, and
human wastage at present shred down
man’s spirit, and one craves contact with
bigness in purpose, with courage and
serenity. Particularly does one need a
renewed sense of authenticity. These we
have been getting from Joseph Barnes’s
“Willkie’; “Two Lives,’’ devoted to
Wesley Clair Mitchell and his wife, by
the latter; Norbert Wiener’s autobio-
graphical account of his first thirty years
in “Ex-Prodigy’; the ‘“Holmes-Laski
Letters”; and now Kingsley Martin’s
were
biography, so candid and deeply under-
standing, of Harold Laski.
When the strong die, lesser men may
maneuver their own or others’ shadows
to lie across the dead. A case in point
is the featured front-page column headed
Laski Under a Clotid in the April, 1953,
issue of- Economic Intelligence, organ of
- the United States Chamber of Commerce.
“For nearly a generation,” it says, “the
Jate Harold J. Laski .. . was the mentor
. .. of the ‘advanced thinkers.’ . .. Now
all this is changing, and many indi-
viduals are wondering just why they
were Publication of the
“Holmes-Laski Letters’ is a deep shock to
many of his former admirers.’’ Then
follow four highly selective denigrating
comments of a sentence or two each—
comment on some personal foible that a
man’s friends come to recognize in the
course of years of affectionate relations
but damaging when repeated out of con-
text. The column concludes: ‘Wide
readership of the ‘Letters’ should make
us all a bit more cautious in following
the easy and facile solutions to tough
problems advanced by our current crop
of forward-lookers.”
taken in.
ROBERT S. LYND is professor of so-
ciology at Columbia University.
418
These are bad times for men not con-
tent with defending the status quo. But
it is because Laski pitched his life so
inveterately at the future that this record
of his complex personality as scholar,
as teacher, and as man of action has deep
meaning for us. For within these 270
pages one perceives the glory and the
heartbreak of the courageous intellectual
in our time. A. J. P. Taylor opens his
review of the book in a leading British
journal with the statement: “There are
few men of whom one can truthfully say
that the world would have been a differ-
ent. place without them. Harold Laski
was one of those few.”
As World War II progressed, Laski
and Winston Churchill came to confront
each other as polar types representing
the new and the old potentials in Britain.
Churchill’s ideas and loyalties are con-
ventional, and as A. G. Gardiner early
noted, he is temperamentally ‘‘not so
much concerned about who the enemy
may be or about the merits of the quarrel
as about being in the thick of the fight
and having a good time.” To such a lusty
buccaneer war was an occasion for ring-
ing affirmation of old values and for
splendor in action. Laski, on the other
hand, while loyally accepting the dread-
ful realities and duties of the war once
it could no longer be prevented, saw it
as an opportunity for British labor to
learn through the experiences of war-
time planning, discipline, and solidarity
the necessary conditions for collective
action in a socialized post-war Britain.
He recognized Churchill as a “very
great war leader.” But once it became
clear that Churchill wanted “to preserve
traditional Britain’’ after the war, “using
our people as a necessary lever for
morale, but . . . not surrendering a single
position of privilege,” Laski unhesitat-
ingly declared, “I shall try to make the
Labor Party break with him on this
issue.” -And in the effort to make labor
grasp the magnitude of its opportunities
and responsibilities, “he spent his physi-
cal strength, which was never large, and
his nervous vitality, which was immense,
in traveling night after night, after a
“) =~
4
day’s teaching or a day of committee
work, to address local Labor parties,
factory meetings, miners’ lodges, discus-
sion groups of soldiers, sailors, and air-
men; thereby he emphasized, with elo-
quent conviction, that the first essential —
task was victory, but that victory must
mean a victory not for the old order but
for the workaday people. . . .”
~LASKI was not “born” a radical. He
became a Socialist in his mature years, as
he was forced to grapple with what
has been called “the problem which con-
fronts every reasoning man [today]—
how to be both a liberal and a Marxist.”
His socialism came not through absorb-
ing doctrine but through the fact that,
as Kingsley Martin states it, his own
life was a long search for the meaning
of what Mr. Justice Holmes called
“the inarticulate major premises” in a
capitalist society. He saw more clearly
than most the moral issues created by
class privilege in a democratic society.
And events of the late summer and fall
of 1931 did much to clarify his stand:
the Labor government collapsed igno-
miniously—to the rank and ‘file it felt
like treachery—under backstairs pressure
from the bankers that reduction in the
workers’ standard of living must be the
first step in overcoming financial crisis.
This underscored for a considerable ele-
ment in the Labor Party the fundamental
correctness of Marxian materialism; and
Laski even saw it as the first sharp break
since 1689 in the British tradition of
compromise. “I have no sort of doubt
where I stand,” he wrote. “I stay with
the Left of Labor and, if necessary, I
go to the extreme Left.” Two years later
his notable and uncompromising ‘‘De-
mocracy in Crisis’ appeared.
Then the sequel: Kingsley Martin, in
retrospect, says the trouble was not that
Laski ‘‘was wholly wrong but that he was
far too dogmatic. He phrased his warn-
ings with as little hesitation as Cas-
sandra, and though he was not wrong in
crying Woe! he was not always right in
choosing the subject of lamentation.
That did not prevent him from. having
his thoat cut in-1945.” How many of
us will groan in compassion over this
dilemma! Standing amid the double-talk
and slippery power tactics of this era,
it is all right for one to see that some-
thing is wrong, and perhaps even to see
what it is that is wrong; but to say so
The NATION
eee
~ Here one encounters one of the most
testing aspects of the Laski story,
documented over and over again in these
pages. Laski clung to the belief that per-
suasion could somehow prevail. En-
dowed with great intellectual capacities
and deep readiness to give and to cherish
friendship, he had all his life “uncon-
sciously assumed that those who abused
him and differed from him nevertheless
respected him.” ‘‘He had the great art of
making the faith he held a road to
friendship.” But, his biographer re-
marks, “his desire to give and to receive
love made him an unsatisfactory rebel,”
for, while he could hate injustice, he
found it hard to match his institutional
condemnations with hatred of the con-
crete human agents of injustice. So his
ardent faith in the possibility of creating
a better future, when combined with the
warmth of his personal ties, betrayed
him into courses of action quite incom-
patible with his Marxism. He kept on—
long beyond the point of realism—trying
to influence by letter and in conference
men caught up into large affairs of
power. His faith in Franklin D. Roose-
velt was little short of extravagant; as
late as the fall of 1939 he thought the
New Deal could be kept going ‘‘full
steam ahead’’; and later on he still be-
lieved that “liberal America’’ could make
“England speak the right words and do
the right acts.” At home it was a bitter
disappointment to him to find that, as-
the issues became drawn, he was not
wanted by the political powers that be:
he was unready for the bluntness with
which Churchill, as politician, could fob
him off, preferring ‘‘a personal enemy
who is political ally” to “‘a friend who is
~not a follower’; and likewise for Prime
Minister Attlee’s tart request in the
summer of 1945, when Laski was still
chairman of the Labor Party, that he
stop embarrassing the government by
his “irresponsible statements.”
LASKI'S PROBLEMS were but in-
tensified versions—owing to his great
capacities—of those every responsible
left intellectual faces in some degree to-
day. Essentially, they involved at point
after point the effort.to form a bridge
between different worlds; he sought to
be both a distinguished scholar and an
active influence in the routine affairs of
-
May 16, 1953 -
hI ae
ee —
=
Pets: politics, ante as Paesult his scholar-
ship suffered. He worked loyally and
generously with a labor movement which
because of its structure and leaders
found it difficult to face major change,
and in the end the bureaucracy shunte
him aside, though he remained the liv-
ing symbol of British socialism to the
constituency parties and to Continental
Socialists. He was irritating to middle-
class straddlers and no less so to the
Communists, whom he criticized sharply
but was unwilling to condemn without
reserve. He refused to despair in an era
of deepening cynicism, and in the last
article he ever wrote he argued against
Bertrand Russell's division of the world
into two irreconcilable power blocs:
“Lord Russell builds his policy upon
despair. I build my policy upon hope.”
But all these things are the measure of
Laski’s strength. For the reorganization
of falsely separated parts of life—on
every level—into the wholeness in which
they belong will continue to be an en-
deavor of men of intelligence and
courage.
Space limitations force upon every re-
viewer selection and omission. In the
present case this has meant the slighting
of many things: the moving account of
Laski’s Jewish background; his related
break with his family over his marriage,
and his subsequent late awareness of
anti-Semitism, at first only as applied
against other Jews and then belatedly as
leveled against himself by Ernest Bevin
and others; the record of his years in
the United States, his other home, years
of great friendships and of battle, com-
mencing with his involvement as a young
Harvard instructor in the Boston police
strike; his prodigal generosity as teacher
and colleague of the young, admirably
set forth in Norman MacKenzie’s chap-
ter on Cambridge in Wartime; the
details of his years of loyal work with
the Labor Party; and Kingsley Martin’s
very effective defense of the spirit,
though not the minutiae, of the famous
Laski tall stories. ‘Most of the stories,’
Mr. Martin concludes, ‘‘I learned by
analyzing them through a period of
years, were well founded in truth.”
Harold Laski was a distinguished and
very human being, and fortunately he
has in Kingsley Martin a biographer
who spares no relevant criticism but
measures the full complexity of the man
against the background of his time.
Norton “Books that Live”
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THEORY
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This book provides the first
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mental disease. He was one
of the first psychiatrists to
recognize that no individual
can be studied as an isolated
organism, but only in the
total context of his environ-
ment. Now, as he traces
the development of the per-
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in later life, he presents a
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THE INTERPERSONAL
New Books in Brief
“New” Criticism at Its Best
THE FORLORN DEMON. Didactic
and Critical Essays. By Allan Tate. Reg-
nery. $3.
These are essays, miscellaneous but
arranged about a common center, by one
of the most persistently interesting of
the critics who cut loose a generation
ago from both academic and journalistic
traditions to become “new critics” in
some sense of that term. Like several of
the others, Mr. Tate adopted premises
and discussed subjects so different from
those current that to many readers he
seemed to be exploring a private world
in a private language, though both
were often less private than simply cur-
rently neglected.
The central theme here is the distinc-
tion between communication,” which is
so much discussed today, and “commun-
ion,” which Mr. Tate takes to be the
real business of literature. Perhaps the
sentences which will best indicate his
thesis are these: “It is a tragedy of con-
temporary society that so much of
democratic social theory reaches us
in the language of drive, stimulus,
and response. This is not the language
of freemen; it is the language of slaves.
The language of freemen substitutes for
these words, respectively, end, choice,
and discrimination.” A good many
readers will probably find themselves
sometimes establishing and sometimes
losing contact with Mr. Tate’s meaning,
but it is very often well worth getting.
Among other valid points clearly made
is one concerning the “responsibility of
the poet.” Mr. Tate’s definition of this
makes more sense than is usually shown
either by those who declare that the
poet has none or by those who would
make him responsible for the general
health of society in specifically social
. and political ways.
Close-up of Russian Life
A WINDOW ON RED SQUARE. By
Frank Rounds, Jr. Houghton, Mifflin
Company. $3.
A lively account of some eighteen
months in Russia by a former news-
paperman who joined the United States
embassy in Moscow in January, 1951, as
420
an attaché. A curious, enterprising, and
well-read young man, Rounds insisted
on seeing as much of the country and
meeting as many Russians as he could.
He presents a Russian neighbor at the
opera with Puccini’s biography and thus
gains an opportunity to discuss with him
“American war-mongering.” (He finds
that many Russians take the party
charges with a grain of salt.) He visits ~
the ancient city of Ryazan, where hotels
are barred to him and he spends, the
chilly night cruising about in a taxi. He
goes to the great Lenin Library, where
an American is permitted to consult only
a small part of the card catalogue. Like
Hertzen, he watches the sunrise from
Moscow’s Spartow Hill, and finds him-
self watched by a carload of plain-
clothesmen. He attends a piano recital
by Shostakovich, where the music is
preceded by a speech spanking the com-
poser; he attends every play he can and
recounts the blood-curdjing plots of
some of the anti-American masterpieces;
he observes a session of a People’s Court
and a remarkably noisy chess tourna-
ment.
Rounds’s book does not deal with
Communist politics or politicians, and it
presérves an admirable note of a search
for the truth. That is perhaps one reason
why this chatty, unpretentious, and
often light-hearted story casts a more
terrifying light on Russian life than
most flag-waving anti-Soviet works.
Democracy and Faith
AMERICA’S WAY IN CHURCH,
STATE AND SOCIETY. By Joseph
Martin Dawson. Macmillan. $2.50.
To the already long list of Baptist
“witnesses” to the traditional Jeffer-
sonian separation of churgh and state,
Dr. Dawson’s name is a welcome addi-
tion. His testimony is presented forth-
rightly; while vigorously attacking the
current Roman Catholic misinterpreta-
tion of the First Amendment, he has no
hesitation about questioning the princi-
ples of many Protestant leaders.
It is particularly interesting to find
this stalwart adherence to strict organ-
izational separation combined with a
viewpoint that is both Southern and
Fundamentalist. The “unreconstructed”
~
Southerner peeps through briefly when —
Dawson asserts that the “misguided fer-_
vor” of the Abolitionists “may have
added to the difficulty of solving the Ne-
gro problem.” In fairness it must be said
that this is a passing comment; in general
this section of Dawson’s book holds out
a promise of better interracial rela-
tions when Southern Christians become
more Christian.
The key to Dawson’s thought about
democracy is that it “is founded on a
faith in God which produces faith in
man.” To many this statement is ac-
ceptable. Others may feel that a better
statement would be: Democracy is a
faith in man which may be founded on
faith in God or may itself be regarded
as fundamental.
Is Europe Recovering?
EUROPE.-AND THE UNITED
STATES IN THE WORLD ECON-
OMY. By Robert Marjolin. Duke Uni-
versity Press. $2.
How successful has the Marshall Plan
been? How well have such new ap-
proaches to European federation as the
Schuman Plan, the European Payments
Union, and the Organization for Euro-
pean Economic Cooperation worked?
What are the prospects for freer world
trade and generally rising living stand-
ards? In the temperate and clearly
presented series of lectures that he de-
livered at Duke University in the fall of
1951, the secretary general of the
O. E. E. C. answers these questions on
the whole optimistically. Before the out-
break of the Korean war, Europe’s dollar
deficit had declined to $1,500,000,000
annually from a high in 1947 of $8,500,-
000,000. The European Payments
Union has restored convertibility to
European currencies. The O. E. E. C. has
persuaded its members to reduce barriers
to international trade. Major problems
remain—overpopulation and raw-ma-
terial scarcity in Italy, unstable currency,
antiquated methods, and an unfair tax
system in France, instability in the Amer-
ican economy, low living standards al-
most everywhere outside the United
States. Perhaps M. Marjolin is some-
what too bland in his assessment of
these difficulties, but he does not evade
them. His lectures are a compact and val-
uable summary of Europe’s post-war .
achievements and needs.
The NATION
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Ce ei een coh! ie
*
_ THE WARRIOR SAINT. By R. V. C
Bodley. Little, Brown. $4.
The story of Charles de Foucauld,
viscount of France, playboy, Trappist
monk, hermit in Palestine, and mission-
ary in the Sahara, killed by Senussi
tribesmen in 1916 at the age of fifty-
- eight. The following note, found among
his papers when his body was recovered
by a detachment of French soldiers,
gives the flavor of the man. “Consider
you must die a martys, shorn of every-
thing, stretched on the ground, naked
and unfecognizable, covered with blood
and wounds, violently and painfully
killed and, furthermore, hope that this
oe ge neater
Harold Clurman
UMAN CAPOTE’S “The Grass
Harp” benefits from the bare pro-
duction that the young people of the
Circle in the Square give it. The Broad-
way production last spring was too
ornate, too pretty-pretty, and largely
miscast,
It is a slight and simple play of pleas-
ant sentiment with glints of genuine
talent. Occasionally it seems derivative
of Carson McCullers. The writing is less
spontaneous—tending now and again to
a certain stiff and decorative archness.
But the play's theme and feéling are
valuable, With diffident humor it invites
us to consider the plight of the odd,
* folks of the world, the “‘special’’ people,
the minorities, the misfits. A malad-
justed orphan boy, a Negro maid, two
spinsters—one crabbed and wilful, the
other eccentrically delicate—a wistful
- and widowed country judge, are willy-
nilly the non-conformists of a humdrum
_ Sunday town. They hardly understand
_ one another or themselves, and they are
regarded with suspicion, not to say hos-
tility, by their. neighbors. They are
usually in trouble because their differ-
‘ence makes them troublesome. Their na-
.tural impulse is to seek refuge away
from-the world. But if they have any
wisdom at all they learn that they must
‘live with themselves and others. The
world may never quite reconcile itself
to them, but it may come to realize that
“courtesy is so necessary.” ;
It is fitting that this “message” be
whispered in the nook which is an un-
conventional Greenwich Village arena
rather than shouted in a large theatrical
emporium uptown. In our cosmopolitan
civilization, where everything suffers
_ from elephantiasis—and only the spirit
is small—the quiet voice, the hinted
word, and the modest suggestion acquire
poignancy. In a world of big lies we
should treasure the tiny truths.
Often in writing of plays I will de-
liberately emphasize and perhaps even
overstress the theme or feeling inherent
in a play’s material rather than dwell on
its plot. In the American theater we are
obsessed by plot. True, the plot of a play
should contain its meaning, but we fre-
quently do not see the meaning for the
plot. We do not realize sufficiently that
a play’s meaning may have a very differ-
ent aspect from what its surface story
indicates. Clifford Odets’s ‘‘Golden Boy’’
is presumably about a boy who becomes
a prize-fighter: it is actually about the
artist who sells out.
In the art of painting the alert ob-
server will recognize that a flower piece
may connote many things besides a horti-
cultural interest. The painting of a sa-
cred subject may convey an emotion
which by no stretch of the imagination
could be conceived of as religious. But
in the theater we are prone to look and
run! We are eager to experience the im-
pact of the story, and when that has
registered, we rarely stop to consider
what exactly has registered—in other
words, what has been created by that
impact.
Earlier in the season “The Emperor's
Clothes” was generally reviewed with in-
difference or annoyance. It was a play
about a professor who, having lost his
job because of a few politically indis-
creet manifestations, becomes a confused
and ‘shabby person till, impelled by his
son’s idealization of him, he renews his
courage and dignity by defying the
authorities who would demean and bru-
may take place today... . Reflect uftea
on this death so that you will be ready
for it and be able to judge everything at
its true value.” A Frenchman as well
as a desert saint, he was enormously
useful to his country by his explorations,
his kgowledge of the Saharan tribes, and
his friendships with the natives. A fas-
cinating study of an extraordinary man.
**/Enormously readable,
and by all odds the most illu-
minating and valuable of the
entire series.”—IRVING STONE
“That most charming of super-
men, Lanny Budd, is back again.
... His adroit snoopings, always
in the guise of an elegant art ex-
pert, put him on the trail of a
Neo-Nazi underground, involve
him in a propaganda war with
the Russians via the American
radio station in Berlin, RIAS,
and eventually land him in a
Soviet prison.... At seventy-five,
Upton Sinclair has lost neither
his verve nor his idealism. He
knows how to translate ideas
into story; he is still a first-rate
teacher.” —Cuar_es Leg,
Saturday Review $4.00
EET
ON SINCLAIR
THE VIKING PRESS
18 EAST 48th STREET, NEW YORK 17
SA OTE isin
in Print for the First
Time Since 1925
Foundations
of
Christianity :
by Karl Kautsky
At all Bookstores $5.50
S‘A-RUSSELL, Publishers
175 Fifth Ave., N. Y. 10
mun 0 fA o FR wwie
421
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talize him. But the play was not merely
a parable for liberals on the subject of
civil liberties. Its real theme was the
recovery of “nobility” in a time when
everything has become drab and
shrunken. It was a play in which man’s
estate was seen through the romantic
vision of nineteenth-century humanitar-
janism, wherein being a “‘hero’’ meant
being a Man. The child in the play
dreams of a nobility his old-fashioned
father has pictured to him; the pro-
fessor’s wife and mother-in-law dream
of a past nobility. which they half know
—but won’t admit—has long ago be-
come threadbare and shadowy. The pro-
fessor is moved to enact a nobility which
he had aspired to and boasted of but
which had existed up to then only as
an impulse of youth and a fantasy of
age.
It may be argued that if this theme
was not appatent to the audience, or
the reviewers, it must have been the
playwright’s fault. This is altogether
possible in many instances, but the argu-
ment as a generalization is based on a
false hypothesis—namely, that we all
understand the themes of the really fine
plays. Traditionally “King Lear’ is a
play about filial ingratitude, in which
case the play is practically over by the
second act and is rather absurd to begin
with. But as I see it, “King Lear’’ is
about the folly of believing in any power
but that of love. And who really knows
what “Hamlet” means?*Certainly, it is
not a play about a man whom thought
renders incapable of action: Hamlet is
violently active throughout the play!
In our haste to enjoy the external
excitements of the theater we often miss
the esseace of plays, like people who do
not truly see a painting when they satisfy
themselves only with the pleasure of
“recognizing what is represented. It is
not so much the defective plays that we
can’t “‘get’’; more frequently it is the
best. ‘‘Camino Real,” I have previously
said, is thematically clearer than “A
Streetcar Named Desire,’ which js artis-
tically superior. And there is something
“more” to “The Seven Year Itch” than
meets the gladdened eye—although in
this case, I agree, it is not necessary or
wise to question what that is. By trying
to appreciate what plays are really about
—and here the critic may be of help—
the pleasure of the theater or, if you
will, its entertainment value is enhanced.
422
| Art
S. Lane Faison, Jr.
FTER the uncertain glory of many
April days, spring and sculpture
came to New York. They make a geod
combination, and the newly dedicated
sculpture garden of the Museum of
Modern Art is the best proof thereof
I have ever seen. To set a proper his-
torical perspective, I first visited the
Metropolitan to see the new Aphrodite.
Despite much advance publicity, I was
not altogether prepared for what must
be called the Aphrodite Oenslager. The
talents of this outstanding scene de-
signer have been given full scope, and
the results are certainly remarkable.
Mirrors at the base of the figure reflect
spotlights from above, and as the mir-
rors are cleverly disguised by botanical
props and a russet curtain hangs beyond,
the image of divinity rising cream-
colored from water is effectively sug-
gested. But at a price. The lighting is so
strong that the slightly translucent mar-
ble looks rather too much like plexiglass.
And afterward the other classical statues
look dead and gray, like concrete. So
much staging should not be ne€essary
for beautiful sculpture, or even for a
beautiful woman. Of the two, I think
the Aphrodite gives us more of the latter
than of the former. It is a copy made
about 100 B. C. of a lost original of
about 300 B. C., which in turn is
strongly reminiscent of the Aphrodites
of Praxiteles. Under such circumstances
it is hard to find contact with the mind
of a particular sculptor, and _ other
Aphrodites, like the very similar one in
the Uffizi, reinforce the ambiguity of the
impact.
HERBERT FERBER, whose exhibition
at the Betty Parsons Gallery closed May
2, provides no Aphrodites whatever. His
divinities resemble Zeus’s thunderbolts
more than Zeus, and some of them are
dark and spectral. One has as little *
doubt that this art is personal as that it
is communicated specifically and directly
through sculptural forms. Last year the
thunderbolts shaped themselves into a
twelve-foot image of the Bush That
Was Not Consumed, an image that
dominated the show called Fifteen
Americans at the Museum of Modern
Art, just as a photomural of its present
appearance on the facade of the syn-
agogue at Milburn dominated the show
which has just closed. The first study, in
metal at a scale under ten inches, was ,
also included, but not the intermediate
study at about half the size of the final
work. A somewhat similar composition,
titled Number 3, appeared in both the
small original and the six-foot version,
and one can only hope that some en-
lightened architect will discover how
magnificently it would enhance a very
large blank wall, preferably outdoors.
In a previous column I made a plea
for opportunities for big mural com-
misions for painters like Adolph Gott-
lieb who have a bold sense of «scale,
and the same reasons argue in favor
of Herbert Ferber. In his case, texture
and color offer further inducements: the
solder roughly laid over copper sheath-
ing with a blow torch, catching the light
- as forcefully as a Pollock and as sensi-
tively as a Rouault, and weathering after
a few months to a dark silver-gray. In
the sculpture garden of the Museum of
Modern Art an open sphere composed
of forms of the same character as Num-
ber 3 holds firm against a stand of large
evergreens. In the best Ferbers the ele-
ments are violent, but the total effect is
one of great restraint. Among our cur-
rent Fauves, Ferber is movingly classic.
Not many years ago it was fashion-
able to decry Rodin, particularly among
those who considered a block of stone
more interesting than its transformation.
The recent work of Lipchitz, not to
mention the work of younger sculptors
like Roszak, points up the expressive
force that Rodin achieved and the force
of influence that his art once again ex-
erts. The retrospective exhibition of «
sculpture which now occupies all the
ground-floor galleries of the Museum
of Modern Art, as well as its new sculp-
ture garden, very properly begins with
Rodin, and includes three magisterial
creations in bronze—John the Baptist,
the Call to Arms, and the Balzac.
The impulse toward geometric simpli-
fication and the rebirth of interest in
The NATION.
be
am
~
as
ne f
ie algae Hotably
Olymp illol gave to sculp-
t Ire in efaa first years of the twentieth
century rather quickly dried up, par-
ticularly as lesser sculptors developed
' direct carving into a mere cult. I think
Zorach, who is also represented, is to
‘some extent a victim of. this disease.
Maja, a standing nude bronze by Ger-
hard Marcks, is also affected by it, de-
spite the difference of medium. Marcks
can be very powerful in warped and
angular forms redolent of the German
Middle Ages. For its exhibition the
museum has borrowed from Duisburg
Lehmbruck’s Seated Youth, perhaps his
last work and perhaps his best, even
finer than the Standing Youth and
Kneeling Woman in the museum's
. metti,
SL eRe
ae Mate
permanent collection. These incredibly
sensitive forms already suggest Giaco-
but in addition ‘the interlace of
arms and legs in Seated Youth surrounds
and molds hollow forms in a way that
makes Henry Moore’s reclining figures
seem much less of a break with-preced-
ing sculpture. .
All the major sculptors are repre-
sented in this wonderful exhibition and
by some of their best works. Examples
of the last decade are, of course, more
generous in number, and the selection
becomes more arguable as_ historical
perspective decreases. For the record, I
think that Mary Callery is more decora-
tive than profound and that David
Smith’s Banquet, here shown, will turn
out to be one of his minor efforts.
Records
B. H. Haggin
HE year has given us the Metropoli-
tan’s producion of Musorgsky’s own
“Boris Godunov” and HMV’s recording
of the Rimsky-Korsakov version. It has
. been possible, then, to hear what Rimsky
_ considered to be “the fragmentary char-
acter of the musical phrases, the harsh-
ness of the harmonies and modulations,
the faulty counterpoint, the poverty of
the -instrymentation, and the general
weakness of the work from the technical
point of view” that called for his correc-
tive revision; and to discover that noth-
ing in Musorgsky’s writing called for
correction, that everything sounded right,
true, powerfully effective, achieved with
assurance and mastery, and that Rimsky’s
changes to make the music conform to
his taste were a falsification of Musorg-
_ sky’s work. This was true even of the
orchestration: Musorgsky’s ‘‘sonorous
image” (to borrow Aaron Copland’s
term) had been right, but his instru-
- mental realization of it hadn’t carried
effectively in the opera house; and what
this had called for was a more effective
realization, such as Karol Rathaus had
attempted for the Metropolitan preduc-
tion, not a substitution of the sonorous
image of “Le Coq d’or.”
It may seem extraordinary that at this
late’ date, when the Metropolitan at last
_ produced Musorgsky’s “Boris,” HMV
recorded Rimsky’s. But in this episode
it isn’t only what has happened to
Musorgsky’s work that is extraordinary,
but the way people’s minds have oper-
ated, and continue to operate, in relation
to it. Thus, for years it has been the
accepted belief that whatever might be
said of Rimsky’s changes they had en-
abled a work that had failed in its
original form to be performed with suc-
cess. That belief goes back to Rimsky’s
statements in justification of his revi-
sion; and it has continued, amazingly,
in the face of his own testimony to the
contrary: the passage in “My Musical
Life” in which he says Musorgsky’s
“Boris” was produced in 1874 ‘with
great success” and continued to be per-
formed “with uninterrupted success’
until 1882, and in which, discussing
possible reasons for the cessation of the
performances, he speaks of ‘‘rumors that
the opera had displeased the imperial
family . . . gossip that its subject was
unpleasant to the censors,” but says
nothing about defects or difficulties of
the work itself. With that contradicting
passage plain to read in the 1942 edition
of ‘‘My Musical Life’’ Carl Van Vechten
wrote nevertheless in his introduction
that Rimsky “‘made it possible for
Musorgsky’s music drama to be per-
formed”; and even the compilers of the
documentary material in “The Musorg-
sky Reader’ quoted and accepted the
statement in “My Musical Life’ that
the revision satisfied the ‘need of an
edition for performances, for practical
artistic purposes,” but did not quote the
passage which revealed there had been
no need of such revision for that pur-
pose. As a result those who listened to
Musorgsky’s own “Boris” this year did
so with the idea that they were hearing
a work whose inept crudities had caused
it to fail when it was first produced, and
some must have been unable to hear the
work whose remarkable qualities brought
it success from the start.
More important: Poems, novels, paint-
ings have been criticized, but I don’t re-
call anyone ever having gone so far as to
rewrite or repaint what he considered to
be faulty in someone else’s work. More-
over, if it had ever been discovered that
this had been done, there would have
been no debate about whether the work
was more effective with the changes or
without them, and whether they should
be retained or not: it would have been
For a LIFT and to Fight McCARTHYISM
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MANDEL vs. McCARTHY
_ actual recording of the
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Evenings at 8:25; $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
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423
ik US BLIC RELATIONS
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424
Crossword Puzzle No. 515
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
i
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~
.
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30
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ACROSS
1 Argues how to form a sect? (10)
6 See 9 down.
10 Something which might be welcome
about the house of the religious
man. (7)
11 If silt got in your throat, it would
be out of place. (7)
12 Old men of war and men-of-war
were. (8)
13 Side, along with the absence of air.
(3)
15 Nothing green should be so open.
(5)
17 1 down is about a true yet false rep-
resentation of motors. (9)
19 The Swiss might have been alive
then, but the term isn’t so common
now. (9)
21 New Year’s Eve should suggest a
small brand! (5)
23 This might be found near a place
of battle. (5)
24 Othello, ior example, is back on a
tear! (4,
27 Soldiers ei stoves might be. (7)
28 Damozel? (8, 4)
29 Do dicers lose their te when they
do? (4)
30 See 9 down.
DOWN
1 Virgil sang of this and the man. (4)
2 More power to Holmes’ shay, by the
sound of it! (Quite alarming, once!)
(2, 5)
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
Pe ee eee
—_
* 27 REVOLVING
io
»
vl
m
O7V
3 Breve Roman, not scratched up.
4 An Arabian relative of 10 is about
to speak of a neutralizer. (9)
5 ‘je some swords doubly advanced?
0
7 Certainly not under-garments! (7)
8 Look at the record? Certainly! (10)
9, 30 across, 6 across, 18 down, 14 down,
16 down. Exercise of political expedi-
ency? (16 words—no lengths given
for obvious reasons!)
14,16 and 18. See 9 down.
20 Haul a fish up in this direction. (7)
22 Forbid a journalist to make up
something out of whole cloth? (7)
24 Spoke like one of these, perhaps. (5)
25 Get set with 24 minus 1 plus 0. (5)
26 Give this a try, and you'll get the
side on which Jonson placed Shake-
speare. (4)
ee
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No, 514
ACROSS :—1 SOUNDING BOARD; 10 IDE-
ATED; 11 IN THESI; 12 DISPARAGE; 13 .
FIEND; 14 IRENIC; 16 ADDICTED; 19 .
MEDALLIC; 20 SHADES; 22 FICHU; 23
VARIOLOUS; 25 CRISPIN; 26 MATISSE;
FUND.
2 OMENS; 3 NATHANIEL BUMP-
PO; 4 INDIAN; 5 GRISELDA; 6 and 9
OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND; 7 RE-
ELECTED; 8 HINDUISM; 15 ENDOCRINE;
17 DESISTED; 18 LITVINOV; 21 TRUMAN; I,
22 FACE; 24 OLSEN. j
DOWN :—
“ground rules."’ Address
The Nation, 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, New York.
The NATION
Bea
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Stirring Novel of an Aviator Amputeo’s
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taken as a matter of course that they had
no validity and that the original work
must be restored (though certainly if
some academician had ‘“‘corrected’’ what
for him were the faults and crudities of
a Van Gogh it would have been recog-
nized that the result was not an improve-
ment but a falsification). But in the case
of ‘Boris’ we find the celebrated Ernest
Newman writing after a production of
Musorgsky’s first version that the prob-
lem of which ‘‘Boris’’ to produce is one
of choosing not merely between Musorg-
sky's own two versions, each complete
and with merits of its own, but from
these two and Rimsky’s, since “rail as
the specialists may at Rimsky-Korsakov
..- he has given the theater a good prac-
tical proposition”; and that the ideal
solution is to give all three. Even more
perceptive critics like Desmond Shawe-
Taylor and Edward Sackville-West also
decide, ‘‘after frequent hearings and ex-
aminations of both versions, that the
case against Rimsky has been overstated,”
and that the differences in the Farewell
and Death of Boris “are comparatively
small.”
And even the most accurately percep-
tive and clearest-minded of present-day
English writers, Gerald Abraham, who
recognizes in the booklet of the HMV
recording that by applying to “Boris”
an att whose “essence . . . is brightly
tinted transparency, clear-cut harmonies
and part-writing realized in primary
orchestral colors” Rimsky ‘imprinted his
own personality over the entite work’’—
even Mr. Abraham goes on to conclude
that “the result is—like Mozart’s re-
scoring of ‘Messiah’ . . .—a fascinating
posthumous collaboration of two very
different but very fine musical minds,
and we must accept it (as we do Mo-
zart’s ‘Messiah’) for a masterpiece in its
own right, without clouding our pleas-
ure by overmuch reference to the quite
different values of the original version.”
Which is to say that he fails ‘9 perceive
the difference between Mozart’s rescor-
ing of Handel’s “Messiah” and Rimsky’s
recomposition of Musorgsky’s “Boris,”
and the disparity between the mind that
produced “‘Boris” and the mind that pro-
duced “Le Coq d’or.”
After all this the simple good sense
of the Metropolitan's reasoning—that if
one is going to give Musorgsky’s ‘‘Boris”’
one should give the ‘Boris’ Musorgsky
wrote—becomes something of a miracle.
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——;,. - BOOKS e THEATER 2 MUSIC
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¥ 4
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aot
May 23, 1953
20¢
Smoking
And Lung |
_ Cancer j
mee BY Alton’ Ocbsner | a
Budget versus Arms _ Bruce Catton
EVERY
WEEK
_ SINCE : Aa | \
1865 Central African Crisis Basil Davidson
Europe’s Dark Suspicions jf A. del Vayo ~
A Philosopher
Challenges Velde
Philadelphia
WHEN BARROWS DUNHAM, chair-
man of Temple University’s Philosophy
Department and author of ‘‘Man
Against Myth,” defied the Velde com-
mittee by refusing to testify beyond giv-
ing his name, residence, and date and
place of birth, the struggle for academic
freedom here took sharper form. The
committee recommended a contempt
citation, Robert L. Johnson, then presi-
dent of Temple and now head of the
beleaguered International Information
Administration, declared that since Dun-
ham’s action ‘‘created a doubt’ concern-
ing his loyalty there was no course oper.
under state law but to suspend him.
Many educators here insist that John-
exceed-
ing the authority delegated by the law.”
Under Section 13 of the loyalty-oath law
state-aided institutions—of which Tem-
ple is one—are“required to certify an-
nually that there is “‘no reason to believe
any subversive persons ‘are in their em-
son’s action was “summary...
ploy.” Each institution sets up its own
rethod of certification. At Temple it is
done by department heads in reports to
the president. Unless a school complies
with Section 13, it receives no funds;
some point to Temple’s $5,000,000
grant from the state—about 20 per cent
Ck tts reason
enough for its suspension of Dunham.
operating
budget—as
e Clark Byse, professor
at the University of Pennsylvania Law
School and a foremost authority on the
loyalty law, underscores the fact that at
first the law’s proponents wanted to re-
quire the oath not only of employees of
the Commonwealth but also of employ-
ees of “any college or school which
receives state aid.” It was largely owing
to vigorous action by Harold Stassen,
George Wharton Pepper, and others that
certification without oath-taking was sub-
stituted. In effect Section 13 was de-
signed to provide the safeguards by
which private schools, compromised in
part by state funds, could keep political
heretic hunters at arm’s length.
One head of a private college has ex-
pressed concern that Temple’s action
might completely negate the delicately
tooled provisions of Section 13. He con-
curs with the American Civil Liberties
Union of Philadelphia, which points out
that an employee can be judged “‘sub-
versive” only through “a fair preponder-
ance of evidence.” The single instance
of Dr. Dunham's use of the Fifth
Amendment does not of itself determine
his loyalty or disloyalty, the Civil Liber-
ties group maintains. “Nothing in the
act,”” it says flatly, ‘‘required the President
to suspend Dr. Barrows Dunham.” It
should be noted that the Philadelphia
A. C. L. U. fairly bristles with big
names: former Supreme Court Justice
Owen J. Roberts, Clair Wilcox, and Earl
G. Harrison are members of its execu-
tive board.
With an eye to the Dunham case, the
university senate of the University of
Pennsylvania has recently taken under
consideration an exhaustive report by its
Committee on Academic Privilege and
Tenure suggesting that the senate “‘record
its opposition” to Congressional investt-
gations into schools and universities. The
committee also declared that under the
loyalty-oath law the isolated use of the
Fifth Amendment does not provide
ground for discharge or suspension.
Campus sentiment at Temple is over-
whelmingly in favor of Dr. Dunham.
Faculty colleagues with curious unorgan-
ized unanimity have refused to take over
his classes, and impressive student and
alumni groups have opened a campaign
for his reinstatement. The local chapter
of the American Association of Univer-
sity Professors has taken up the case. Its
chairman, Dr. C. Irwin Griggs, reflected
the general attitude of the faculty when
he said, “Of course there are differences
among us about the Dunham issues.
Some feel strongly that he chose the
wrong method. Others feel equally that
he was merely exercising a basic con-
titutional guaranty. But no one is fright-
ened. We have a very strong tradition
of academic freedom here—we intend
to maintain it.’ It was clear that Pro-.
fessor Griggs needed no directives from
either Washington or Harrisburg about
“subversives” in education.
To say that Dr. Dunham’s action ig-
nite¢ a powerful chain reaction against
the probe into education might be too
optimistic. Nevertheless, the influential —
American Friends Service Committee has
“taken serious note of the issue of aca-
demic freedom involved,” according to
Lewis Hoskins, its executive secretary,
and the independent Teachers’ Union
honored the Temple professor with its
annual award for “outstanding service ,
to education.”
. e Certainly Widesptéad
disquiet was occasioned by the hearings.
The ultra-conservative Main Line Times.
‘ scathingly indicted the ‘“‘witch-hunters’’
for their flat-footed sterility,” echoing
the very Republican Upper Darby News,
the country’s largest community weekly,
in warning that the probers might well
prove more “subversive” than _ those
whom they pretend to uncover. Both the
Inquirer and the Evening Bulletin ex-
pressed editorial misgivings about the
investigations. There has been a striking
absence of attacks on Dunham. While
his action in. Washington has been
criticized privately, there has been no
public hysteria about a “red” on the
Temple campus. —
It is possible that the unique position
taken by Dunham in regard to the Fifth
Amendment apd the action -of the
Temple administration in invoking the
loyalty-oath law may finally be brought
into court. There is no denying the
hostility of the community teward
loyalty probers. A veteran columnist —
summed up the situation well when he
remarked with typical candor, “Look,
I don’t know about Dunham, but I do
know that Velde, Jenner, and McCarthy .
would have their work cut out for them
up here. This is rough country. Outfits .
like Penn, Swarthmore, Haverford, and
Bryn Mawr happen to be in a business
where ‘dangerous’ ideas are common.
Take it from me, they don’t scare easily.”
CHARLES ALLEN
[Charles Allen, a free-lance Phila-
delphia journalist, was formerly on the
staff of The Nation.}
’
‘
r
:
: J wale
Volume 1%6, Nieuber 21
‘New York, Saturday, May 23, 1953
The Shape of Things
Voices of Reason >
More than once British moderation and initiative have
prevented extremists in this country from forcing the
hand of the government. Mr. Attlee did it when Presi-
dent Truman’s off-hand reference to his power to decide
on the use of atomic weapons terrified the Western
world. We believe the Prime Minister's speech and that
_ of his Labor opponent mark another such occasion. As
these lines are being written, the truce talks in Korea are
in suspension, presumably to give the U. N. command
time to. get new instructions. Our allies clearly feel that
_ the Chinese eight-point offer came well within negotiat-
ing distance of the position set in the Indian resolution
adopted by the General Assembly—a resolution accepted
by the United States and rejected by the Soviet bloc. At
the same time the sentiment is growing in the West for
action along the lines proposed by Sir Winston. As our
foreign editor pointed out two weeks ago, in an article
from Paris* predicting the Prime Minister’s initiative,
much of Europe is pinning its hopes on Churchill's ap-
parent determination to take advantage of Moscow's
professed desire for a settlement.
| What our allies want is a truce in Korea along the
© lines laid down in the U. N. resolution, strongly in-
+: dorsed again by Premier Nehru, and talks among the
heads of states on the broad issues under dispute between
)) Russia and the West. By speaking when they did, Sir
| © Winston and Mr. Attlee made these the prime objectives
.of international policy. Until they are at least honestly
iE assayed, no plans that might get in their way are likely
I) .to be put into effect—either in Germany or in the Far
East.
McCarthy Is Not America
ie We hope Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee will
| not be dismayed or swerved from their purpose by the
storm their words stirred up in Congress. We hope they
|) will realize that the demagogues who denounced them
| fepresent no more than an ill-informed minority of the
“American people—and even of the Republican Party.
_ The power of these men comes from the noise they make
| —even when uttered in an all but empty Senate, their
Nation
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
words are broadcast to the world—rather than from the
size of their following. President Eisenhower's press-
conference statement, although it took issue with Church-
ill on the idea of early top-level talks with the Russians,
was as much a repudiation of McCarthy and Co. as a
reiteration of Administration doubts and _hesitations.
And the rebukes administered by Senator Wiley, chair-
man of the Foreign Relations Committee, and by Senator
Smith of New Jersey, mild as they were in phrasing,
revealed the embarrassment to which the party has been
subjected by their colleagues’ reckless. attacks on the
Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition.
The truth is, the Administration cannot afford to toe
the McCarthy line on major foreign policy, however re-
luctant it may be to face a showdown with the plug-ugly
right. It came to power on a pledge, actually a reckless
pledge, to end the war in Korea. If the voters should be-
come convinced that the President and his lieutenants
were forfeiting the opportunity to make an honorable
peace, they would lose little time in turning on the peo-
ple they so lately put in office. That is the way Americans
act, and it is because Mr. Eisenhower knows this that he
stated so firmly—allowing his words to be quoted—that
he knew nobody in America who wanted war.
This statement was, to put it politely, inexact; many
important citizens, from General MacArthur down
through the ranks of the China lobby, have openly advo-
cated bombing Manchuria, blockading the China coast,
helping Chiang Kai-shek to overthrow the Peking gov-
ernment—all acts of war. But it is a favorable sign that
Mr. Eisenhower felt obliged to assure our allies and the
world of the essential peacefulness of the Administra-
tion’s intent—despite the McCarthyites.
Brain-Washing At Valley Forge
The Pentagon’s utilization of “‘political psychiatric
therapy” in the case of the twenty-odd P. O. W.s who
were “secretly” flown from Tokyo to Valley Forge Army
Hospital for medical and psychiatric treatment against
the danger of possible Communist indoctrination seems
to have been resented in about equal measure by the
soldiers themselves and by Hse army doctors. “I don’t
know where this idea started,” one army physician said,
“but there’s one thing for sure—we’re not running a
damned laundromat here.” Another officer, who also
Pr.
Oe gp ee
eee nae
+.
a
ss
* iF
a
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 425
The Senate Sleeps 428
ARTICLES
Europe's Dark Suspicions
by J. Alvarez del Vaya 429
Budget versus Arms:
Washington Merry-Go-Round
by Bruce Catton 430
Lung Cancer:
The Case Against Smoking
by Alton Ochsner 431
Republic of Learning:
Danger from Within
by Scott Buchanan 433
Whose Continent? Central African Crisis
by Basil Davidson 435
Land in Peril: Soil Program Slipping
by Hugh H. Bennett 436
BOOKS
Moravia, Moralist by Frances Keene 438
New Books in Brief 440
THEATER by Harold Clurman 441
MUSIC by B. H. Haggin 442
LETTERS 443
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 516
by Frank W. Lewis 444
AROUND THE U. S. A.
A Philosopher Challenges Velde
by Charles Allen opposite 425
| RSI NSS RE IT EE I
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Assoctates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign-Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
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Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
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_ Tory district. .
=
requested that his name be withheld, said:. “There has
been a big foul-up somewhere along the line.” Of this
there can be little doubt. After announcing that the
flight from Tokyo was being made “under a cloak of
military secrecy” (May 2), the army censors permitted
the story to go out to the nation’s press the following
day. Secrecy was essential, the army said, in order to
preserve the anonymity of the men; yet on the following
day the newspapers published a complete list of their
names. Secrecy was also essential, the army said, because
the men were tired and disturbed and should not be
interviewed; yet on May 4 the newspapers published
interviews with them “two by two,” complete with
photographs.
To make matters worse, leading psychiatrists. attending
the convention of the American Psychiatric Association
in Los Angeles were quoted out of context in a manner
that implied approval of the new therapy. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. At off-the-record ses-
sions condemnation of the army’s handling of the entire
matter was strongly expressed. “It is evident to any
psychiatrist,” to quote from one of several letters we
received from delegates, “that this set of paradoxical
circumstances makes no sense at all if the real aim was
psychotherapeutic. . . . It makes sense only if we recog-
nize that the real purpose was that of using the [affair }
for political propaganda, and publicity purposes.”
A sorry episode, this, to be associated with the great
name of Valley Forge.
British Borough Elections Cs
Our London correspondent writes: The total Labor
gain of 500 seats all over the country in last week's
Borough Council elections has bucked up the party con-
siderably. It reassures members that “coronation fever’
has not changed voting loyalties and that the lassitude
which has recently afflicted the party machine can be
overcome in a conflict. The elections also showed that
Labor and the Conservatives are very evenly balanced
and that the decline of independents, Liberals, and Com-
munists continues apace. The recent improvement in the
Soviet attitude has not done the British Communists any
good. They lost all their remaining seats in London’s East
End. f
The results will probably dampen the enthusiasm of
most Conservatives for a “snap election” soon after the
‘coronation; its outcome would be too uncertain. Beyond
that it is unwise to speculate; drawing national conclu-
sions from local elections is a risky business. The turnout
is only half that for national elections, and the shift in
seats frequently follows a change in the character of an
area rather than a shift in individual loyalties, For in-
stance, the opening of a new housing estate for workers
frequently brings a Labor majority into a previously
The NATION
. a i
io tt Pay
a. of EA i, io af :
Shaking Up the Brass
There is no end of scuttlebutt about the new Chiefs of
Staff, their personalities, connections, and biases, But the
_ circumstances of the appointments strike us as being
more significant than the choices themselves. It was
unfortunate that the new men should have been named
‘so long before the terms of the incumbents expired. But
even if the selections had to be made now so that the
incumbents could “ease” their successors into their
jobs—and it has been suggested that General Bradley
wanted them made now---the authority of the off-stage
nominees will certainly overshadow that of the incum-
bents in the interval. But there cah be little doubt that
the President made the appointments at this time because
Senator Taft and his cohorts were insisting that the
military men who had advised President Truman could
not be trusted to advise a Republican Administration. In
- yielding, the President has given the appearance of ap-
proval to the notion that the offices of the Chiefs of Staff
are to be regarded as political patronage.
_ There is another interpretation, however, which can
be placed on Eisenhower's action. It is generally agreed
that in selecting Admiral Arthur W. Radford to succeed
General Bradley the President was deferring to the judg-
ment of Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson.
Whatever his shortcomings may be, this much can be
said of Mr. Wilson: he is not at all overawed by the top
brass of the armed services. The Joint Chiefs dictated the
policies of the Truman Administration, but Mr. Wilson
is strongly inclined, by all accounts, to run his own show.
“He and his assistants,” reports Business Week (May 9),
“will make the major policy decisions; the military men
will carry them out.” To the extent that this implies a
cutting-dewn of the power of the military it is a good
omen regardless of the merits of the new appointments.
Nevertheless, many people will share our uneasiness that
_ General Bradley, a wise and cautious man, has been
succeeded by Admiral Radford, who helped father the
_, idea of a naval blockade of China.
_Mr. Samish of Samish Alley
On the same day (May 6) that Arthur H. Samish,
‘long the master-lobbyist of the California legislature,
posted $2,500 bail on a charge of income-tax evasion,
“the state legislature set aside a soundproof room in the
handsome new capitol annex for the exclusive use and
convenience of the “third estate.” A public-address sys-
tem will connect the room with the Assembly and Senate
chambers so that the lobbyists may relax while the legisla-
tors are orating. For the record, we should like to note
that it was an article in this journal (The Guy Who Gets
Things Done, July 9, 1949) that first brought Mr.
Samish to the attention of a national audience, Later
_ Lester Velie induced the always affable and garrulous
May 23, 1953
iA tS 2X.
“Artie” to indulge in some amusing but indiscreet boast-
ing—‘I’m the governor of the legislature,” he told Mr.
Velie—for Collier’s.
Those who know the legendary Mr. Samish will find
it difficult to suppress a feeling of sympathy for this
amusing and exuberant Californian who after two dec-
ades of wonderfully astute legal tight-rope walking has
‘finally stubbed his toe and tripped on an indictment
charging eight counts of income-tax evasion. But know-
ing Sacramento we doubt that Mr. Samish has lost any
of his power there. At last report he had not abandoned
his suite at the Hotel Senator, known as Samish Alley,
to which so many legislators come for instructions.
Voices of Liberation
Local African leaders have decided to let the world
know that the liberation movements there are not the
exclusive handiwork of the Kremlin. Two big pan-
African congresses will be held within the next few
months. One is sponsored by the Inter-Territorial Con-
ference of Central Africa; the other will meet under the
auspices of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of the
Gold Coast. The agendas will include all subjects related
to ‘the struggle against colonial rule and the growing
threats of white domination.” Basil Davidson’s analysis
of the Central African situation in this issue makes clear
why such congresses are being held.
Inching Towards Unity
A political constitution for “Little Europe” was the
main subject discussed by the Foreign Ministers of the
six member states of the European Coal and Steel Com-
munity at a meeting in Paris last week. They agreed on
the urgent need to unify Europe on the political level,
since economic unification clearly offers only a partial
solution of their problems. Animated by interparlia-
mentary deliberations at Strasbourg, they are more than
ever convinced that there must be a European Assembly
elected directly by the people.
- This is undoubtedly a step forward, On the other
hand, the French Foreign Minister, M. Bidault, insisted —
that the plan for a constitution worked out at Strasbourg
did not commit any government. The project will be re-
examined and certainly revised at an intergovernmental
conference to be held in Rome from June 12 to July 1.
This group will report to the Council of the six Foreign
Ministers meeting at The Hague on July 10. It is plain
that the governments are taking their time.
Between its working sessions the Paris conference was
‘absorbed by Churchill’s speech, which aroused more in-
terest than the Strasbourg project. It was reliably re-
ported that Chancellor Adenauer, alone among his five
colleagues, agreed with the Washington line of no early
talks with the Russians. Having just completed a series
427
of Machiavellian maneuvers designed to win Bundesrat
support for ratification of the German treaty, he does not
want negotiations with Moscow until West Germany has
entered the Western community and obtained from it all
possible benefits.
The other five Foreign Ministers are reported to be
privately supporting Churchill. Were they not so badly in
need of dollars, it is a good guess that they would at once
accept “British guidance” in preference to “American
leadership.”
The Senate Sleeps
TIME was when the Senate of the United States, proud
of its great traditions, jealous of its prerogatives, was
properly regarded by the people as the principal guardian
of their rights and liberties under the Constitution. Tra-
ditionally it has been the Senate, not the Supreme Court,
which has held out against the vehement efforts of tran-
“sient majorities to suppress the rights of unpopular
minorities. The names of Borah, Norris, and La Follette,
in our time, remind us of the Senate’s role as the cham-
pion of constitutional freedoms. But of late years the
Senate seems to have lost its taste for freedom. It has
become, not corrupt or cynical, but drowsy and indifferent.
The immediate danger, indeed, is that the Senate is be-
coming a body of sleep-walkers who, in casual dreamy
fashion, may one day give away the liberties of the
people along with their basic resources.
On May 9, for example, the Senate came within a
hair’s breadth of passing Senator McCarran’s S. 16
which would permit either house of Congress, by ma-
jority vote, or any committee by two-thirds’ vote, to
grant immunity from prosecution to witnesses summoned
before Congressional committees. Should the witness
claim the privilege against self-incrimination when asked
a possibly incriminating question, he could be compelled
to answer on pain of contempt charges. If he did answer,
however, he could not be prosecuted or subjected “to any
penalty or forfeiture for or on account of any transaction,
_ matter or thing” concerning which he gave testimony,
except possible perjury.
The bill would destroy the protection afforded by the
Fifth Amendment, offering in exchange an essentially
spurious immunity. For the witness, immunized against
federal prosecution, might still be vulnerable to prosecu-
tion by the state. Moreover, he would have no protection
at all against the social and economic penalties a hysteria-
ridden society might choose to inflict on him.
Back in 1893, Congress enacted a statute of this kind
which led to such serious abuses that it was finaNy re-
pealed. “For the unscrupulous,” as the Wall Street
Journal pointed out in a recent editorial on the current
bill, “it would be a temptation to connivance; for the
vindictive it would be a temptation to bear witness as
428
~
revenge.” The measure sneer still another attempk. =
on the part of legislative committees to encroach on the
judicial power. Law enforcement is a function of the ,
courts, not of Congress. In short, here was a bill of major
constitutional importance. How, then, did the Senate
discharge its traditional role as the watch-dog of the
people’s liberties with regard to it?
Brought before the Senate on short notice, the bill had
nevertheless been widely discussed for a year or more,
and the dangers implicit in it and similar proposals were
well known—they were discussed in The Fifth Amend-
ment: Freedom’s Bastion, by Leonard Boudin, in The *. —
Nation of September 29, 1951. Nevertheless, not only
was the measure reported directly to the floor of the |
Senate by the Judiciary Committee without hearings, but
it nearly passed without debate. Murrey Marder, writing
in the Washington Post, notes that “no direct opposition”
was voiced to the measure “despite some concern” ex-
pressed by three Senators over the haste with which Sena-
tor McCarran was attempting to slip the bill through
the Senate. “Only six Senators a all,” reports Mr.
Marder, “spoke on the measure.” Indeed the bill was
“rolling to passage,” with only a dozen Senators on the
floor, when Senator Kefauver saved the day by calling
attention to the absence of a quorum. It was then put
over until the following Tuesday and has now been
shelved for at least two weeks on the suggestion of
Senator Taft, who is “somewhat dubious” about it.
IT IS A remarkable commentary on the alertness of the
Senate liberals that the principal opposition should have
been voiced by Senator Robert A. Taft and Senator
Walter George. It is also remarkable that the principle
editorial of the week in opposition to the measure should
have appeared in the Wall Street Journal (May 11).
Thanks to this timely conservative intervention, with an
assist from Senator Kefauver, the proposal may now be
thoroughly debated, but the odds favor its enactment with
minor modifications. The Attorney General, it is true,
has said that he cannot recommend the bill in its present
form, but he would probably favor one which vested in -
him rather than the legislature the power to cloak-a
witness with immunity. —
It should be fairly obvious that the enactment of such-
a statute at this time, when Congressional committees
refuse to acknowledge any limitations on their power to
investigate and have almost succeeded in convincing the
public that none exists, would be extremely dangerous;
but an even greater'danger may be found in the strange
somnambulistic manner in which the Senate disposes of
matters of this sort. Today if a bill can be presented to
the Senate as having some possible relation-to the “fight-
communism campaign” it stands a good chance of pas-
sage without study, debate, or hearings. The Senate acts
as if it were hypnotized by the charlatans in its midst.
The Nation —
Europe’s Dark Suspicions
Paris
DOES the United States really want to
negotiate? That is the question Europe's
Most serious observers are asking both
privately and publicly. The question does
not apply to Panmunjom; everybody ex-
pects a truce agreement and a cease-fire
within a few weeks. It applies to a gen-
'
eral negotiation aimed at putting an end
to the cold war, and the doubt is ex-
pressed by persons and newspapers gen-
erally labeled conservative or moderate
—papers like the London Daily Mail,
Le Monde and Figaro of Paris; colum- °
nists and correspondents like Beuve-
Méry, Raymond Aron, and Maurice
Ferro, recently back from years of re-
porting in Washington.
Of course it is easy to 4sk the same
question about Moscow. But since the
: Russians took the initiative in suggesting
peace talks, the feeling here is that it is
-up to the West to test the genuineness
of their overtures in the way diplomacy
' indicates—by sitting down with them
at a conference table, not merely answer-
ing one speech with another speech and
" one pronouncement with another. That
is why Churchill’s proposal last week
for such a conference—to be held at the
_ highest possible level—aroused so warm
hie Was
-a response on this side of the Atlantic.
In regard to the United States,
answers to the key question vary widely.
This is clearly a consequence of the fact
that American psychological warfare is
conducted in a way calculated to leave
people over here continually perplexed.
One day they hear President Eisenhower
deliver a speech that inspires everybody
with hope and even finds its way on to
the front page of Pravda. The response
is, “Of course the Americans want to
negotiate.” But a few days later they
hear the President or his Secretary of
State saying practically the opposite and
the answer is “no.” In between there
may be an anxious “‘perhaps’’—perhaps
the Americans want to negotiate but are
prisoners of everything they have been
‘writing and saying for years, Repub-
licans and Democrats alike; prisoners,
too, of McCarthy and the other wild
men and of a public opinion fed on
predictions of imminent Soviet attack.
At the moment the answer is “
“no,
—precipitated by Washington’s rejection
of Churchill’s proposal for East-West
talks as well as by the President’s earlier
message to Congress treating Chiang Kai-
. shek as one of the pillars of American
policy in Asia. To the Daily Mail (May
6) both the strengthening of Chiang’s
forces in Formosa and the big increase
in aid for France in Indo-China.“‘would
seem to rule out the possibility of even-
tual agreement with Chinese Commu-
nists on the mainland.”’ The Administra-
tion accepts a truce in Korea because it
was an electoral promise and at present
there is no possibility of achieving de-
cisive military victory, but it does not
make peace with Peking, for it awaits
the day when increased air and naval
power will permit a tougher attitude
without involving the dispatch to Korea
of large American forces.
I do not quote Le Monde, so fre-
quently cited in the American press and
so widely criticized for its ‘‘neutralism,”
but turn rather to Figaro and Raymond
J. Alvarez del Vayo ;
Aron, ablest among the columnists of
the right and usually close to the Amer-
ican position. Writes Aron (May 4):
In theory the Western powers had the
choice of three replies to the Soviet ad-
vances. The first was to take advantage
of the apparent crisis caused by the death
of Stalin and undertake more vigorous
diplomatic action. The second was to meet
the peace offensive not only with propa-
ganda speeches but with proposals that
would lead into negotiations over South-
east Asia and Germany. The third was to
continue the political and military organ-
ization of Europe as if nothing had
changed. They decided on the third. I
think it is time to consider the second.
In his series of articles on ‘““How to
Deal with the Russian Initiatives,” Ray-
mond Aron does not modify his opinion
of Moscow—his distrust, his permanent
dislike. But he fully recognizes the dan-
get of holding back, until the Russians
decide to propose a full-dress, four-
power conference. Molotov’s reference
to a five-power conference is not taken
here too literally. It is accepted that he
must continue to press for the inclusion
of Communist China in any diplomatic
talks, especially in view of Washington’s
pro-Formosa, anti-Peking attitude. But
diplomats sense that a formal, official
proposal from Moscow of four-power
talks on Germany may follow closely
upon a truce in Korea. And the impres-
sion is that the Russians may offer terms
which go a long way toward meeting
the conditions laid down by the Western
Allies.
If that happens, what will be the
position of those who were ready to
negotiate an armistice, or peace, in Korea
but not willing to extend the nego- ©
tiations to the central issues that concern
France and Great Britain most acutely?
Is the United States stalling itself into
just such a situation? This is the prob-
lem that is worrying those Europeans
who, while opposing Russia and com-
munism, retain a sense of diplomacy
and realism.
429
SS
ee
BUDGET VERSUS ARMS |
Washington Merry-Go-Round .. by Bruce Catton
Washington
THE defense program is under pressure
these days. Its source is a burning desire
to balance the federal budget coupled
with the belief that the country can get a
reasonable degree of security even if it
cuts expenditures for defense.
This has led to a little confusion. Sec-
retary of Defense Charles E, Wilson has
said that the budget cannot be balanced
within the next two years without seri-
ously jeopardizing national safety. Sec-
retary of the Treasury George M.
Humphrey has replied that he thinks it
can. Senator Robert A. Taft has remarked
that he wished the Administration would
make up its mind about things.
Mr. Wilson told a Congressional com-
mittee a few days ago that in paring
down earlier defense programs the Pen-
tagon authorities have set an “interim
goal’’ of 120 wings for the air force, in
place of the 143 wings previously
sought. On the following day he told a
ptess conference that defense planners
do not now have hard-and-fast goals for
airplanes or for other items. Meanwhile,
the defense budget for the next fiscal
year shapes-up at some $5,000,000,000 |
under the Truman estimates, with a pro-
jected cut in actual spending of some-
thing like $2,300,000,000.
Beneath all this it is possible to detect
some of the difficulties bound to be met
by a big-business, economy-minded Ad-
ministration which is obliged to cope
with an extremely expensive and com-
plicated rearmament program, one of
whose salient features must be making ,
due provision for an extreme emergency
which may never actually arrive.
When the outbreak of the Korean
war brought the defense program into
being, it was decided not to embark on
an all-out defense program but to build
up to a level at which the country would
be reasonably safe—and, that level at-
tained, to broaden the production base
BRUCE CATTON is a contributing
editor of The Nation,
430
so that if the worst happened production
could rapidly be expanded to meet the
requirements of total war. This purpose
is now being modified in two ways.
Though we have not yet reached the
—
Chatles E. Wilson
— “reasonably safe’ level as it was origi-
nally calculated, the program is definite-
ly being slowed up. The Defense De-
partment now suspects that many of its
original estimates were unrealistic. It
wants to restudy them and see whether
it can’t all be done for less money. Sec-
retary Wilson told the House Military —
Appropriations subcommittee that “by a
careful review and balancing of our
military effort’’ a good deal of progress
could be made toward a balanced budget
at a fairly early date, say, within two or
three years.
What is really dismaying, however, is
not that a balanced budget-is being put
ahead of “reasonable safety’ but that
the broadening of the production base is
receiving less emphasis. On January. 1
of this year the eighth quarterly report
of the Director of Defense Mobilization
stressed the importance of this part of
the job. Production of the infinite num-
ber of items that go into military goods
may rise high enough to meet current
needs and still leave us poorly prepared
for a real emergency. To prepare for
that possibility, the report declared, it
was necessary to budget at least half a
billion dollars for broaderling the base.
The half-billion is still in the budget,
but the money will be spent, Mr. Wil-
son assured the Congressional commit-
tee, only after a “very careful study” of
the whole defense-mobilization plan.
Furthermore, high-cost producers are
to be eliminated, which means concen-
tration of defense orders in big concerns.
Underlying this approach is the -theory
that reliance must be placed on the
giant industrial producers, which can
quickly convert to all-out war produc-
tion. It is amusing to recall in this con-
nection that twelve years ago, just after
Pearl Harbor, the hottest single issue
confronting mobilizers in
Washington was whether the automobile
industry should be immediately con-
verted to war production. Charles E.
Wilson, president of General Motors,
now Defense Secretary, maintained that
the automobile factories could not really
be converted. The man who insisted
they could be was none other than
Walter Reuther, then the big wheel in
the United Automobile Workers’ union.
The two had a six-hour debate on the
subject in Detroit. Reuther challenged
the late Robert P. Patterson, Under Sec-
retary of War, to try dropping an air-
craft-engine contract into an automobile
factory. Patterson did it, and from then
on the industry was in war work.
It was the manufacturers’ reluctance to
admit that they could be converted to
war production, plus the reluctance of
the Office of Production Management
under William S. Knudsen to insist on
such conversion, which finally blew the
industrial
_O. P. M. out of the water in January,
1942, and brought about an erftirely
new defénse-production set-up. That, to
be sure, is water over the dam. The
trouble right now is that the bold Tru-
man program for broadening the indus-
trial base is quietly being shelved in
favor of a “let the big boys-do it” policy
The Nation
ee dis is
oe rym “S erry \ >
» x - .
which may well result in immediate
budgetary savings—and in nicer con-
tracts for the industrial giants—but also °
in serious loss of time in getting into
full war production if the need comes.
ANOTHER OBJECTION to the “new
look’’ given to the defense program cen-
ters around the drive for economy. Gov-
ernment employees are being fired so
that expenses can be cut. What is not
realized is that most government work-
ers never see an office in Washington:
they are blue-collar workers, plying their
trades for the armed services out in the
field. A case in point is a $60,000,000
air base in the Middle West whose
18,000 employees were until recently
mainly engaged in overhauling jet en-
gines. The number of jet planes in serv-
ice is constantly rising—but 3,000 of
those workers have been laid off, and
more lay-offs are in prospect. The planes
will net get along without engine over-
haul; the work is simply being farmed
out to private firms. That shows the
pattern. The work being done by civil-
ians who work for the armed services
in air bases, navy yards, or anywhere
else will still have to be done. If those
people are discharged, the work will
have to be done on the outside. That will
make it cost more, but government em-
ployment will be cut, and perhaps that is
what really matters.
Somewhat similar is the drive now
getting under way against the Bureau of
Standards. When Secretary of Com-
merce Weeks made his ill-advised at-
tempt to fire the bureau’s director he
was reminded that most of its work is
high-powered research for the armed
services. After he had pulled in his
horns on the firing incident he wrote a
letter to the Defense Department call-
ing attention to the large number of re-
search projects at the bureau and sug-
gesting that perhaps the department
would like to reexamine them with a
view to reducing the number. The De-
fense Department replied that it would
look into the matter at once. The re- ~
search will go on, of course, but prob-
ably a lot of it will be done hereafter
by private firms.
A third field in which the defense
program begins to look a trifle odd is
that of aluminum production. Output
has been sharply increased under the de-
fense program, but a further increase is
necessary: the metal must be stockpiled
for emergency use, and the civilian econ-
omy is crying for larger allotments. Un-
fortunately, the expansion program is
colliding with the Administration’s
hard-money policy and with its refusal
to continue the construction of public-
power plants. Two of the smaller, newer
producers in the field report they are un-
able to expand: the hard-money policy
has raised interest rates, and they can’t
get the money on any acceptable terms.
That seems to mean that the government
must rely on the established giants in
the field, which might be all right if
they too did not need cheap electric
power. The decision to knock out Hell’s
Canyon Dam may have been greeted
with enthusiasm by big business in gen-
eral, but it emphatically has not made
the aluminum producers happy.
So the prospects for more aluminum
right now are dim. This may make it
somewhat easier to understand why the
Defense Department is saying that its
“interim goal’ for the air force will
stand at 120 instead of 143 wings. But
it makes one wonder where the alumi-
num is going to come from for defense
stockpiling and civilian use.
LUNG CANCER
The Case Against Smoking . . by Alton Ochsner
New Orleans
CASES of cancer of the lung are in-
creasing more rapidly in men than cases
of any other kind of cancer of the body.
During the ten years from 1938 to
1948, deaths from cancer of the lung
in the United States rose 144 per cent,
from 6,732 to 16,450. Deaths from all
types of cancer are increasing because
cancer is primarily a disease of older
people and with the greater aver-
age life expectancy more people are
living to the age ii which cancer ig most
DR. ALTON OCHSNER is a member
of the Tulane University School of
Medicine and head of the Ochsner
Clinic in New Orleans,
Ma: 23, 1953
+
ae re
prevalent. However, in the same ten-
year period deaths from all types of
cancer rose only 31 per cent, from 149,-
214 in 1938 to 295,594 in 1948. The
number of deaths from cancer of the
lung per one hundred thousand of popu-
Jation in the United States was 1.1 in
1920 and 11.3 in 1948. In 1920 cancer
of the lung represented 1.1 per cent of
all cancers; in 1930, 2.2 per cent; and in
1948, 8.3 per cent. It is believed that in
1970 cancer of the lung will represent
18 per cent of all cancers or almost 1
in 5. It affects men primarily; 90 per
cent of our cases at the clinic have been
men.
The tremendous and disproportionate
increase in the incidence of lung cancer
demands an explanation. One of the
factors suspected of being responsible
is the inhalation of noxious gases from
exhaust fumes of automobiles and trucks,
from gas works, and even from tarred
roads, There is no evidence, however, of
a higher incidence among people sub-
jected to such inhalations. Doll and Hill
found that cancer of the lung was no
more frequent in people living near gas ~
works than in others.
But there is a definite parallelism
between the incidence of lung cancer and
the size of cigarette sales in the United
States. Although the population of the
United States increased only 14.5 pet
cent from 1940 to 1950, cigarette con-
sumption increased 107 per cent. The
431
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a ae a
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wy
annual production of cigarettes per capita
(including men, women, and children)
increased from 46.3 in 1903 to 2,541 in
1948—the latter figure excludes those
produced for foreign consumption.
MY COLLEAGUES and I are convinced
that the products of cigarette smoking
are responsible for lung cancers. It is
well known that carcinogenic agents
(cancer-producing substances) can cause
cancer when applied to the surfaces of
animal tissue and that the amount and
duration of the application-are related to
the rapidity with which the cancer de-
velops. The time relationship between
cancer of the lung and cigarette smoking
is approximately twenty years.
Cancer of the lung is rare in an in-
dividual. who does not smoke. Wynder
and Graham found that among 760 men
with lung cancer only 1.4 per cent were
non-smokers, as compared with 14.6 per
cent among 780 controls without lung
cancer. Doll and Hill found that among
1,357 men with lung cancer only 7
(0.5 per cent) were non-smokers, where
as in the control group 4.5 per'cent were
non-smokers; 25 per cent of the men
with lung cancer had smoked twenty-five
or more cigarettes a day, whereas in the
control group only 13.4 per cent had
smoked that many. It is frightening to
speculate on the possible number of
lung cancers that will develop as a result
of the tremendous number of cigarettes
smoked in the past two decades.
Doll and Hill found that the death
rates from cancer of the lung increase
with age and the amount smoked. ‘“They
pass from a negligible figure for male
non-smokers aged twenty-five to forty-
four to an order of 1 in 100 per year in
_men aged sixty-five to seventy who have
smoked an average of twenty-five or
more cigarettes a day for the preceding
432
ten years.” Doll and Hill also state that
“at about the age of forty-five the risk
of developing the disease {bronchogenic
carcinoma} increases in simple propor-
tion with the amount smoked, and it is
approximately fifty times as great among
those who smoke twenty-five or more
cigarettes a day as among non-smokers.”
Schrek, Baker, Ballard, Dolgoff say:
‘The incidence of cigarette smoking and
the incidence of cancer of the respiratory —
tract appear to be both statistically and
biologically significant. There is strong
circumstantial evidence that cigarette
smoking is an etiologic factor in cancer
of the respiratory tract.”
Unfortunately many physicians, prob-
ably because they themselves smoke, are
unwilling to admit that there is a causal
relationship between smoking and cancer
of the lung, in spite of the overwhelm-
ing statistical evidence. One of the argu-
ments advanced by theése doubting
Thomases is that it has not been possible
to produce.cancer of the lung in animals
subjected to cigarette smoke. But Roffo
was able to produce cancer of the skin
in rabbits when the skin was painted
with tar obtained from tobacco. And
recently, Graham—as he related in a
personal communication—collected a
tar-like substance from the residuum of
cigarette smoking by a robot and was
able to produce cancer in animals by
applying this substance to epithelial sur-
faces over a relatively long period of
time; 80 per cent of the animals so _
treated developed cancer. Essenberg has
been able to produce cancer of the lung
in mice by keeping them for long
periods in an atmosphere of cigarette
smoke. A control group was kept under
identical conditions except for the cig-
arette smoke. In the animals subjected
to cigarette smoke 91.3 per cent de-
Pee
Pi.
veloped tumors of the lung, and in te =a
control group only 59 per cent. a
Undoubtedly, as emphasized by Doll
and Hill, smoking is not the only cause
of cancer of the lung, but it is in our
opinion the most important cause, and
it is the one cause that is readily con-
trolled. Investigations by Levin e¢ al.,
Watson, Breslow, Mills, and Porter sub-
stantiate this view.
ALTHOUGH cancer of the lung occurs
primarily in men, it is increasing in wo-
men. There is considerable doubt in our
minds whether the increase will be as
rapid in women as in men, even though
women today are smoking as much as
men. Men are apparently much more
susceptible to the disease than are wo-
men. Recent surveys by the United States
' Public Health Service show the incidence
of lufig cancer rising sharply in many
different localities. In Birmingham, for
instance, between 1938 and 1948 it rose
189.4 per cent in both men and women;
in women the figure was 72.4 per cent -
and in men 247 per cent. During
the same period no other sites of
cancerous involvement even approached
this tremendous increase. The site of
involvement with the next highest in-
crease was cancer of the intestine—122
per cent in men, 45.5 per cent in women,
and 71.9 per cent in both sexes.
We are so convinced of the causal
relationship between cigarette smoking
and cancer of the lung that we believe
every man past forty years of age who
has smoked ten years or longer should
have an X-ray of his chest at least every
six months and preferably every three
months. Then if and when he develops
a lung cancer, it may be possible to ob-
tain a cure by removal of the affected
lung.
Dangerous Tars
Washington, D. C.
Smoke from cigarettes but not from pipe tobacco or cigars yields tars which
cause cancer, it was disclosed here [before a Congressional subcommittee}.
“The chemicals which cause the cancer,” testified Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads,
New York cancer authority, ‘‘are being extracted from the tar, and the identi-
fication is expected in the near future.’’ When that has been done, he added,
it may be possible to eliminate the “active ingredient’ or devise methods “for
neutralizing the cancer-producing effects.”
A companion witness, Dr. Norman Topping, vice-president of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, elaborated on the findings.—Washington Post.
The NATION
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REPUBLIC OF LEARNING
Danger from Within . . by Scott Buchanan
[This is the third article of a series on
the current threats to academic freedom
prepared for The Nation by distin-
guished teachers-~and editors. Congress
on the Campus by Alan Barth, in our
issue of April 18, aroused widespread
comment; Teacher as Rebel by Howard
K. Beale was printed last week. Addi-
tional articles will appear in early issues.
Scott Buchanan, formerly dean of St.
Joba's College at Annapolis, is a vice-
__ president of the Foundation for World
Government. |
IF WE want to summon the courage of
- our convictions, it may be useful to re-
call the basic document in academic
freedom, Plato’s account of Socrates’s
defense before a jury of the Athenian
Republic. Socrates was under indictment
for teaching atheism and corrupting the
young, both defined by law as subver-
sive of the state. The indictment had
been brought by a self-appointed com-
mittee on un-Athenian activities in a
time of war and chronic revolution.
Socrates defended himself without bene-
fit of lawyer, organization, or public
demonstration, first by an ironic refuta-
tion of the specific charges and, second
_ and more important, by a clear reasoned
statement of the inalienable right and
duty of every human being to question
and teach his fellow-men. The state-
ment was taken as confirming evidence
of deliberate guilt, and he was accord-
ingly condemned. When he was asked
to propose an alternative to the death
penalty, he suggested that he be publicly
supported in continuing his function as
: gadfly of the body politic.
In effect the “Apology” was the pre-
amble to the charter of the Platonic
Academy which existed as an institution
of learning throughout a thousand years
of wars, revolutions, and empirts. It
still is the original of our schools, col-
leges, and universities. During one of
its longest and most influential periods
it was famous for training skeptics, and
many of its students held high positions
\
in departments of the Roman govern-
ment. It made heavy contributions to the.
subversive doctrines of Christianity. This
may be the time for refounding the
Academy as the perpetual gadfly of the
American body politic.
IN THE LAST few years I have many
times recalled the trial of Socrates when
I have tried to imagine what I would do
before a Congressional committee or a
grand jury. Part of the difficulty of such
imagining is that the intellectual enter-
*prise which Socrates originated has had
such a long and honorable establishment
under many academic charters; time’s
dulness and many compromises with cir-
cumstance have placed these institutions
between a man and his government. In
times of peace and comfortable academic
life the charters seem to protect the in-
dividual in his intellectual pursuits, but
at the time of trouble they seem to dis-
solve and to rob the individual of
his independent judgment and _ will.
This is a time of trouble and it
promises to be long; at its start there is
a deep failure of nerve in the academy.
To me this failure of nerve within the
academy is much more impressive than
the attacks, indictments, and slanders
from without. It is to be expected that
in times of peace the citizen will not
notice that the underlying truth is differ-
ent from the superficial appearances in
institutions and customs, and that a
time of trouble will shock him into a
quick judgment that the truth and the
methods of discovery of the truth are
subversive of his way of life. But
-for the scholar this should be the
great occasion for public education,
the time above all others when the
teacher has the opportunity to bring
aid to his fellow-citizens by bearing
witness to the truth that can make men
free, even by laying down his life if
that is necessary. In the past there have
been philosophers who drank hemlock,
slaves who defied tyrants, martyrs burned
at the stake, street fights between town
and gown, manifestoes nailed to the
doors of monasteries.
In 1947, when the Loyalty Order was
issued in Washington, I naively antici-
pated an immediate and unanimous
chorus of protest from all the academic
' establishments in the country and a rally
of. support and defense for colleagues
on leaves of absence who for the first
time in our history had been invited to
bring scholarship and intelligence to bear
on government and politics. Instead of
this, individuals were abandoned to the
wolves of investigation and the Loyalty
Order was made the implicit . funda-
mental law of every educational institu-
tion where it generated a spirit that was ~
more vicious than the letter of the law.
Inside the academic walls there has been
the dull triviality of a uniform denial of
the ideas as well as of the peoples that
are on the march all over the world.
These great days of history are being
celebrated in the academies by silence
and fear. The lamp of learning is burn-
ing low and suffocating itself. There is
the smell of mass treason against the
republic of learning.
IT IS NOT EASY to explain this aca-
demic default. It is not due to the bark-
ing dogs—Dies, Rankin, Mundt, Nixon,
McCarthy, and McCarran—or to the
little irresponsible minds that set the
Loyalty Order as a counter-fire to stop
a popular conflagration. These are ex-
ternals that should have been taken as
signals for the rallying of the academic
community. I believe the explanation
lies in the consideration of subtler and
more pervasive developments within the
academy itself. The academic man, for -
all his professional traits of critical ob-
servation, is a creature of private and
social habits; and the community within
which he acquires his habits, for all its
appearance of democratic republican
polity, is actually a tyranny heavily cam- ~
ouflaged with benevolence, a polity that
systematically degrades and corrupts the
processes of government by consent.
433
ay en Pha Se ~
~~ ; ta
The best that an officer of a college or
university can do, whether he be presi-
dent or department head, is to temper
his tyranny with teaching, and the
best that a student or teacher can do is
to learn and teach the truth by rebellion
against tyrants; the usual practice is
something less than the best. Some of
the tyrant-subject relation is intrinsic
to the learning process and the collab-
oration of youth with age, but most of
it is due to the frustration of modern
corporate life.
It is important to recognize that the
present status of institutions of learning
is that of a charitable corporation which
was originally established as an integral
part of the great corporation, the church.
The truth that was sought and trans-
mitted was The Truth, which drew to
itself a deep and constant consent from
the members of the corporate body. In-
deed, the consent was so deep and per-
vasive that the institution could allow
and encourage a very wide variety of
dissent in teaching and learning, as was
evident in the continuous and ubiquitous
practice of dialectic and disputation. As
the big truth faded and left the many
little truths in its place, and as the little
corporations broke loose from the big
corporation, business men took the
places of clergymen on the board of
trustees, and freedom of conscience and
imagination took the place of a great
common consent.. Business management
of free intellectual enterprise became the
pattern of academic government. The
contract between teachers and boards of
trustees concerning salary and teaching
hours is about all that holds these
corporate entities together.
434
I am not here raising the familiar
unanswered questions concerning the
fateful domination of schools by the
church in the past or the pressures of
the big business corporations on the
little corporations of learning of the
present, or yet the immanent control of
the schools, colleges, and universities
by big goverhment. These questions be-
long with other questions that try to
comprehend the many social, economic,
and political revolutions providing to-
gether the subject matter of greatest
academic Concern, the Industrial Revo-
lution. It is for a proper treatment of
these questions that a new clarification
and implementation of the principles of
academic freedom are now imperative.
For the present occasion I should like to
put these questions aside for the purpose
of paying special attention to the subtler
and more immediate consideration—
namely, the business management of the
intellectual enterprise. It is this that has
made our academies benevolent tyran-
nies, corrupted the processes of assent
and dissent, and killed the spirit of
academic freedom.
THE CHARITABLE corporation. of
learning, because its operation involves
funding and investing large amounts
of capital and the spending of large
incomes, invites business men to sit on
its board of directors. They in turn hire
presidents, deans, registrars, and public-
relations experts as managers, and these
hire researchers and teachers, and treat
donors, students, and students’ parents
as customers. Although the rules of the -
market are almost entirely irrelevant to
the charitable corporation and the pur-
poses of learning, the management,
trustees and executives alike, imitates the
business organization in directing the
affairs of the academy. The raising, the
husbanding, and the investment of funds
and the marketing of the product de-
termine the choice of teachers, the
strategy of research, and the educational
policy. For the most part the delicate
problems of teaching and learning are
subtly reduced, even by teacher and stu-
dent, to questions of salesmanship, per-
sonnel management, and interpersonal
relations. It is as if the board of direc-
tors and the financiers of a shipping firm
were invited to engineer and navigate
their ships.
There is a ceremonial show of dele-
gation of powers from trustees to
president, to executive officers, to de-
partment heads, to teachers in ‘laboratory
and classroom, and there is a semblance
of representation in faculty committees
and sometimes even on boards of
trustees, although this is more often
representation of successful alumni; but
the decisions, when they are not dodged
by everybody, are made by the board or
by the president, whichever has raised’
“ more money. The benevolence of the
tyranny is always to be measured by the
degree to which the central govérnment
consults or responds to pressure groups, .
lobbies, or public opinion. :
There are persons to whom the prac-
tices of academic freedom are vital. The
processes by which assent and dissent,
deliberation and persuasion, lead to
agreement on the conditions of learning’
and teaching are matters of life and
death in the intellectual enterprise. But.
there are no orderly ways by which the
judgment and will of the teachers and
students can be made effective. Academic
politics and faculty meetings are notori-
ously trivial or violent. As in student
governments, none but trivial decisions
can be arrived at; the responsibility and
_the power reside elsewhere.
This is bad training and discipline
for the citizens of the republic of learn-
ing; they have been well called the irre-
sponsibles in our society. Not even the
American Association of University Pro-
fessors, imitating the techniques of the
labor unions, negotiating for wages and
job tenure, and restraining itself from
adopting collective bargaining and the
strike, can rally the courage of the
academic proletariat. Battle by black list
seems to be the last crude resort. The
fact is that there are deeply planted and
long-standing habits-of acquiescence and
compromise on all sides of what might
be a continuous, significant, and useful
conflict. These habits, taken together,
amount to a silent conspiracy of mutual
stultification within what is piously
called the family of schoiars. Everyone
knows who the patricians are and who
_the pater familias is, and that they have
little knowledge of and less care for the
essential purpose of the professional
community, which has consequently
come to be concerned with the bare
perpetuation of an institution that as-
sures its members of security and liveli-
hood of sorts.
1... FbeiN amiigates:
ae so weak ‘and hoes at its
to defend its existence and purpose from
' a group whose members have learned for
_ so long to practice private intellectual
_ enterprise for profit—not to say, stealthy
_ indulgence in private interest and whim
for the entertainment of student cus-
tomers—common defense of learning
and teaching will be an embarrassing
Central African Crisis .
London
WHEN I was a boy I used to think of
Africa, tropical Africa, the Africa of
Livingstone and Stanley, as a green dark
wilderness where naked blacks and other
living creatures lay in wait for Christian
| gentlemen. Had not Nevinson written
| of the ‘loathsome darkness of the man-
‘grove swamp’; did not the scattered
| bones of missionaries and lone adven-
| turers prove that this was not only a
dangerous continent but one that was
evil and almost beyond saving? My
picture of Africa was the familiar stereo-
type of Englishmen. Only in recent years
has some notion of the reality penetrated
_ the non-specialist mind.
Tales of that feckless and frightful
scarecrow known to white settlers and.
‘administrators in Africa as the “African”
_ may still be heard in clubs and bars up
| _and down the continent. He has disap-
peered from serious conversation. Afri- -
i
*cans, we know now, are various, like
their languages, capacities, looks, and
degree of social organization. But with
all this variety Africans have developed
a common aspiration which bears a
modern and forbidding name—nation-
retards and frustrates the entry of Afri-
BASIL DAVIDSON i is a British journal-
‘strife—in the measure that colonialism
who has spent much time in Africa.
n self-government will quickly learn _
external threats in a time of trouble. In _
_alism. Holding the promise of bitter.
can peoples into the modern world—
_ sham. Compliance with the Loyalty
Order, far beyond the call of duty, will
be the easier way out, Therefore we may
expect to see that faculties will approach
external investigating committees with
proposals that they set up their own
inquisitions. They can be much sharper
inquisitors, as the University of Cali-
fornia has demonstrated.
The internal damage that benevolent
tyranny has worked on our educational
institutions in the last century is very
this nationalism stands for freedom from
Oppression in the minds of many mil-
lions of men and women.
The knowledge that a different and a
-better life is possible is the ‘essence of
African nationalism, Determination to
attain it varies in intensity from the
boiling ferment of West Africa to the
smoldering ashes beneath the paternalist
autocracies of the Belgian and the
French Congo. It erupts in the central
and southern British territories through
African congresses which are more or
less embryonic nationalist parties. It is
behind the disciplined and self-sacri-
ficing campaign of non-violent resistance
to racial laws in the Union of South
Africa, the terrorist extremism in Kenya,
the sober welding of African opinion
in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, and the
massive drive toward self-government
and full nationhood in West Africa.
Most African societies today are living
through a crucial period, preparing to
make the leap—in parts of West Africa
already making it—from subjection to-
*
great. In spite of the going concerns in
science and technology that the labora-
tory represents, there is progressive
deterioration in the practice of the
intellectual arts. These could be revived
if the academic government would sup-
port dialectic and deliberation and the
decisions that would flow from them.
But for this there must be a revival of
the great tradition of dissent, the kind
of dissent that no business management
can tolerate.
“WHOSE CONTINENT?
by Basil Davidson
ward independence. Imperialism has met
the challenge by seeking new ways of
prolonging and reinforcing white con-
trol. The British government's proposals
for'a federation of the protectorates of
Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland and
the self-governing colony of Southern
Rhodesia are its solution for the prob-
lem in Central Africa. The situation here
is different from that in West Africa. Cli-
mate and conditions of trade have kept
white men out of West Africa. In the
Central African territories—as in Kenya
and Tanganyika in East Africa—whites
have settled in slowly growing numbers
since about 1890.and live there today
as in their native country, believing that
their children and their children’s chil-
dren will, and should, inherit their lands.
The proposed Federation of British
Central Africa would contain fewer than
- 200,000 whites, outnumbered by Afri-
cans about thirty to one. The white set-
tlers, mainly British and South African
Dutch, have worked for it because they
want full release from the control of the
British government. And they want this
because the British government is under
certain well-defined obligations to the
African peoples in the area. Neither
Northern Rhodesia nor Nyasaland was
conquered by arms: their chiefs accepted
British protection in return for a clear
pledge that African interests should te-
main paramount. In Southern Rhodesia
the settlers provoked around the turn of
435
the century a murderous war with the
two principal tribes, the Matabeles and
Mashona, and crushed their tribal power.
Granted self-government in 1923, they
have since trod the same racialist path
as the whites of South Africa.
In the protectorates, by contrast, gov-
ernment has traditionally stood between
the Africans and the settlers. The Afri-
cans grew accustomed to two kinds of
whites—the settlers, whom they recog-
nized as their enemies, and the govern-
ment in London, to which they believed
they could look for protection. A third
group, the representatives of the mining
interests and of the old British South
Africa Company organized by Cecil
Rhodes, generally identified itself with
the home government.
IN 1949 A BIG CHANGE occurred.
_the colonial powers were multiplying
their efforts to find new sources of
in these rich territories:
Northern Rhodesia supplies, for ex-
ample, a quarter of the world’s copper.
United States capital had entered the
field. The need for absolute white con-
trol was urgent. The settlers’ leader in
Northern Rhodesia, Roy Welensky, first
got himself elected to the Legislative
Council on a program of expropriation
raw material
of the mines and then, shrewdly, nego-
tiated a deal with the mining companies.
In return for an agreement that a sub-
stantial proportion of copper profits
would remain in the territory to the
account of the Northern Rhodesian gov-
ernment, the settlers would abandon-all
thought of expropriation.
With settlers and mining interests in
close alliance and shouting for self-
government, the imperial authorities
prepared to comply. After being rejected
for years, federation—a short cut to
settlers’ self-government—became prac-
tical politics. Since 1950 the British
government has been working on a plan
for federation and trying to persuade the
Africans to accept it. The scheme was
completed at a conference in London
last January. Meanwhile African opposi-
tion has grown steadily.
It was in 1949, the date of the alliance
of all white interests, that a conscious
and determined African nationalism in
these territories was born. African con-
gresses have been formed in all three
and have grown in influence until they
now represent most Africans in North-
ern Rhodesia and Nyasaland and prob:
ablwin Southern Rhodesia as well. (Since
Africans in Southern Rhodesia are vir-
tually without political rights, it is hard
to know what they think, but all the
signs indicate strong latent nationalism. )
The next few months will show
whether or not the British government
x
intends to go back on its pledges to the ,
original inhabitants of the area. If it
does, as now seems probable, the world
will be called upon to watch one more
ruthless struggle between “civilization”
and a backward people striving to move
forward. African nationalism in these
territories is a healthy and constructive
movement. Its leaders have made it clear,
that their goal is not black supremacy
but multi-racial democracy attained by
reasonable and gradual steps. Advocates
of federation insist that white domina-
tion must be made permanent. It would
be a rash man who would prophesy that
African nationalism would not turn de-
structive if Africans saw every door to
eventual equality slammed in their faces.
Americans cannot be indifferent to
this situation. American mining interests
today are powerful—perhaps all-power-
ful—in most of Central Africa, whether
British, Belgian, or Portuguese. They are
as much a part of the apparatus of im-
perialism as any of the heirs of Cecil
Rhodes or the despoilers of the Congo
basin. Is imperialism, too, to become
part of American life?
LAND IN PERIL ~
Soil Program Slipping . . by Hugh H. Bennett
FROM the sidelines what is being done
to the soil-conservation program looks
disturbing. Only a few months ago it
was making splendid progress. The Soil
Conservation Service was furnishing the
farmer-directed soil-conservation dis-
tricts with technical assistance, free, and
everywhere the arrangement was func-
tioning well. Field workers helped farm-
ers and ranchers to do the things they had
HUGH H. BENNETT, formerly chief
of the federal Soil Conservation Service,
is president of the Soil Conservation
Society of America and author of “This
Land We Defend.”
436
not learned how to do themselves and
won so much respect and cooperation
from the farm operators that their trans-
fer to another locality was often pro-
tested. Now it appears that the machine
is not working smoothly and that the
whole program will be slowed down.
Any let-up in soil conservation would
amount to a national danger. Productive
land is our basic resource, the supply is
limited, and what we have is being cut
into by still uncontrolled erosion and the
construction of buildings, roads, and air-
fields. Fortunately, people are beginning
to realize the danger and are demanding
that our agricultural lands be protected.
They see that with our rapidly increas-
ing population, we must either safeguard —
what land we possess or have recourse
to synthetic foods or strict birth control,
neither of which promises much for the
near future.
The progress we have already made -
in conserving soil and water convinces
me that we can more than meet our .
domestic needs for food if we go ahead
quickly and determinedly with the con-
servation job started nearly two decades
ago. The safety of more than one-
fourth of our farmland has already
been secured—an. achievement those of
us who started the work never thought
The NATION © |
a
eT ee *
Pp abi e in our nian Continued progress
will depend on keeping the work under
the direction of capable and sympa-
& thetic scientists who will recognize the
need for permanent conservation, the
kind that cannot be bought at so much
per acre or accomplished with palliatives,
shortcuts, or directives. Lasting con-
servation calls for scientific treatment of
__ the land, adapted to the special character
. and needs of each area. The water-borne
products of erosion cannot be econom-
. ically dredged from river beds or coastal
waters and redistributed over our fields.
Modern soil-conservation methods in-
-vatiably increase per-acte yields. The
- production of some 800 farms in many
parts of the country practicing modern
-soil conservation and keeping production
.accounts was found to average 36 per
-cent above that of the same number of
farms on similar land where little or
no conservation was practiced. This study
was made several years ago. If it were
made today it probably would reveal an
increase in production of 50 per cent or
more, since conservation practice usually
gives optimum benefits several years after
being started.
IT IS OF THE UTMOST importance to
give protection to all land that needs it
before it is too late. An adequate food
supply is essential to nationat defense
‘and a satisfactory standard of living.
Erosion and use of land for non-agricul-
tural purposes is taking out of produc-
tion probably a million acres annually—
twenty thousand fifty-acre farms. The
erosion can be stopped, and much con-
struction work can be directed to less
_ productive land. What will actually be
done depends on the demand of a well-
| informed public and on the efforts of
| __ the capable technicians serving the more
__ than 2,400 soil-conservation districts in
|. the country.
» > The Soil Conservation Service has
. proved its usefulness. Many conserva-
|__. tion measures applied to the land twenty
| _ years ago are still holding satisfactorily.
_ The districts have demonstrated their
capacity to handle the job at the local
level. The reported deterioration of
morale among S. C. S. Personnel must
not be allowed to contifue. It must be
overcome at all levels of work wherever
. found, and replaced with the old spirit
and push that accomplished so much
under the original program. A directive
AP at ne pep
issued by the Secretary of Agriculture in
February, 1951, was supposed to stream-
line the department’s complicated soil-
conservation activities, but the situation
still calls for improvement. Two big
soil-conservation organizations in one de-
partment—the Agricultural Conserva-
tion Programs Branch and the Soil Con-
servation Service—are not needed and
hinder understanding and cooperation.
One change which seems likely to
prove harmful was the disruption of the
S. C. S. research program, which for
nearly two decades had helped find quick
answers to problems encountered in the
field work. This program was taken
apart and portions of it turned over to
an outside agency. My experience has
been that an action agency like the Soil
Conservation Service should conduct its
own research. If it is handled by another
office, particularly one primarily con-
cerned with long-time research, the ac-
tion agency may not get what it needs
but what the other agency thinks it
should have.
Another change started toward the
end of the preceding Administration and
carried over into the present one
shouldered the S. C, S. with the work
of the soil survey. I pointed out at the
time that the addition of this unneeded
responsibility could easily lead to over-
loading and confusion, and my fear
seems to be borne out. The old soil
survey was established fifty years ago for
the primary purpose of classifying soils.
This, of course, has a certain scientific
value, but it has no great usefulness in
soil conservation. The Soil Conservation
Service has developed its own land-
capability survey for the strictly utili-
tarian purpose of guiding the develop-
ment of conservation plans for individual
farms. Land is divided into eight broad
categories according to its productivity
potential. It is a quick and simple system
of land evaluation that takes into con-
sideration the general nature of the soil
in the locality, the slope of the land,
. drainage conditions, present use, and
adaptability for safe agricultural use.
There is no more necessity for combining
these distinctly different types of sur-
veys than for combining both with the
topographic survey of the United States
Geological Survey, which also deals with
the land but employs basically different
methods and gathers facts for quite
different purposes.
THE ANNUAL REPORT of the Soil
Conservation Service for the fiscal year
1952 shows that something has slowed
the application of soil-conservation
measures to the land, if I have properly
interpreted the figures given. The 1952~
accomplishment figures covering ‘‘con-
servation practices newly applied in soil-
conservations districts with Soil Conser-
vation Service assistance” add up to more
than a million acres less than the total
for the fiscal year 1950 (counting fifteen
acres benefited per mile of terracing and
diversions), although the appropriation
for the regular soil-conservation work
was five and a quarter million dollars
more in the later period. This looks like
less done for more money, with respect
at least to area coverage, and that counts
heavily in the soil-conservation program,
I am calling attention to these danger
signals because of my continuing interest
in the S. C. S. program. As long as
there is any possibility of helping to
keep soil conservation properly aligned
I shall want to do what I can by flagging
the plays that appear.to be the wrong
ones. I am aware that there is no point
in doing this unless it is possible at the
same time to indicate remedial action.
My suggestion in this instance is to turn
over to the S. C. S. all the soil-conserva-
tion work carried on at the federal level
and to keep the agency completely free
of politics and panaceas. This would be
a practical solution of a problem that
must be tackled without unnecessary de-
lay. The people, I think are going ta
demand it.
Pa i RA a tna
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BOOKS
Moravia,
Moralist
By Frances Keene
HE past twelve months have been
eventful for the leading Italian
novelist, Alberto Moravia, whose last
work to appear in English in a fine new
translation is his first novel, “Gli In-
differenti,’ written twenty-four years
ago. In the space of a little over a year
Moravia’s works have been placed on the
Papal Index, reprints of his books have
been banned in Chicago, he has been
invited to the United States by our
cultural attaché in Rome, and he has
been denied a visa by our State Depart-
ment. It does not seem to matter that
Chicago’ is not under direct Vatican
jurisdiction, or that the cultural attaché
is a part of the same State Department
that denied the writer his visa.
Moravia visited this country in 1938
without, as I recall, visa trouble. He was
a young author whose first work, the
same ‘Indifferent Ones’ now reissued as
“Time of Indifference’ (Farrar, Straus
and Young), had given him meteoric
prominence in Europe. In the crucial
thirties Moravia’s books and articles and
short stories seemed without factious
political overtones here, and for those
who wanted to go into his background
the varying allegiances of the critics
who praised him would seem to bear out
his own non-political attitude. Thus
though in Italy he had been launched
by G. A. Borgese, then leading critic
for the Corriere della Sera and subse-
quently one of the most influential anti-
Fascist voluntary exiles, he was shep-
herded on that trip to the United States
by Giuseppe Prezzolini, whose acquies-
cence to the regime had been rewarded
by the fat plum of an appointment as
unofficial Fascist cultural attaché in New
York, where for a generation he headed
Columbia’s Casa Italiana. On the face of
it, you could not tell Moravia’s political
views by association, as is now the fash-
FRANCES KEENE lived in Italy for
many years. She edited “Neither Liberty
nor Bread,” a documented history of
Fascism as told by the opposition.
438
ion. He was simply a good young writer
on the way up. That he was personally
much more than that has been amply at-
tested by the years between, but we are
talking of first impressions and of 1938.
Because of the stir “Gli Indifferenti”
aroused in Europe, Putnam brought it
out in an unfortunate rendering which
caused American readers to mislay Mo-
ravia for almost fifteen years. However,
the keen interest in Moravia’s work felt
by the late Professor Livingston of
Columbia persuaded that gallant Italo-
phile, despite his growing blindness, to
dictate a translation of a long novel of
Moravia’s, known in English as “Wheel
of Fortune.” The novel was published
by Viking in 1937 and, for different
reasons, met substantially the same fate
as had Putnam’s ‘‘The Indifferent Ones.”
NOW THE WAR, interrupting our
close acquaintance with what was new
in Continental letters, came to break the
jinx. Since its close Moravia has really
been introduced to this country for the
first time, thanks largely to the sapient
handling of his current. publisher, John
Farrar, who bought up Moravia titles
and issued them in good translations in
the order best calculated to advance the
author on the American market.
The first published was “The Woman
of Rome,” an improbable first-person
tale which purports to lay bare the life
and hard of a Roman tart;
works which in Italian had preceded
it were held back, among them “Agos-
tino,’ which Farrar, Straus later issued
here as part of the twin-story volume
“Two Adolescents.” Moravia’s publisher
was right: “The Woman of Rome,”
helped by the wave of post-war interest
in Italian life, “got’’ the public.
Since then, Moravia novels have ap-
peared regularly and enjoyed almost
uniformly enthusiastic critical acclaim,
plus at least two notable sales records.
Sales have, of course, extended to the
reprint editions of the books, and Mo-
ravia is now an American best-seller.
times
In seeking an explanation of State De-
partment hysteria over Moravia, one
would be hard put to establish any
marked political alignment on his part.
With the exception of his finest novel, -
“The Conformist,” in which he master-
fully portrays a type of man who lends
himself to total identification with
oligarchy, not one book is specifically
polemical. And this same ‘“‘Conformist”
is somewhat counterbalanced, if you will,
by “The Fancy Dress Party,” a weak,
verbose novel in an earlier vein in which: -
Moravia'’s opera buffa dictator is rela-
tively endearing. Thus you cannot make
Moravia into a tract writer: he remains
an increasingly good novelist with a
vital interest in modern man’s dilemma
of survival amid pressures essentially
alien to him. And his work has validity
in that it is first felt with genuine pro-
fundity, then expressed with terse econ-
omy and elegance of design.
Moravia’s emphasis on work rather *
than tract was publicly recognized last
Moravia
year when thirteen American writers of
varying stature, but uniformly anti-
totalitarian, protested in an open letter
to the New York Times (July 30, 1952)
against the invocation of the McCarran
act to keep Moravia out of thé United
States. This letter pointed out that whens
in 1950, the Corriere della Sera of Milan
wanted to send Moravia to Moscow for
a series of first-hand reports, “the Soviet
Union [also} refused him a visa.” °
Captious friends have remarked that
had ‘‘The Conformist’’ been a less suc- :
cessful argument against bourgeois uni-
formity as a breeding ground for Fas-
cism, and had’ Moravia trimmed hig sails
to the wind when asked if he “knew”
any Communists, he would have graced .
many a speaker’s platform here from
coast to coast.
The NATION
5
owe
:
we tee a ee aes
tions, the fact remains that church and
. “@
New non-fiction
State pressures on both sides of the
_ Atlantic descended on the author with £ VIKING
startling synchronization. And after rom
fact remained that Moravia reprints felt
the ax of the Gathings committee, “K fine piece of portraiture, fair, candid, a
which, as one commentator shrewdly 2 ae
; = : and affectionate.” —MANCHESTER Guarpian 3
observed, considers that ‘‘what is ob- BY:
scene at a quarter is not obscene at three England knew him as “the brains of the Labour Party,” the ,
bucks!” gadfly of the London School of Economics. To Americans, he ay
Now it may be objected that there is was the friend of Holmes and Frankfurter, the fiery lecturer at wD
it aioen tie Panallndex Harvard, the profound authority on our political institutions. +
c ; tates P : Journalist, philosopher, politico and scholar, economic theorist ey
the Gathings committee’s condemna-
: : . and wary radical, he was one of the most remarkable person- on
tion of “Woman of Rome” and “The ages of our era—a legendary figure even in his own time who oa
Conformist’’ (along, of course, with a can now be properly understood. - Illustrated $4.00
spate, of other books), and the episode +P
_-of the cultural attaché and the refused ; wt
visa. If any instance of such a compound- HAROLD LASKI, A biography 3 .
ing of coincidence existed in relation to
another author of like importance, one b y King sley Martin ter
might be tempted to give greater weight |= meee meme eee ee eee ee ee ee ee eee ee i
to the objection. But establishment of a i © i
| chain of command in censorship is al-_ A fascinating survey of modern science— ie
most impossible. What is important,
3 ; its breath-taking discoveries, its dramatic dev ents, i ic i
however, is a clear understanding of 2 tie Sev Sone ens Alina fi
for the future. What do you know about the “machine heart and
those elements in the writer's work lungs”? About the developments in cancer research, supersonic _ | i
which all repressive forces, whether speed, the creation of life from lifeless matter? You'll find expla- i ih
working singly or together, might take | ° : nations of these and a broad range of additional scientific won- 4
exception to. : ders-in-progress in Mr. Kaempffert’s newest book, which takes iq
, the intelligent layman on a guided tour along the main paths as ‘
eons well as some of thé'more intriguing by-paths of modern science. hy
CERTAINLY my own long familiarity suing DY-P $3.50 it
with Moravia’s work would lead me to ae
emphasize his morality above everythi . i
: By this I Bre in Moravia’ EXPLORATIONS “"
Id there i fakery, dient
bow to uishared orthodoxies, whether | LIN SCLENCE
i political or religious, no attenuating cir- by Waldemar Kaempffert i
eed
cumstances. In the highest, most person-
. ° - . . ‘2
_ moralist. He does not preach, it is true, ie
'
but his every book carries within it the Intimate recollections of one Nobel prize-winner i
: dispassionate examination of man’s flaws by another ie
i lati to his possibilities. And ; : : zy
pe or eerie tos “The door is pushed ajar. A man sidles into the shop as a down- ie
_ though his grasp of motivations is clini- .
and-out slips into the warmth of a church. His eyes are hidden
cally sound, he recognizes man as capa- behind the brim of a battered old hat.... An unfrocked priest
ble of aspiration, heartbreak, renuncia- perhaps?” Rather it is André Gide—the man of singular, irri- te
tion, selfless attachment. What Moravia tating neuroses, the writer of deep artistic integrity—as he was 1g
_,Says with ever-increasing effectiveness is seen and understood for 30 years by his close friend, Martin
that ‘until man assesses the circumambient durGard. $2.75
world and his own role in it, until he
accepts responsibility for his execution REC OLLECTIONS / ’ |
of that role, he can know no peace, and
i his lot can become no more enviable than OF ANDRE GIDE a ‘
a sorry acceptance of the makeshift *
present. by Roger Martin du Gard ae
Now this, more than political pros- ; : ;
Be the paper-back, market. First, the ae er
THE VIKING PRESS, 18 East 48th Street, New York 17 r
| May 23, 1953 | 39
telligence characteristic of Moravia’s
protagonists, which makes them capable
of continual self-analysis, is suspect—
though the Vatican has but recently lifted
the ban on psychoanalysis, the climate
continues unfriendly. Second, the middle
class, which is Moravia’s scene, has
never looked shabbier, no, not even in
Flaubert. Third, the sacrosanct nature
of the status quo is subject to continuous
tacit attack. Fourth, self-honesty is the
only reliable, indisputable virtue. The
implicit exhortation to men and women
to see their lives for what they are, their
world for what it is, runs through every
book from first to last. And the un-
questioned genius of the man for creat-
ing characters of believable proportions,
for placing them before problems of
genuine impact in a three-dimensional
world, makes his work very jarring
indeed to those whose interest lies in
maintaining an attitude of pliant ac-
quiescence,
Since no political label will stick—
for Moravia can easily establish the fact
that he was no card-carrying Fascist or
Communist—the next level of attack is
obscenity and then, bolstering that, sac-
rilege.
Now “Time of Indifference’ has come
to swell the list of incisive novels in
which Moravia exposes facets of middle-
class life invall their gross vulgarity and
meretricious hypocrisy. That this was an
early book is not, as it happens, relevant:
it can stand with his best as a work of
power. But its republication will add to
the unease with which the author is
regarded in certain high places. Justice
Brandeis once stated that “among free
men the deterrents ordinarily to be
applied to prevent crime are education
and punishment for violations of the
law, not abridgment of the rights of free
speech”; and more recently—in 1951,
after pressure by Catholic groups forced
the New York Board of Regents to ban
“The Miracle’”—Justice Clark said that,
in attempting to define sacrilege, ‘the
censor is set adrift upon a boundless sea
amid myriad conflicting views, with no
charts but those provided by the most
vocal and powerful orthodoxies.”’
What it all hpils down to is how far
can you go in criticizing criteria of be-
havior which are recognized as false but
to which the vast majority give patient
lip-service? In prosecuting such social
studies as ““Woman of Rome,’ “The
Conformist,” and ‘Conjugal Love,” “all
that is relied on,” to quote Judge Bok,
‘is an indefinable fear for other people’s
moral standards—a fear that I regard
as a democratic anomaly.” A writer of
the unquestioned stature of Moravia
may well become a test case in the
question of how far our fifth freedom,
the freedom to criticize things as they
are in this best of all possible worlds,
has been threatened if not already cur-
tailed in America.
New Books in Brief
Author and Translator
DOM CASMURRO. By Machado de
Assis. Translated by Helen Caldwell.
The Noonday Press. $3.50.
Machado de Assis, Brazilian satirist of
the nineteenth century, was known in
this country chiefly to students of Portu-
guese until last year, when his “Epitaph
of a Small Winner’ was translated.
That book hid a penetrating irony and a
pungent wit behind a deceptively mild
style. The accompanying publicity sug-
gested that it ranked as a minor master-
piece, whereas the great work was ‘Dom
€asmurro.”’ Now that the latter has been
made available, readers may compare the
two and make their own choice. From
the point of view of plot “Dom Cas-
440
murro” is undoubtedly the more impos-
ing achievement. It is a rounded novel
of love and betrayal, a study of deceit in
which he who tells the tale has been
cuckolded by the woman he loved best
and the friend he most trusted. Set in a
quiet house in Rio de Janeiro, the story
is fashioned with meticulous care for the
crucial small details which prove in the
end more important than the larger
forces to which homage is customarily
paid. Belief in the power of the small.
to destroy the large is the creed by which
the author lived and wrete, and it holds
the secret of his brilliance.
That creed and that brilliance are con-
veyed by the shaping of the word, the
sentence, the paragraph to the author’s
intent. When “Dom Casmurro” left the
author's hand, every nuance, every
modeling and shading, was provided as
its maker intended. But when the trans-"
lator takes hold to clothe such subtlety
in another language a new problem is
posed. Will what comes out be a true
English equivalent or merely a smudged
replica of the main design? The trans-
lator of “Dom Casmurro” is Helen Cald-
well, professor in the Classics Depart-
ment of the University of California,
and winner of a translation prize spon-
sored by three institutions, including the
Pan American Union. The translator of
“Epitaph for a Small Winner” was Wil-
liam Grossman, lawyer and economist,
teaching in the field of transportation at
New York University. For this reviewer,
the professional loses out to the ama-
teur: Dr. Grossman’s English caught the
mordant subtlety of the original; Miss
Caldwell’s missed the bite. .
New Book from Tawney
THE ATTACK AND OTHE
PAPERS. By R. H. Tawney. Harcourt
Brace and Company. $4.50.
Although not a major work, this col-
lection of essays and addresses is very
welcome, for we have had no book from
Professor Tawney for far too long a
time. Its subject matter is varied. The
title piece describes the author’s experi-
ences in the World War Y battle in
which he was seriously wounded. The
others include an impressionistic but
prophetic sketch of China in 1930, two
discussions of Labor Party policy which
are still apropos though written in 1934
“and 1944, two essays on the Webbs full.
of illuminating personal touches, and
two articles on Christianity and social
problems that present a trenchant chal-
lenge to the churches.
These papers may perhaps be de-
scribed as “‘occasional,’’ but they have —
none of the anemid that word some-
times implies. Writing a robust and
witty prose, drawing on rich stores of
historical knowledge, Professor Tawney
both informs and stimulates—in short, ~
educates. The temptation to quote is ir-
resistible, but one short passage must
suffice. “It would be optimistic to say
that, even today, a posture of deference
to wealth and social position, and of
kindly patronage to common men, is
universally recognized by Christians to
be the negation of Christianity which in
fact it is. The statement that ‘religion is
The NATION
~~ ~
1 Je area
sented, It is difficult to deny, however,
tha t a good many Christians continue to
behave as though it were precisely that
which they think religion ought to be.”
Reply to Fry
AN EXPERIENCE OF CRITICS by
Christopher Fry and The Approach to
Dramatic Criticism by Ivor Brown, W.
A. Darlington, Alan Dent, Harold Hob-
‘son, Philip Hope-Wallace, Eric Keown,
J. C. Trewin, and T. C. Worsley. Edited
by Kaye Webb. Oxford. $2.25.
Eight British drama critics reply to
complaints made by Christopher Fry at a
dinner of their Circle. Mr. Fry's phrases
are often witty, but their burden is fa-
miliar. Critics take too little pains to con-
sider what the playwright is getting at.
He needs encouragement rather than
snubbing. Understanding praise is best,
but praise of any kind would help. T. C.
_ Worsley of the New Statesman and Na-
tion makes the tartest reply. ““What au-
thors, actors, and producers want ts praise
_... What, on the other hand, they eed,
_ whether they know it or not, is dis-
crimination.” Most of the others content
themselves with the usual response:
(1) They write for playgoers not for
playwrights. (2) One man’s opinion, not
infallible judgment, is all they claim to
deal in. (3) They do the best they can.
Pleasant reading but not much new light
on a very dark subject. ;
f,
id or Ye por sy
ye a9 one Ty Sees me
of the people’ is naturally re-
’ Wa ss
rs
”
Dream of the Past
THE ECHOING GROVE. By Rosa-
mond Lehmann. Harcourt, Brace. $3.95.
An odd novel by the author of ‘Dusty
Answer” and “Invitation to the Waltz,”
not a success and not a failure, despite
the incomprehensible reviews it has re-
ceived. The strained and tortuous rela-
tionship of two sisters, which is compli-
cated by one sister’s love affair with the
other’s husband, is told through a series
of interrupted time-sequences and bro-
ken reveries. As in some of Virginia
Woolf's evetybody is seen
through somebody else’s eyes,.a type of
abstractionism and relativity in the tech-
nique of the novel that can be very
confusing. The background is a changing
England from that Edwardian scene of
security and affection—in which Miss
Lehmann is more at home—to the social
revolution of World War II, full of
sturdy determination to compensate for
a “‘lack of petrol.” The total effect is
that of an intricate and uncertain dream
of the past, sometimes nostalgic and
tender, at other times unpleasant and
harsh when it isn’t, as dreams can be,
downright tedious. Probably Miss Leh-
mann’s characters are not up to the level
of her own insights in the novel. Or
they are too old for her special capacity
to deal with the tremors and anguishes
of adolescence; one suspects that neither
maturity nor modern society is her cup
of tea.
novels,
Theater
TPXHOUGH "“Can-Can”’ (Shubert Thea-
= ter) suffers from what is known
‘in the trade as “book trouble,” it pro-
vides a pleasant sight and, for me at any
tate, an agreeable evening in the theater.
- Tam not so hard to please in musical
_ comedy as some of my more sophisti-
~ cated New York friends, who must have
everything trim, tight, and as packed
_ with stuff as a sausage is with meat.-In
fact, I am often inclined to shudder at
the severity of our musical-comedy con-
' noisseurs. They will not tolerate a dull
_ moment, a sprawling scene, a muffed
punch line, or the slightest decline in
Harold Clurman
zest. (Tickets at musicals come as high
as $7.20 a seat.) Still, many of these
harsh judges looked favorably upon
“Hazel Flagg,’ which I prefer to forget,
and at “Paint Your Wagon,” which, for
the most part, weighed heavily on my
patience. Perhaps they forgive all where
there is plenty of noise.
In musical comedy I seek only a few
good spots of sight and sound, an occa-
sion to smile, and some pleasant people
to watch. The purpose of the musical-
comedy form is genial: how can one te-
frain from greeting it with cordiality?
The spirit is what counts much more
“One of the Signs
of the World's
Coming of Age"
crucial problem of coordinating the eco-
nomic assistance policies of the nations
who give and those who receive and the
agencies that plan economic progress in
the lands that are aided by the U. N.
- and the U. S. A.”
PROFESSOR HERMAN FINER,
University of Chicago
“This Volume Is One of the Signs
of the World's Coming of Age”
“Tt is a study of man’s responsibility
for man; how duty is assumed and car-
ried out. There have to be nerve centers;
there has to be a kind of collective mind.
Here it is seen coming to its useful
shape, giving guidance and taking it,
making all work together. dt is an early
stage yet and there are many problems.
But the process has begun; and thia
book will contribute to its cumulation.”
Rexrorp G, TUGWELL
YOU MAY SEE THIS BOOK FOR
10 DAYS FREE EXAMINATION
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ING THE WoRLD’S STANDARD OF LIVING,
the publishers have arranged to make a
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for your copy today and you are free
to return it within 10 days for full
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44}
a
by Robert T. Mack, Jr.
a
Foreword by Quincy Wright
For the first time, and based on
actual records and documents,
a specialist in international af-
fairs -gives the full story of
what the underprivileged na-
tions are doing to develop their
own resources—how Point Four
and U. N. Technical Agencies
are helping — the tremendous
job that still remains to be done.
"Most Intelligent and
Incisive Analysis"
“This ia the most intelligent and incisive
analysis that has so far appeared on the
Sell hs ara
ee etiet ae eet
than the technique. When I like the
approach, I like the show.
In “Can-Can’” I particularly liked
Michael Kidd’s dance numbers, which
by themselves were (almost) worth the
price of admission. Kidd's talent is twin-
kling as well as energetic. No matter
how strenuous the type of movement
he may design, the effect has a friendly
prankishness, a kind of benevolent teas-
ing of good-natured and humorous mis-
chievousness, always fundamentally deli-
cate and light. In ‘‘Can-Can,” moreover,
the dancers he has chosen—beginning
with the attractive and versatile Gwen
Verdon—form a lovable and amazingly
agile group.
Not enough attention, it seems to me,
or enough tribute is paid to the brilliant
training and natural gifts which are
shown by the virtually anonymous young
people who make the ensemble of our
THE KEY 10 THE BIBLE
By Harry Waton
Author of “A True Monistic Philosophy”
“Philosophy of the Kabbalah”
A New Scientific Approach to the Bible
for Jews and Christians. The Bible is the
Book of history and reveals the destiny
of mankind, Understand it with the aid
of THE KEY TO THE BIBLE.
Price — $2.00
Published by
SPINOZA INSTITUTE OF AMERICA
P. O. Box 149—Murray Hill Sta. N.Y.C. 16
ISLAND PRESS COOPERATIVE, Inc.
is in a position to accept new manuscripts.
We. publish limited editions, selecting
“best books’ rather than ‘best sellers.'' We
invite talented writers and discriminating
readers to share the advantages of mem-
bership in a cooperative publishing house.
For details write to ISLAND PRESS CO-
OPERATIVE, Inc. 470 West 24 Street,
New York 11, N. Y.
Prof. Frederick Sehuman writes:
“a source of warmth and inspiration.”
For a LIFT and to Fight McCARTHYISM
Own and Play
MANDEL vs. McCARTHY
actual recording of the sensational
televised hearing
12 minutes — 78 r.p.m. — $2.00
FREEDOM DISCS
Box 182, Audubon Station, New York 32
ALFRED DRAKE
in
RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN’S
The King and I
A New Musical Play
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
Air-Cond. ST. JAMES THEA., W. 44th St.
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinces
Wednesday & Saturday at 2:25: $4.20 to 1.80.
musical shows. No other country pos-
sesses such groups in its popular theater.
In Europe these people would be re-
garded as artists; here, though they have
far more craft background and prepare |
themselves with infinitely more hard
work than most of our actors, they are
more or less taken for granted as part of
the new-fangled “chorus.” Dance direc-
tors like Agnes de Mille, Jerome Rob-
bins, Michael Kidd, and their teachers.
have made a real contribution to our
theater not only through the dances they
have staged but through the people they
have discovered and helped develop.
Kidd has been delightfully abetted
by Motley’s costumes. Jo Mielziner’s sets
are nice—they have a kind of softness
which suits a musical about old Mont-
martre; and on the stage floor itself
there are, besides the aforementioned
dancers; some good people. Lilo, the
leading lady, has that racy quality of
French gutter staunchness which is
brazen without being offensive. She ‘is,
however, stronger in comedy than in
sentiment. Hans Conried as a Bulgarian
sculptor with an unpronounceable name
has a sepulchrally striking mask which
he contrives to make funny through a
slyly comic nature, and there are at least
two girls in lesser roles—tall Shelah
Hackett and the dimpled redhead Jean
Kraeme—whose good looks are extreme-
ly important in a show of this -kind.
The fault with Abe Burrows’s book
is that his talent, which is essentially
that of a loose-jointed, slapdash joshing,
is not genuine in sentiment or sharp and
sustained enough for real satire. That is
why the semi-burlesque duel scene and
a scene in which a killing notice is read
to an artist are funny, while the main
plot—something about censorship in
Toulouse-Lautrec’s day, which is not en-
tirely sincere to begin with—is weak.
Cole Porter’s songs are occasionally
distinguished by a suave nostalgia, like
warmed over memories of kinder and
more gracious times and places, but
some of them seem short of breath and
invention, as if the musical impulse be-
hind them failed before the notes were
finished. (One of the songs—the sec-
ond-act tenor solo “It’s All Right with
Me’’—has a sweet feeling but does not
make a complete. impression because
Peter Cookson, who performs a decent
job throughout, does not possess sufh-
cient freedom as a stage singer.)
Yet none of these reservations,
though they may seem harsh in printed
statement, matter much: the show is
gratifying to one’s tired bones. Certainly,
I found it a warm send-off to my trip
to Tel-Aviv, Paris, and London, from
which I hope to speed my readers news
of the theater. :
Music
B. H. Haggin
HE simple good sense of the Metro-
politan’s decision to produce Mu-
sorgsky’s own “Boris Godunov” was so
extraordinary, in the light of the work’s
history, that perhaps this alone is enough
to be grateful for, and one shouldn’t
complain about the production’s inade-
quacies and defects: Certainly if the
choice were between this production and
none I would choose this one even with
its assembled odds and ends of scenery,
Yannopoulos’s ineffective staging, and
Stiedry’s ineffective conducting. But it
would have been nice if the Metropoli-
tan’s good sense had extended to realiz-
ing that this first presentation of one of
the® great masterpieces of the operatic
literature was more important than any-
thing the Metropolitan had done in these
last few years—more important than the
new productions of already known
works, more important possibly than
even the presentation of Stravinsky's
“The Rake’s Progress’ —and that it was
“Boris” rather than ‘‘La Forza del Des-
tino” that should have the scenery by
Eugene Berman, ‘‘Boris’’ as well as “The
Rake’s Progress’ that should have the
first-class stage director and conductor. ~
In other respects the Metropolitan did
‘ well by the work. It commissioned Karol
Rathaus to make a revision of the or-
chestration that would be a more effec-
tive realization of Musorgsky’s sonorous
image—with results that showed the
need of further revision: the orchestra
came over well at rehearsals in the empty
auditorium and when I sat upstairs at
- The Nation ©
’ he
ynstairs in nie “filled suditnwiecs” at
e last performance. For the title role
“it used two superb singing actors, Lon-
don and Siepi, of whom London had a
fresher and more beautiful voice that
was a little too light in color and weight,
Siepi a darker and deeper voice that was
more effective in the part. And the other
singers were good, with two exceptions:
Sigurd Bjoerling and Baccaloni, of
whom Baccaloni produced the worse
sounds, Bjoerling «the worse-mangled
English. As pronounced by London and
the others the English words came
through with remarkable clarity at the
. rehearsals and dress rehearsal and over
the air; and heard without effort they
were unobtrusive and acceptable. But
- Siepi’s words, with his accent and in the
filled auditorium, were difficult to under-
stand; and when the effort to do so drew
attention away from the music they be-
came an annoying distraction.
And finally I should add about
Stiedry that he produced excellent per-
‘formances of Haydn symphonies with
the New Friends of Music Orchestra
_ years ago, and an excellent performance
of Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” at the
Metropolitan, but that the effective pac-
ing and cohesive tension of those per-
- formances have been lacking in his per-
formances of Verdi and now of “Boris.”
As for the HMV recording of the
Rimsky version, when the original
“Boris” was, produced at Covent Garden
a few years ago I wrote to HMV sug-
"gesting that it be recorded, and received
one of those letters in which the writer
assumes that he—or in this case she—is
smart enough to contrive the evasions
‘and nonsense in the letter but the reader
is too stupid to see through them. That
is, after all the recordings of complete
operas HMV had done I was told that
to record a complete opera was ‘for-
midable to the point of impossibility.
And in due time HMV recorded the
complete “Boris” of Rimsky. It is sung
_ in Russian by excellent soloists and a
Russian chorus with the French National
‘| Radio Orchestra under Dobrowen’s di-
‘rection; and the defects in the perform-
ance are the many objectionable details
of tempo and dynamics in Dobrowen’s
‘treatment of the work, and the vocal dis-
ortion Christoff resorts to in the last
scene to differentiate between Boris and
a nen (he also sings Varlaam). The
Rae:
Soke piirs booklet gives a transliter-
ated version of the Russian text and an
English translation, oan by Louis Bian-
coli.
Prokofiev's last symphony, his No. 7,
was played by the Philadelphia Orches-
tra in New York; and everything in it—
whether the few insipidly sweet tunes of
the first and third movements, or the
waltz of the second movement, or the
characteristically lively and jocular finale
—shocked one with its lack ‘of vital im-
pulse and energy. It was undoubtedly
music written to please the simple-
minded; but it was as undoubtedly
music written by an enfeebled man.
Discovering in my program, before
the concert, that the Prokofiev was to be
followed by the Brahms Piano Concerto
No. 2, I reflected on the miseries of
being a member of the great Philadel-
phia Orchestra and having, year after
year, to play Brahms, Brahms, and more
Brahms. Then the concert began with
Ormandy’s transcription of Bach’s D
minor Toccata and Fugue for organ, and
I appreciated the miseries of being a
member of the great Philadelphia Or-
chestra and having to play Bach-
Ormandy under Ormandy. It was the
Stokowski style blown up to the point of
caricature, with an added blatant, brassy
vulgarity beyond belief; and if that is
what this wonderful orchestra was made
to do in England one can understand
the comments there about American
machine-tooled and chromium-plated
performances, which it must have given
some of our English cousins much satis- _
faction to be able to make.
Letters
Surgery the Only Cure
Dear Sirs: Congressional investigating
committees of the un-American variety
are a blot and a curse on the American
scene, not because of their techniques,
methods, or procedures, primarily, but
by the mere fact of their existence. It is
futile to wish that they would change
their techniques. These reprehensible
techniques are part and parcel of their
reason for being and of the motives of
the men who direct and serve on them.
It is ridiculous to suggest that their
procedure should be legal, for their
entire purpose makes this impossible.
Every move made by these commit-
tees, from their creation to the present
moment, has indicated that their purpose
is to limit the thought and action of
Americans, to force them to comply
with standards set by the committees.
No technical, methodological, or pro-
cedural change can make this purpose
any less destructive of the basic pre-
requisites of political freedom.
One ‘unfriendly’ witness, testifying
before a session of the House Un-Amer-
ican Activities Committee in Los
Angeles, remarked that the existence of
the committee was illegal. Mr. Tavenner,
the committee counsel, replied that the
committee had been authorized by Con-
gress. The witness’s reply was that the
committee had obviously succeeded in
confusing Congress along with some of
“this retort... Mr.
the rest of us. Whatever thé merits of
Tavenner seems to
imply that authorization by Congress
carries with it automatic constitutionality.
This is a grave error... .
Justice Holmes; who enunciated the
principle of “tolerance for the thought
we hate,’ would turn over in his grave
if he were aware of this colossal denial °
of all that he fought for in the frame-
work of constitutional law and civil
liberties. All of us had better turn over
before we go to the graveyard of moral
and intellectual idiocy being prescribed
for us by the investigators.
Evanston, Ill. ROBERT R. HUME
Let Us Praise, Too
Dear Sirs: Every channel of public in-
formation daily provides ample material
to merit our condemnation. But let us
also be vigilant in watching for items
which are praiseworthy. For example:
1. Senator Flanders of Vermont, in
a speech referring to the recent Siberian
plane incident, charged the U. S. Air
Force with conducting psychological
warfare on the people.
2. Headline: “Closing of Negro Col-
lege Suggested to Delaware.” (Recom-
mehdation of a committee set up by
Governor Boggs.)
3. The Very Reverend James A. Pike,
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, de-
clined an invitation to preach the bac-
443
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444
Crossword Puzzle Neate
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
ee |
ACROSS
1 and 9. On your feet they shouldn’t
be exactly monotonous. (3-4, 5)
5 See 10 across. 9 See 1 across.
10, 5 across, 20, 29. Implying a late ex-
ample of sausage, by the sound of it.
(3, 5, 2, 3, 2, 4)
11 See 5 down.
12 Stands for all but the first of well-
known poppers. (6)
15 37 might be reading this. (7)
16 Moral? Find it and others around.
17 and 31 down. Is she a fellow-
traveler? (4, 4)
19 Cyclops was one. (4)
21 Popular information, certainly not
of the high rolling country. (3-4)
22 See 18 down.
23 Check her out of 13. (4)
25 Common in both April and June. (7)
27 See 18 down. 29 See 10 across.
33 It’s an ill sorted arrangement, every-
thing included. (2, 3 )
84 35, not of a different name. (5)
35 A foil to the character of rustic
chivalry. (5)
36 No definite time in May does. (7)
37 It’s probably flat, like all feet! (7)
DOWN
See 18 down.
Winds carry the air along. (5)
See 32 down. 4 See 14 down.
and 11 across. Makes the note
sharp? These won’t! (9)
One of those Schopenhauer said are
always sociable. (6) .
There isn’t a questionable sound in
ANA &® AWNe
clas
Cee
i a
the try-out, but there’s something
fishy about it. (5) ,
8 Asparagus might be, but most other
food shouldn’t be at table. (7)
13 She’s found about an uprising of a
leftish movement in poetry. (7)
14 and 4. Where to sit at recess? (6, 5)
15 “Mat” is about the sort of word to
apply to alyssum. (7)
18,27, 22 across, 1 down. Is a retire-
ment plan introduced thus? (3, 1, 3,
2, 4 2515)
20 See 10 across.
22 This side is a bad line-up for any-
thing but tellers! (7)
24 French novelist-dramatist overpow-
ers one, and returns therein (7)
25 Created an expression which could
result in your getting misled. (6)
26 Found on the music rack, but not-as
a new arrangement. (6)
28 Limb appended to the gentleman of
6, 34, and 35. (5)
30 Refuse to be not as bad as it sounds.
31 See 17 across.
82 and 38. This should spell out the title.
(4, 2, 4)
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No, 515
ACROSS :—1 ALTERCATES; 10 MAHOMET;
11 GLOLTIS; 12 TRONCLAD; 13 IDEAL;
15 OVERT; 17 ARMATURES; 19 HELVE-
- TIAN; 21 EMBER; 23 ARENA; 24 ROOM
RENT; 27 DRAFTED; 28 OLD MAID; 29
FADE.
DOWN :—1 ARMS; 2 TO HORSE; 3 RAMON;
4 ANTALKALI; 5 EDGED; 7 OUTWEAR;
8 DISCLOSURE: 9, 30, 6, 18, 14, 16 NOW IS
THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN_ TO
COME TO THE AID OF THE PARTY; 20
LEEWARD; 22 BANDANA; 24- RADII; 25
RADIO; 26 IDOL. ‘
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's “ground rules.'’ Address
requests to Puzzle Dept., The Nation, 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, New York.
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degree from the University of the South
at Sewanee, Tennessee, because of its
segregation policy.
4. Headline: ‘Biddle Urges U. S. to
Sift McCarthy Acts” (with an uncom-
promisingly scathing bill of particulars).
5. Headline: “Lehman Denounces
Dulles’ Opposition to Genocide Pact.”
Common decency and justice demand
that the “good companions’ shall not
be left to feel that they stand alone.
Brooklyn MURIEL I. SYMINGTON
Self-Criticism
Dear Sirs: Briefly, I would like to_say
amen to the little causerie by authors
in the book section of the May 2 issue.
They all seemed to be rubbing their
eyes, amazed that anyone should care
what they thought.
Between the lines, and sometimes ex-
plicitly, what cries out is a lack of critt-
cism. There is nothing wrong with
American fiterature. that wouldn't be
cured by a more cohesive group. con-
sciousness.
This self-criticism is the first step to-
ward creating a fruitful criticism which
speaks from the same base as the writers.
Only this will break down the walls of
the cubicles and cotertes.
New York E. H. RUSSELL
Hats Off to Haggin!
Dear Sirs: I've read The Nation for al-
most fifteen years, and it is therefore
apparent that I enjoy it. During this
time, of course, I’ve read Mr. Haggin’s
weekly music columns, and I think it’s
time I write a note of appreciation to
you for his reviews. I think his
greatest value is his refusal to compro-
mise with mediocrity, and I’m hopeful
and sure that he will continue to use
his high standards of judgment.
My thanks to you for Te Natron in
general and for Mr. Haggin in -par-
ticular. CATHERINE WATKINS
Los Angeles
The Good Fight
Dear Sirs: Just a word of commendation
for your persistent opposition to censor-
ship, McCarthyism, race hatred, and
other forms of insanity prevalent in the
United States today. Your comments on
The Voice of America were especially
apropos. IRA D. CARDIFF
Yakima, Wash.
evga
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| ( PUBLIC LIBRARY ) |
I HE @ Wieliscame, Cale ~
——_——— ig
ee
—
Tap TOT ‘
e ™~ ]
Atomic ’
y
by Leland Olds 4
Franco’s Best Bet J. Alvarez del Vayo a
Victory in Atlanta LD. Reddick
| WEEK HE Ethics of John D. = Keith Hutchison | 1
A Review of Allan Nevins’s “Study in Power”
Around
“s the
USA
Victory in
Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia
FOR the first time since Reconstruction
days Negroes have been elected to pub-
lic office in Atlanta, Georgia. On May
13 Rufus E. Clement was elected to the
Board of Education, and A. T, Walden
and Miles G. Amos won places on the
In a state
where Herman Talmadge is Governor
this is a remarkable accomplishment.
Atlanta is booming—everybody has
a job—and becoming comparatively ur-
bane and sophisticated. The local Klan
has not been heard from in years. In
such an environment a Southern kind
of liberalism flourishes. Its adherents
range from professors and students at
the schools and colleges that do not
depend upon state funds to the “pro-
gressive’ jazz and entertainment crowd
that winks at Jim Crow laws. In between
are the religious groups and interracial
Organizations.
As in most Southern cities the news-
papers mold public opinion with respect
to race relations: Atlanta has no race-
baiting sheet. The two big dailies are
liberal in the sense that they are quiet
and polite about their pro-white views.
In the recent political campaign they did
not support any of the Negro candidates,
but afterward they praised those who had
won and congratulated the city and the
South in general for being so fine-
spirited.
Atlanta’s Negro community is un-
usually articulate and active. Negro-
owned and operated businesses are more
numerous and substantial than in most
places; among them are a member bank
of the Federal Reserve System, a million-
dollar savings and loan association, and
a multi-million-dollar insurance. com-
city Executive Committee.
*
At
pany. Home ownership is ‘high: The Ne-
gro Business League and the Negro.
Voters League are effective instruments
for community progress.
Last fall the Talmadge machine tried
to force through a so-called county-unit
amendment to the state constitution. The
maneuver was a power grab pure and
simple camouflaged as another effort to
“save the whites from the blacks.’’ It
was defeated at the polls, and Talmadge
was denounced by some thirty white
organizations, religious and civil, for in-
jecting the white-supremacy issue into
the campaign. This was a turning point
in local history. All the candidates in
the elections of a fortnight ago were
asked by the leaders of these same
organizations to refrain from raising the
race issue, and all complied.
With the help of the United States
Supreme Court, Atlanta Negroes have
so well established their right to vote
that four years ago white candidates for
city office learned to pronounce the word
“Negro” correctly and to address Ne-
groes as “Mr.” or “Mrs.”’ and presented
themselves at Negro mass-meetings as
believers in democracy and equal rights.
If this does not spell complete political
democracy, it at least spells progress.
NEGROES, however, still have to fight
for their rights every step of the way.
For example, when the city Executive
Committee learned that some Negroes
from the predominantly Negro third
ward planned to run for positions on
it, it promptly declared that no new
members would be elected at this time.
The Negro candidates then obtained a
court order requiring the Executive Com-
mittee to hold the election. Still de-
termined to bar Negroes from member-
ship,.the committee announced that an
election would be held but on new ward
lines; that is, the wards of heavy Negro
concentration would be “‘diluted”’ by the
addition of large blocks of white resi-
dents. As it turned out, however, the
delays and controversies proved so con-
fusing that one Negro candidate was not
opposed by anyone and one was opposed
only by another Negro.
When Rufus E. Clement, president of
Atlanta University, filed for the Board
of Education, the Executive Committee
was not disturbed. Membets of the
board are elected by the whole city, and
of Atlanta’s 110,000 registered voters
only 18,000 were Negroes. But Dr.
e
race of it. His able staff of advisers
mapped out a campaign that took him
to all parts of the city and by way of
radio and-TV into almost every home.
Clement was ae ule an
His opponent, J. H. Landers, was so’
certain that the white voters would never
choose a Negro over a white man for
any public office that he did not bother
to campaign at all. The Executive Com-
mittee, however, with its ear closer to
the ground, heard ominous rumblings .
as the candidates came down the home
stretch. So two days before the election:
it called a special meeting to consider
disqualifying Dr. Clement on the ground
that he was a Communist or Communist-
inspired. Dr. Clement learned of the
committee's intentions through friends |
and went before it prepared to defend
his record. After grilling him for hours,
the committee by a five-to-four decision *
ruled that he could not properly be
disqualified.
Both the Constitution and the Journal
denounced the attempted smear as “dirty
politics." The Daily World, the Negro
paper, in a front-page editorial ‘de-
clared that “now we must elect Dr.
Clement.”
office by 22,259 to 13,936 votes, topping
his opponent in forty of the fifty-eight
precincts. When Mr. Landers was asked
why he had not put up more of a fight
against Clement, all he said was,
didn’t think that they were ready for
this.” Apparently they were.
The election of A. T. Walden and
Miles G. Amos to the city Executive
Committee puts them on what is in
reality the Democratic Party’s Executive
Committee of Atlanta. Through them
Negro Democrats of Georgia expect to
become integrated into the regular
Democratic Party orgenigeos of the
city and the state.
The influence of the Negro voter was
felt all along the line—in the elections
for the Board of Aldermen, for the —
other members of the Board of Educa-
tion, and for the mayoralty. In most
instances the candidates indorsed by the .
Negro Voters League won. Negro
voters gave 88 per cent of their votes .
to Hartsfield, the successful candidate for
mayor. This turned out to be a bit more
than the margin of victory.
L. D, REDDICK
L. D. Reddick is professor of history and 4
chief librarian at Atlanta University.
fae
ee
‘ =
Ts
He was in fact swept into -
=
2 we rT Mitre s: ——S ow.
; al Py re ae °
he olume 76 Nisbet 22°
New York, Saturday, May 30, 1953
The Shape of Things
Undermining the Public Schools
On July 13, 1948, the Board of Education voted to
ban The Nation from the public high schools of New
York. Our spokesmen insisted at the time that the issue
was an incident in a struggle for control of the largest
public-school system in the country, one with a larger
enrolment than some forty-odd state systems.
Any doubts as to the correctness of these warnings
must surely have been removed last week when the Board
of Higher Education, top policy body for New York’s
municipal college system, elected Joseph B. Cavallaro as
its new chairman. In his first interview Mr. Cavallaro had
high praise for the McCarthy; Velde, and Jenner investi-
gations, insisted that there should be “more religious
emphasis” in the colleges. :
le A prominent Catholic layman Pesca to the board
| in 1946 by Mayor William O’Dwyer, Mr. Cavallaro has
|
four children enrolled in parochial schools, although he
himself attended public schools—“segretfully” he adds.
His elevation to the chairmanship by a vote of eleven to
‘nine, gives Catholic pressure groups the same dominance
of the Béard of Education (the elementary and high
schools), where Mr. George A. Timone, another Catholic
appointee of Mayor O’Dwyer (1946), is the dominant
power and chairman in fact if not in name. That
_ individual Catholic leaders have loyally supported the
: New York public schools should not blind voters and
taxpayers there, or elsewhere, to the consequences which
| - ensue when a pressure group which has never bothered
| to conceal its dislike of public education acquires control
- of a school board.
$$$
_ Absent-Minded Friends
;
|
| Primary responsibility for the New York situation,
. ae ty
| however, probably rests not with Catholic pressure
| groups but with the absent- minded friends of public
|
~ education. Thus the New York Times, which noted with -
genuine “apprehension” Mr. Cavallaro’s praise of Velde,
Jenner, and McCarthy, blandly states that the “McCarthy
type of investigation” has not yet been used in New
York. But on March 26 the Times carried a full account
-
oe LVatlon
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
of the New York schools, who had journeyed to Wash-
ington to praise the Congressional inquisitors and deliver
to them in person a casualty list of recent “purges.” In
the December 27 issue of this magazine Broadus Mitchell
pointed out that the McCarran committee’s purge of the
New York schools was essentially an “inside job” which
had been instigated by elements anxious to acquire con-
trol of the schools.
The banning of The Nation was merely an incident in
this struggle for control of New York’s public schools—
_ including its municipal colleges—which has culminated
in a clear-cut victory for Catholic pressure groups and
their City Hall allies.
We Can’t Have Everything
For the harassed Republican leadership in Washing-
ton, the campaign chickens are beginning to come home
to roost, and canny politicoes like Senator Taft and
Speaker Martin are running for cover. General Eisen-
hower promised the undeliverable during the campaign,
the time for a pay-off is coming, and nobody is happy.
The General simply promised too much: world peace,
adequate defense, lower taxes, a lower cost of living, a
batanced budget, and no reduction in the government's
“social services.” It can’t all be done, and the bright pro-
gram is now colliding with a few of the hard facts of
life. The President handed the bad news to his Admin-
istration via the radio, and Senator Taft promptly entered
Walter Reed hospital. for a medical check-up, while
Speaker Martin, taking a sidelong glance at the request
for continuance of the excess-profits tax, announced,
dead-pan, that the House Ways and Means Committee
will proceed with it “in the regular way.”
The “regular way” ought to be interesting. The com-
mitfee chairman, Congressman Daniel A. Reed of New
York, and most of the fifteen-man G.O.P. majority on
the committee, had just recorded themselves as being
solidly in favor of killing the excess-profits tax—which
they can do by just doing nothing—when the President
spoke. Rather plaintively, Mr. Reed remarked that he did
not think the Republicans ought to extend oppressive
taxes like this “when our party has pledged to reduce
them,” and most Republicans in Congress think he has a
point. Actually, the President has no chance to get his
tax program through unless the Democrats come to his
rescue. The Democrats are well aware of this, and are
eee
(Ub Bas ge
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In This iene
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 445
Bonn, Burmuda, and Points East
by Freda Kirchwey 447
ARTICLES
Grab for the Atom:
I, Big Business Moves In
by Leland Olds 449
Franco's Best Bet: Washington and War
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 452
Asia’s Revolutions:
Meanings for the West
by Aneurin Bevan 454
Defense or Depression:
Is There an Alternative?
by Arnold A. Rogow 455
Freedom of the Printed Word
by J. R. Wiggins 457
BOOKS
The Ethics of John D.
by Keith Hutchison 458
New Books in Brief 459
FILMS by Manny Farber 461
MUSIC by B. H. Haggin 462
ART NOTES htt eS
LETTERS 463
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 517
by Frank W. Lewis 464
AROUND THE U.S. A.
Victory in Atlanta
by L. D. Reddick opposite 445
a TTT
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey
Carey McWilliams
Lillie Shultz
Victor H. Bernstein
J. Alvarez del Vayo
——ooo
™ Editor and Publisher
Editorial Director
Director, Nation Associates
Managing Editor
Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, N. ve
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New Yerk, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising’
and Circulation Representatives for Continental ‘Europe: Publicitas.
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Three
years $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $l.
Change of Address: Three weeks’ notice is required for change of
address, which cannot be made without the old address as well as the
new.
Information to Librarles: The Nation 1s tndexed in Readers’ Gulde to
Periodical Literature. Book Review Digest, Index to Labor Articloa,
Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index.
446
- Me b * vv : ae ate - Fh mt ’ aie) Nosh
, s res toe
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es Ee the a ia
eg A oe
taking a short breather to enjoy the pleseul! spectacle of
Republicans sweating under the unaccustomed burden of
being obliged to act like a responsible political party.
Pro-Economy or Anti-F. D. R.?
The Republican leaders are caught in an odd fix. They
believed their own propaganda, and they wholly forgot
that the campaign to reduce taxes and spending was
originally launched as a means to an end rather than as
an end in itself.
Propaganda held that high spending and high taxes
came because feckless Democrats, unused to handling
large affairs, were being very wasteful;-a business-like
Administration would remedy all that. So now we have
a business-like Administration, composed (almost exces-
sively) of men skilled in handling very large affairs in-
deed, yet the millennium has not come; and the real trou-
ble is the dawning realization that you can’t go on doing
all the things the previous Administration did without
spending money—and collecting taxes. The Korean war
costs money; so does national defense, and aid to our
allies, and the farm program, and social security, and all
of the other things which, as the Republican orators in-
sisted, would be done much better by Republicans. Thus,
as an example, a worried House of Representatives
actually votes $12 million more money in the agricultural-
appropriation bill than the Department of Agriculture
asked for. (Republican Congressman Usher Burdick of
North Dakota warned tartly that “you might just as
well legislate yourselves out of this House” as to cut
soil-conservation payments. ) \
The real trouble is very old. For two decades the
demand for a balanced budget and lower taxes was
actually an indirect way of attacking the social and eco-
nomic reforms of the Roosevelt and Truman administra-
tions. If that point had ever been faced honestly, the
Administration could be honest today; but it wasn’t. So
the President tries to still the waves which he himself
helped ‘to raise; and Defense Secretary Wilson tries man-
fully to persuade Senators that less money for defense
somehow means more airplanes and fighting power; and
diametrically opposed campaign pledges, none of which
can possibly be disowned, meet head-on in a Congress
which is already beginning to worry about the next
national election.
The Return of William Oatis
William Oatis’s. return proved an anti-climax to the
more rabid sections of our press. He denied that the
Communists gave him drugs, except for illness; he ad-
mitted he had been in touch with our Embassy in Prague
(all foreign correspondents are always in touch with their
Embassies); he denied that he was brow-beaten, btain-
washed, mesmerized, or in other ways tortured; worst of
a. SS
Pee Wee ke te te eee.
all, he admitted freely that he had been arrested in the
first place because he broke the laws of Czechoslovakia.
As things turned out, he would have served the cause—
if not himself—better had he stayed in jail.
It is true that Oatis has been talking guardedly enough
since his return to make it clear that he is not now telling
all he knows. Why should he? He is an Associated Press
man, and one of the canons of American journalism is
that an AP man never tells a UP man anything if he can
help it. .
The Czech authorities may have acted stupidly and
inhumanly in jailing Oatis, but they acted legally and not
at all mysteriously. Even their censorship laws are not
quite so esoteric as we would like to imagine. Any corre-
spondent who has worked in the Middle East—or in
some Latin American countries—knows how quickly he
can get into trouble simply by asking a few embarrassing
questions or filing a story critical of the regime.
As for our own country, a few years ago there occurred
the Amerasia case, in which a group of writers was
threatened with jail for doing precisely what Oatis did:
passing around material which, though easily obtained,
was regarded as “‘classified” by our government. It is a
‘tribute to our judicial system—and perhaps a measure of
the. difference between it and the Czechs’—that in the
end the Amerasia people were freed. But it is legitimate
to wonder what would have happend in that case had it
occurred today, in the atmosphere created by McCarthy-
‘ism. ;
We can blame the Czechs for having jailed Oatis
instead of doing the humane thing and deporting him.
If we criticize—legitimately—their attitude towards a
free press, we ought to have a little criticism left over for
the direction in which we ourselves are moving. There
are more .ways of intimidating the press than by putting
newsmen in jail, as Senator McCarthy is taking great
pains to point out.
| Remember F. E. P. C., Mr. President?
_$ While Eisenhower was campaigning, he frowned upon
any federal fair-employment-practices legislation but said
he would encourage such laws at state level. That was
also the line taken by the Republican platform writers.
» ~ But if the President has been doing any encouraging in
_ this direction, few have been listening—least of all his
| Supporters. Of fourteen states, all pro-Eisenhower last
November, in which proposals for new or stronger fair-
employment legislation are under consideration, only
Kansas has taken a progressive step, albeit an exceed-
ingly small one. The Republican legislature in Cali-
_ fornia, home of Vice-President Nrxon and the pro-Eisen-
hower Senator Knowland, has done nothing. Neither
has Pennsylvania, another key Eisenhower state with a
Republican legislature and governor, despite a recent
feport by the Governor's Commission on Industrial Re-
; a M ay 30, 1953
mrs
}
i
As oe gash
ig he gi ies J at
Jations which showed employment discrimination in 75
to 90 per cent of the firms surveyed.
~ Certainly the President should have been able to do
something in Michigan, which went all the way for.
Eisenhower “liberalism.” The automobile industry con-
tributed lavishly to his campaign, and key Michiganders
—Wilson, Dodge, Summerfield—have risen to important
national posts. Moreover, Michigan’s Democratic gov-
ernor, G. Mennen Williams, long an advocate of
F. E. P. C., had offered to support any adequate fair-
employment measure, whether sponsored by Republicans
or Democrats. But recently the period for reporting bills
out of Michigan’s legislative committees quietly came to
an end—and no F, E. C. P. bill was reported out.
How does the President plead to this indictment? .
That he no’longer controls his state machines? Or that
he is back-tracking on his campaign pledges?
Bonn, Bermuda, and
Points East
THE cold war seems to have settled down into a contest
of “initiatives.” First Malenkov got the ball and kept it
for a while, making considerable gains. Then Eisenhower
captured it in his speech offering to discuss differences—
when and if. Ike tossed it to Dulles, who fumbled it
badly; whereupon Churchill saved it for our side by a
bold bid for early, top-level East-West talks—without
whens or ifs. But the teamwork was atrocious: no coordi-
nation among the Western contestants; Ike’s~ boys, in
particular, running all over the field. So Ike came up
with a call for Western three-power talks to iron out dif-
ferences. The ball is his again but anybody who knows
the rudiments of diplomatic football realizes that Ike is
trying to stall: to keep the initiative but not do anytHing
with it—just fool around until the other side gets tired
or makes a misplay. The chances are against such tactics
working. British and French members of the team want
to use the initiative to get a decision. That is Ike’s
dilemma. The Bermuda play gives him nothing more
than a “time out.”
- The issues in the cold war cannot be stalled out of
existence. Even in the unlikely event that the Russians
obliged with a couple of the “deeds” the President asked
for—a cease-fire in Korea, the peace treaty with Austria
—the big issues loom just ahead, and on these the differ-
ences that separate us from our allies are only a little
shallower than those between us and Moscow. The big
issues are China and the rest of Asia; Germany and the
rest of Europe.
For this country the Korean war began as a limited
action to check aggression; it has become a campaign in
an all-out struggle to end Communist power in Asia. If
this is not its officially admitted purpose, the various state-
447
age
ments made by President Eisenhower and Secretary
Dulles—not to mention the generals who have com-
manded the U. N. forces in Korea and the new head of
the Joint Chiefs of Staft—add up to something very like
it. The policy of the Administration in Korea and For-
mosa and Indo-China differs from that of the generals
and the China Lobby in tempo rather than intent.
The only terms on which the Administration could
now—or soon—reach a settlement in Asia are terms it
has explicitly rejected. As a minimum it would have to
agree to admit the Peking government to the U. N. in
place of Chiang’s Formosa regime as soon as an armistice
is arranged, or at least as part of the political settlement
to follow an armistice. But if the United States should
agree to this, it could no longer apply money and mili-
tary strategy to the weakening and ultimate overthrow of
Mao’s government: no more embargo, no blockade, no
training and arming of Nationalist commando units.
And if the Chinese Communists were admitted to the
U. N. and took their seat in the Security Council,
Chiang’s regime would not merely lose its present insub-
stantial claim to be the legitimate government of China
but would also lose all right to rule the island of For-
- mosa. The United States, as party to the Cairo conven-
tion promising the restoration of Formosa to China,
could continue to recognize Chiang’s control there only
in yiolation of its word and defend him only by using the
unlawful means of armed intervention. These are some
of the problems the Administration would like to dodge
as long as it can.
BUT SINCE no political settlement in Asia will be pos-
sible unless Communist China is taken into the United
Nations, it is certain that Mr. Churchill must intend to
try to induce Mr. Eisenhower to pay that price. For a po-
litical settlement is obviously the aim of Churchill and
the French, in Asia as in Europe.
On Europe the division between Washington and its
chief allies is less clear-cut, deeper at some points, rela-
tively slight at others. The economic tensions are sharper
than the political ones. But in the end they overlap and
become a single issue which was neatly summed up from
Europe’s point of view by Howard K. Smith last Sunday.
Europeans, he said, recalling the pre-Eisenhower promise
to ‘‘negotiate from strength,” now fear that the United
States is abandoning both ends of the formula. If the
West is strong enough to bargain on equal terms—and
Mr. Dulles has referred to Moscow’s recent moves as a
“peace defensive” forced by the growing power of the
West—then why does Washington shy off discussions?
And if it is not strong enough, why is the Administra-
tion lopping five billion dollars from the defense budget
and reducing foreign aid by more than two billion—
while maintaining trade policies that will reduce still
further the economic, and consequently the military,
448
power of the West? The fact that ee Sbtpasisedartt
rs
een
7am
are partly the product of fierce disagreements inside the
Republican ranks rather than of Administration planning
does not reassure Europeans. They may have theif own
troubles with recalcitrant legislatures—as witness the
current crisis in France—but if the Eisenhower govern-
ment claims the right to direct, and largely dictate, West-
ern policy, it cannot afford to put om a spectacle of
paralysis in the face of pressure from within. As the con-
servative London Spectator remarked, ‘There is a poison
at work in the United States” that must be eradicated or it
will become dangerous—dangerous to other nations, that .
is. The power of the extremists is becoming decisive in
foreign policy, and the grim fact will rise up to embarrass
the President when he meets his European colleagues
in Bermuda,
BUT THE CHIEF issue at the coming meeting will be
the possibility of talking to the Russians about a European
settlement—and this means talking about Germany. And
the first step must be to find out whether the United
States is willing to have an agreement on Germany on
any available terms. At present this seems unlikely. What
the United States would like is a unified Germany based
on free elections but committed in advance to association —
with the Western bloc. And it wants a European army
incorporating German divisions without regard to Ger-
man unification or a negotiated settlement with Russia.
The desire of most Europeans for a settlement with Rus-
sia that will eliminate the need of German integration
with the West seems sheer romance to Washington—on
that one point there is little or no difference of opinion
among Republican factions or between the parties. But
Europe’s desire is bound to be expressed at Bermuda be-
cause Britain and France want to negotiate with Moscow
on realistic terms, and they know that whatever conces-
sions on Germany the Russians may be prepared to make
they will make 7m order to keep an armed Germany out
of the Western alliance. Churchill hinted at this in his
speech when he suggested that a new “Locarno Pact”
guaranteeing Western Russia and Germany from each
other might one day be arranged.
What the Prime Minister wanted the President hae
successfully forestalled—an early exploratory meeting
with the Russians without too many previous talks and
too precise an agenda, a meeting that could feel out the
ground and perhaps achieve some piecemeal agreements.
But that sort of informal get-together could have been
useful only if there had been initial unity among the
Western allies. Since there is no unity, the Bermuda
meeting makes sense, Russia naturally regards this as a
hostile -ganging-up against itself. Perhaps it should wait.
and see. Bermuda at least offers an opportunity for the
advocates of negotiation to regain the initiative.
FREDA KIRCHWEY ~
The NATION
[This is the first of a series of articles
on one of the most challenging prob-
lems of our time, written by a man who
is generally considered the country’s
foremost expert on public power, Leland
Olds was a member of the Federal
Power Commission for ten years during
the Roosevelt administrations—nearly
half that time as chairman. He has rep-
resented the United States at various in-
ternational conferences dealing with
_ public power and has long been asso-
ciated with the power aspects of the St.
Lawrence Seaway project. His second
article will appear next week. |
THIS is a year of decisions which will
profoundly affect our participation in the
atomic age. The drive to amend the
Atomic Energy Act, which established
the Atomic Energy Commission, has
been in full swing for more than a year.
Everything now appears set for its te-
consideration by the Congressional Joint
Committee on Atomic Energy.
The first steps were taken in the Tru-
man Administration. In August, 1952,
the Congressional Joint Committee ad-
vised the Atomic Energy Commission of
its intentidn to hold hearings during the
next session of Congress. Gordon Dean,
chairman of the commission, replied that
the question of industrial participation
in the atomic-energy program was being
studied and that the commission’s policy
report would be ready for Congress by
the first of the year. The report is now
ready, but committee hearings have been
delayed. The indications are that the
: Eisenhower Administration will ask Con-
gress to let private industry have a bigger
. share in atomic-energy development.
The Atomic Energy Act, which be-
came law in 1946, makes the Atomic
Energy Commission responsible for the
direction of the entire _atomic-energy
program. The commission owns the
plants and raw materials; in fact} the
government has the exclusive right to
own not only fissionable material, that is,
all material from which energy can be
released by splitting atoms, but nuclear
May 30, 1953
oo
rs iA »
ee
” ? ns * * ~.
“*
reactors, or plants for producing fission-
able materials or atomic weapons. The
act forbids the granting of private pat-
ents in certain parts of the atomic-energy
field.
As the law stands today, new discov-
erties in the field of atomic development
become public property. In a sense, then,
atomic energy, as a vastly important new
resource, is part of the public domain,
like the public lands or the water power
of streams, which are constitutionally
under the jurisdiction of Congress. It
represents a public investment some 400
times as great as the Louisiana Purchase.
The vital question before the people to-
day is how this new resource, with its
tremendous possibilities for our civiliza-
tion, can best be developed and utilized.
When Congress acted in 1946 to give
the government a monopoly in the field,
security reasons unquestionably carried
great weight. So we find that the act it-
self contemplates a time when its terms
will be reconsidered. In fact, Congress
specifically directed the Atomic Energy
Commission to advise the President and
Congress when nuclear-power develop-
ment had reached such a stage that sup-
plemental legislation was necessary or
desirable.
IN DECEMBER, 1952, as a basis for
the coming review, the Joint Com-
mittee on Atomic Energy issued a
document compiled by its staff contain-
ing some 400 ‘pages of material culled
from a wide range of addresses and re-
ports. It includes no conclusions or rec-
ommendations, but material is summa-
rized to suggest the current answers to
such questions as: what is meant by
atomic power? who is responsible for
its development? why*is there no atomic-
power plant under construction today?
who should own atomic-power plants
and development facilities and why?
how should atomic-power development
be financed? what is the public interest
in atomic-power development? what are
its defense aspects? What is the effect of
the patent situation on atomic-power de-
ie I. Big Business Moves In . . by Leland Olds
velopment? what are the secrecy and
safety problems? how might legislative
changes affect atomic-power develop-
ment? what is retarding it?
The Atomic Energy Commission is
reported to be ready to recommend a
revision of the law so as (1) to per-
mit the licensing of American concerns
to possess the quantities of uranium they
would need to produce electric power;
(2) to permit the licensing of such
private firms to produce plutonium and
other fissionable material as by-products
in connection with their use of atomic
energy to produce electric power; (3) to
permit the government to make long-
term contracts for the purchase of plu-
tonium in order to assure private com-
panies using uranium to make electric
power a market for this by-product; and
(4) to protect private patent rights of
companies doing research and experi-
mental work in developing electric power
from the atom. The grave question that
now arises is whether there is enough
public understanding of the issues in-
volved and of the significance of what
is going forward to protect the public
interest in this legislative proceeding. To
test your own understanding of the
matter, try to formulate answers to the
questions suggested by the joint com-
mittee’s publication. Or get a group of
your friends together some evening and
see if they can agree on answers.
The gravity of the situation was em-
phasized by Oscar M. Ruebhausen, chair-
man of the New York Bar Association’s
committee on atomic energy, in an
address to a meeting of the National
Industrial Conference Board om atomic
energy in industry in October, 1952.
“There is today no substantial body of
informed public opinion,” he warned,
“that -can be drawn upon to formulate
an atomic program for the future. There
are, it is true, scattered throughout the
country, both in government and out of
it, groups of able men qualified to pass
on atomic problems but never in the
history of our democracy have we been
compelled to rely on so few to debate
449
Se ap
es
problems so vast. There is a critical need
for informed public thinking on these
questions” (italics mine).
The critical need for informed publi¢
thinking is accentuated by the fact that a
small group of very well-informed men,
representing ‘the private-power utilities
and their industrial allies, knows exactly
how it wants the Atomic Energy Act
changed and is well organized to obtain
these changes. Furthermore, it is mobiliz-
ing business behind its drive. One of
the most members of the
group is Walker L. Cisler, president and
general manager of the Detroit Edison
Company, which together with the Dow
Chemical Company has been working
for some time under supervision of the
Atomic Energy Commission on the gen-
eration of electricity with nuclear energy
as fuel. Speaking at the American
Management Association’s retent con-
ference, Mr. Cisler outlined his proposed
amendments to the Atomic Energy Act.
These would permit private enterprise
(1) to build, own, and operate atomic-
energy plants; (2) to use, sell, and dis-
tribute end-products, such as plutonium
‘and radioactive isotopes, made in atomic-
energy facilities; (3) to acquire, own,
and dispose of source materials, such
as uranium and thorium; (4) to obtain
licenses from the Atomic Energy Com-
mission, subject only to. maintaining
standards and conditions set up under
the act; and (5) to obtain normal pat-
ent and trade-secret protection, subject
only to full disclosure to the commission
for its own use in protecting national!
security.
To get some idea of the significance
of these proposals, we should look back
six years to a day in July, 1947, when
Mr. Cisler appeared in Washington be-
fore the House Interstate and Foreign
articulate
450
~*~ >”
iene RY
Commerce Committee and asked virtual ©
dismantlement of another important
piece of federal legislation. At that time
he wanted Congress to amend the Fed-
eral Power Act so that his company and
a lot of other large power companies
could engage in business across state
lines without coming under Federal
Power Commission regulation. He was,
in effect, laying down the terms on which
utilities were willing to give the people
the advantages of modern power pool-
- ing, which he described as more eco-
nomical use of power plants, greater
reliability of service, and strengthening
of the national security. The price the
people must pay for these advantages
was to grant the companies immunity
from federal regulation,
So the amendments now proposed
may be taken as the asking price of
the private power industry for pushing
work on the development of atomic
power. If made the basis for changes
in the law, they would have the effect
of turning the atomic industry, lock,
stock, and barrel, over to big. business.
Note particularly the narrow limitation
proposed on the regulatory jurisdiction
of the Atomic Energy Commission and
the unlimited right to the monopoly
privileges of patents.
DURING THE PAST YEAR, in increas-
ing volume, the business chorus has been
proclaiming this coming shift of atomic
industry from government to private
enterprise. A typical voice in the chorus
is that of S. B. Roboff of Sylvania Elec-
tric Products. Addressing the National
Industrial Conference Board’s forum,
Mr. Roboff forecast the day when so
many privately owned reactors would be
producing power, plutonium, and _ iso-
topes that it would be uneconomical for
the government to build and operate re-
actors for the production, ultimately, of
only one of these. He continued: “If to
the general reactor program we added
companies which are producing with
private capital reactor materials, nuclear
instruments, fuels;.and other supplemen-
tary materials, the need for relying upon
government sources for these materials
would be removed and we would have,
in effect, atomic energy on a private-
enterprise basis.”
Some three months later David E,
Lilienthal, former chairman of the Ten-
nessee Valley Authority and the Atomic
M <i atin. haat ee le ee
Energy Commission, and now chairt
of the Attapulgas Minerals and ‘Chen |
icals Corporation, said amen to this
suggestion. He thought that “‘the-pro-
duction of fissionable material contrib-~
utes a good place to start shifting atomic
energy over to the competitive system
by steps.” After a transition period he
foresaw the time when even the Atomic —
Energy Commission’s famous Oak Ridge
and Hanford plants could go out of
public ownership. He summed up the
attitude of business when he said that.
he did not want to see “‘our American
competitive industrial system and our
educational system as the first casualties
of the atom.”
Within the last few weeks the Atomic
Industrial Forum, Inc., has: made its
bow. Walker L. Cisler, according to the
Electrical World, is its “guiding spirit.”
This organization is designed to per-
form for the atomic-energy industry
the same functions that the Edison
Electric Institute performs for the elec-
tric-power industry. Clearly, a parallel
organization to protect and promote the
great consumer interest in atomic power
is urgently called for.
But this is not the only evidence that
the private-power monopoly is a jump
ahead of consumers in the race to con-
trol atomic power. On April 11 the
Atomic Energy Commission announced
conclusion of. an agreement under which
two companies serving the utility in-
dustry will make a study aimed at indus-
trial production of atomic power in the
next few years. These companies are the
Pioneer Service and Engineering Com-
pany, consultant to the electric utilities
in all phases of the power business, and
the Foster Wheeler Corporation of New
York, manufacturer of equipment for
the power, oil-refining, and chemical in-
dustries. They are added to the four
utility-industrial teams already at work.
Under the agreement with the commis-
sion these companies, at their own ex-
pense, will make a one-year’ study to
determine (1) the feasibility of their
designing, building, and operating an
atomic-power plant; (2) the economic
‘and technical aspects of building such a
plant in the next few years; and (3)
whether the project will require any re-
search and development beyond that al-
ready done by the government.
The two firms will also make recom-
mendations to the Atomic Energy Com-
The Nation
*.*
Po oars
+ ie eeee a.
¥
tose
n on indus ty's role in undertaking
carrying out the power project.
- This will serve as the focus of industry's
participation in the next stages of atomic-
power development. But since the as-
signment involves matters of vital in-
terest to the people, who have invested
billions of dollars in the atomic program
and are ultimate consumers of the power,
the situation calls for a similar con-
tract between the Atomic Energy Com-
mission and an organization provided
with sufficient funds to be able to repre-
sent all consumer groups in preparing
the necessary studies, reports, and recom-
mendations.
IN THIS CONNECTION it should not
be forgotten that publicly owned electric
utilities in the United States, excluding
those owned by the federal government,
represent an investment of nearly two
and a half billion dollars and supply
some 3,700,000 customers with over
forty billion kilowatt-hours per year. In-
cluding rural electfic cooperatives, the
people’s investment in customer-owned
power systems totals nearly five billion
dollars and provides \more than seven
million customers with electric service.
This great area of local autonomy in
power supply cannot be overlooked in
any move to revise national atomic-
energy policy.
- Last February the American Public
Power Association, trade organization of
the country’s municipally owned electric
systems, asked the Atomic Energy Com-
mission for permission to participate in
the atomic-power program on a basis
of equality with privately owned systems.
Subsequently, on April 14, their Atomic
- Power Policy Committee, headed by
‘ Samuel B. Morris, general manager of
the City of Los Angeles Department of
Water and Power, clarified the associa-
- tion’s position on the Atomic Energy
. Act ina letter to Chairman Dean of the
commission.
Its estimate of the existing situation
_ was amplified in a report to the associa-
tion’s national convention: in Boston,
presented by Mr. Morris on May 13. The
association considers the problem of
government policy in the atomic-energy
field ‘from the viewpoint of protecting
the government’s interest and of making
available to the maximum number of
' people in the United States the benefits
which may accrue from development of
| May 30, 1993
we eS.
-
this new source of energy.”’ To this end
it indorses the provisions of the present
Atomic Energy Act and urges that any
amendments provide safeguards against
monopolistic advantages for private
groups.
The urgency of such organized effort
to have the public represented in the
forthcoming reappraisal of the law is
apparent when Barron’s weekly, authen-
tic voice of Wall Street finance, head-
lines a front-page story in its March 2
issue: ‘Power for the Future: It Should
Be Freed from the Legacy of the Past.’
The story deals with the announced
intention of the Westinghouse Electric
Corporation to build a multimillion-dol-
lar atomic-energy equipment plant near
Pittsburgh and with the company’s state-
ment that
pression of our belief that private enter-
prise will become an increasingly im-
portant factor in the future development
of nuclear energy.”
Barron’s hails this as representing ‘‘a
new post-election high in corporate con-
fidence in the free economy.” The leg-
acy from the past, from which. the
“power of the future’’ should be freed,
is not the watering of capital stock or
the manipulation of education and
politics by the private-power industry,
exposed by the Federal Trade Commis-
sion some twenty years ago. Rather,
according to Barron’s, it is “the old
‘socializing’ legislation looking toward
extension of public power’ and, more
particularly, the so-called ‘‘preference
clause,” which is referred to as “‘prob-
ably the most arbitrary symbol of the
clutch of the public-power philosophy
upon the legislative mind.” The “'prefer-
ence clause,” granting public systems a
prior claim on federal power, .has been
Congressional policy since the Reclama-
tion Act of 1906. It appears in one form
or another in the Federal Power Act, the
Tennessee Valley Authority Act, the
Bonneville Act, the Rural Electrification
Act, and the Flood Control Act of 1944.
It simply protects the people’s own local
electric systems in the right to obtain
power from public resources, free from
dependence on private monopoly as
middleman.
. Thus it becomes crystal clear that the
alleged drive to eliminate federal mo-
nopoly and open the door to private
monopoly in the development of atomic
power is part of the larger private-power
“this investment is an ex-
campaign against the federal power
policy which has come down by un-
broken evolution from the birth of the
conservation movement in the days of
President Theodore Roosevelt and his
“great forester,” Gifford Pinchot. It is a
continuation of the battle that has been
waged over the Tennessee Valley Au-
thority, over legislative efforts to create
Missouri and Columbia valley authori-
ties, over appropriations for transmission
lines to deliver government power to
municipalities and rural electric coopera-
tives. It is perhaps a foretaste of a
coming battle to save the’ great federal
power developments from ex-President
Hoover's proposed “‘going-out-of-busi-
ness’ sale. All this makes the indorse-
ment of the provisions of the present
atomic-energy law by the American
Public Power Association’s committee on
atomic energy extremely important. And
I conclude this article by commending
the committee’s further suggestions to
the thoughtful consideration of all con-
cerned with the country’s great resources
program.
THE COMMITTEE recommends (1)
that there be no release of controls until
adequate knowledge and information are
available concerning the development
of atomic energy for industrial purposes
and power, and then only with adequate
safeguards against private monopoly;
(2) that the Atomic Energy Commission
itself assume responsibility for the de-
velopment of a pilot plant for the pro-
duction of electric energy, this being
amply justified by the tremendous energy
requirements of the commission’s pro-
gram; and (3) that publicly owned
electric utilities be afforded the same
same opportunity to participate under
contract in the research and pilot-plant
program as other electric-utility and in-
451
dustrial groups. A portion of the lan-
guage of this last recommendation is
worth quoting. It runs:
Because this energy potentially repre-
sents one which stands as a natural gov-
ernmental monopoly and one where the
advantages must be spread ultimately to
the people, it is urged that publicly owned
electric utilities also be afforded the op-
portunity of participating in such develop-
ment contracts because of their experience
in distributing such benefits to the public.
For similar reasons, the publicly owned
®
.
-
electric utilities should be recognized and
be permitted to adequately share in the
application of atomic energy to electric-
power production when such application
has been demonstrated to be appropriate
by the results of pilot-plant operation.
As a step toward meeting the need
for widespread public understanding of
the atomic-energy issue, the report of the
atomic-power policy committee of the
American Public Power Association
should be given wide circulation. Its
3 arn tee
Pa on eine government m
nopoly’” and on the experience of pub-
licly owned utilities
these principles to the present situation
can they make sure that any reconsidera-
tion of the Atomic Energy Act will
result in a strengthening of America’s
great conservation policy.
FRANCO'S BEST BET
Washington and War . . by J Alvarez del Vayo ~
French-Spanish Border
THE French-Spanish border has always
been an unexcelled center of observation
and information about Spain. Spaniards
cross it every day, and once in France
their tongues are loosened. I arrived at
the border at a moment of great rejoicing
for the Franco regime. “As I hope to show
in this article, the reasons for the rejoic-
ing are rather slim; however, the presum-
ably imminent signing of the bilateral
treaty with the United States compensates
the dictatorship, at least for the time
being, for its loss in popularity even
among its former followers. The Spanish
dictator, quite incapable ‘of solving the
country’s multiplying domestic problems,
is pinning all his hopes on becoming,
with Germany, one of America’s two
safe allies and hence the recipient _of
generous aid.
A speech made by Franco on a recent
visit to Andalusia, which was intended
to remain secret, confirmed the fact that
it is the United States to which he looks
for salvation. The Caudillo was speaking
at army headquarters in Seville. He
talked as a soldier among soldiers, with-
out any diplomatic restraint and without
anticipating the indiscretions which oc-
curred later. “How happy I am,’ he
said, ‘‘to find myself once more among
my old comrades-in-arms. In Morocco
and later during the war [1936-39] we
tempered our spirits for the great days
that still await us. I ask you not to lose
the enthusiasm of those days because I
452
can assure you that the Third World
War is coming. When it comes, those
who have been chary with their aid and
denied us what we need will give us
what we need; more, they will give us
what we demand.” The censorship for-
bade any reproduction of this speech or
any, allusions to it; its sub-
stance was broadcast by a local radio
commentator and then quickly sup-
pressed.
The speech showed how academic was
the discussion in the United Nations
about whether or not Franco represents
a menace to peace. His regime is one that
lives for war and is a disturbing element
in the international situation. Any sign
that international tension is diminishing
creates anxiety and rage in the Falangist
press and radio. At this moment the man
the regime hates most is Churchill, and
the country it abuses most is England.
The thought that the British Premier's
policy may lead to a big-power confer-
ence which will reduce tension and
make it less urgent for the United States
to utilize Spain is enough to keep the
Falangists in a constant panic. It is a
race with time: which will come first,
the signing of the Spanish-American
treaty or the conference called for by
Churchill? Fury against the British some-
however,
times takes ridiculous forms, such as the. -
government-ordered sabotage of the
Coronation. Both radio and newspapers
have been told to mention the Corona-
tion as little as possible. Coronation
advertising matter is refused by the press
under the pretext of lack of space.
Non-Franquist Spaniards do not un-
derstand American policy toward their
country. They cannot find a reasonable
explanation for the fact that, at a time
when American aid to Europe is being
reduced, the Franco government, which ©
is the most corrupt and incompetent of
them all and is certain sooner or later
to be removed from power, should be
the only one exempted from cuts. The
Opponents of Franco agree at least on
one point: the day Franco falls, all the
obligations he has undertaken toward the
United States will be declared null and
void.
Many of the questions Seatuat ask
are of a moral nature. A poor Protestant
pastor who had to seek refuge in France
asked me: “But is not the United States
a Protestant country? And is not General
Eisenhower himself a Protestant?’ He
was astonished that American Protestants
had not fought more energetically
against the policy of aid to Franco. He
told me of a number of recent incidents
which prove conclusively that after a
brief period of “toleration” —while the
treaty was being negotiated—Protestants
are once more being persecuted in Spain
and cannot openly practice their religion
there. “The authorities are applying pre-
ventive medicine,’ he said. ‘Believing
that once the treaty is signed many
American soldiers and officials will come
to Spain, they want to create an atmos-
The NATION
“in distributing
such benefits to the public” reflects fyn-
damental principles which have been |
hewn out over the years. Only as the
people understand the applicability of
x
—
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——
hs ee ae A 7
iE Sonya se x
- ee io 7 cA _ -
; i =
prevent the opening of new Protestant
churches and the reopening of the few
existing ones, now closed. American
Protestants will soon find ‘out what is
awaiting them in Spain.”
Franco needs dollars to cope with a
grave crisis which has many causes,
though the principal one is that, like all
dictators, he has adopted a wholly un-
realistic economic policy for reasons of
_ “prestige.” A large industrialist, until
recently a follower of Franco, told me
that the regime maintains the peseta at
an excessively high level solely because a
cheap peseta is incompatible with the
dictator's glory. The more serious among
Spain’s banking and financial leaders be-
lieve that the government’s economic
policy has failed in its three chief ob-
jectives—to modernize industry and
agriculture, to increase. exports, and to
establish some equilibrium between
prices and salaries.
These people think that with the two
hundred million dollars Madrid appar-
ently expects to get from Washington
in exchange for naval and air bases
the dictatorship will be able to postpone
its downfall for some time longer. They
say: “It will be a good business for
Franco but not for. the Americans.” The
same people believe that the United
States would have to spend some two .
billion dollars to get any real results;
that the two hundred million dollars
will be a mere drop in the ocean. It
would require ten times that sum merely
to put the Spanish 'railroads in order and
to fit the roads to carry heavy armament,
quite apart from procuring equipment
for an army which is ill supplied in most
_ essentials. In this connection I have
: found other evidence of the incoherent
character of Franco’s policy. While the
government is asking for more dollars,
some of the dollars,already in Spain are
. lying idle. This applies, for example, to
a sum allotted to the Altos Hornos de
_ Bilbao Ironworks.
_ The United States is embarking on
troubled waters which no amount of fi-
nancial “oil” will succeed in quieting.
Franco’s mifisters travel from one prov-.
ince to another, dealing with complaints
and promising improvements’ and” re-
forms which are never made. Mean-
while, the government at Madrid is
paralyzed by their absence. A very suc-
cessful Spanish film, ‘Bienvenido Mr.
_ May 30, 1953
ale ‘
phere of anti-Protestant terror so as to
*<
iw *
“Marshall” (‘‘Welcome Mr. Marshall’),
which won a prize at the Cannes Festi-
val, shows a high official of the Franco
government going to a town to prepare
the triumphal reception of the Ameri-
cans. But the townspeople, believing that
he has come to promise them once more
the new railroad which has been prom-
ised year after year, receive him with
great skepticism. It seems almost incon-
ceivable that such a film should have
been made in Spain, for even if some
people see in it a satire against the
Americans, it is undoubtedly aimed at
the Franco regime. There are towns in
Spain where the cornerstone of a public
building has been ceremoniously laid ten
times, without ever being crowned by a
second stone.
Franco has now joined the journeyings
of his ministers to raise public morale.
He has recently visited Andalusia, where
there is starvation among the peasants,
and will shortly go to Catalonia, a tra-
ditional breeding ground of social un-
rest. In Andalusia, Franco spoke to the
poor at the opening of a cheap housing
project. He talked without a prepared
script and his words were significant.
He said: “I know very well that the
Marxist and revolutionary virus has not
left you but we came to power to offer
you realities, not utopian promises.”’ Un-
happily, the realities are starvation wages
and a discontent which no quantity of
dollars will abate.
Any American tourist will tell yo:
there is much new construction in Spain.
It is true that there are many new build-
ings in the center of Madrid which give
an impression of prosperity. However,
the great working-class belt surrounding
the city, which the tourist does not see,
is full of shacks and caves in which the
people, to quote the Falangist news-
paper Pueblo, live “worse than pigs.”
A pathetic feature of Madrid life today
is the competition for these wretched
shelters. ‘A black market in them has
grown up in the last few months and
hundreds of families are dealing in it.
The police recently intervened in an
alleged case of profanation of a ceme-
tery. But there was no profanation; there
were only some children who had pre-
empted vacant niches, as yet unoccupied
by coffins, to sleep in during the night.
WHAT ARE, the prospects of the
Franco regime? One thing is certain: the
process of decomposition is going on.
The crisis is affecting a larger number of
people every day. Not only does the
whole national economy suffer, but also
those classes and professional groups
which the regime might use to maintain
itself by satisfying individual egoisms at
the expense of the country. It is the en-
gineer, the architect, the army officer,
and the small business man whose situa- ©
tion is becoming ever more wretched.
Indifference and cynicism fade when
general misfortune becomes personal
misfortune. Even the most conservative
are beginning to oppose Franco without
really wishing to do so, and the time is
past when people shrugged their shoul-
ders, refused to take an interest in poli-
tics, and preferred to enjoy life by fre-
quenting soccer matches and bull fights.
_ Asection of the army is against Franco
—without, however, seriously thinking
of displacing him—and even part of the
church has turned its back on him. De-
spite the immense benefits showered on
the clergy, intelligent prelates, like Bish-
op Herrera of Malaga, do not forget
the danger the church will be in when
Franco disappears and it is left as the
principal pillar of the hated dictatorship.
Even the Vatican is now reserved in
its support; America provides Franco
with his only substantial backing.
But as the Spanish saying goes, “There
are friends that kill.” Many people be-
lieve that the American operation in
Spain, while helping Franco temporarily,
will cause great trouble among his gen-
erals and his followers. For in spite of
formal assurances that “the dignity and
national sovereignty of Spain have been
preserved” in the negotiations with the
United States, many Spaniards fear
that Spain will be converted into ‘“‘a
barracks for the American army’’ with-
out even being admitted to the NATO
organization.
453
ASIA’S REVOLUTIONS
Meanings for the West . . by Aneurin Bevan
London
ON TWO occasions I visited the Indian
Parliament in New Delhi. Making al-
lowance for the very different physical
setting and for the costumes and com-
plexions of the members, I might have
been sitting in the Strangers’ Gallery of
the British House of Commons.
The procedure is the same. The stand-
ing orders have been copied from our
own. Lying on the table before me as I
write is a volume presented to me by
the clerk to the Peoples’ House of the
Indian Parliament. It is the record of
conversations which took place between
him and the clerks and officials of the
House of Commons when India was
framing its constitution and determin-
ing upon the procedure it was to adopt
for its own Parliament.
There is, however, one fundamental
difference. Like many other modern con-
stitutions, India’s is preceded by a decla-
ration of fundamental rights to which
legislation must conform and which is
construed by the courts.
The Indian government has already
discovered that this is a mixed blessing.
In the same way that the United States
has found the powers of the Supreme
Court to be a real hindrance to effective
action in times of crisis, India is finding
that too exact and detailed a description
of individual rights can be an immobiliz-
ing clamp on the Representative Assem-
bly. But the important thing is that India
has decided that its political way of life
must follow the pattern of the Western
democracies. This is true also of Ceylon,
Burma, and Pakistan, although the last
has still to agree upon the character of
its constitution.
This decision of the nations of South-
east Asia has consequences for all of us
ANEURIN BEV AN, leader of the left
wing of the British Labor Party, recently
returned from a trip through Southeast
Asia. This is the second of two articles
about his journey, The first appeared in
our issue of May 16.
454
which have not yet been fully realized.
The reason for the decision should be
studied by those who ate so critical of
the abrupt withdrawal of British power
from Southeast Asia. This withdrawal
meant that new nations could go about
the task of constitution-making in a
calmer atmosphere than would have ex-
isted if independence had been won on:
the battlefield. China was denied such an
evolution. Imperial domination and civil
war made impossible a calm selec-
tion among a number of constitutional
alternatives, and the decision eventually
made in China was as much the result of
imposed circumstances as the choice of
its victorious leaders.
THE LESSON is obvious and has been
so often stated that it is depressing to
have to repeat it. It is that national re-
sentment against foreign rule, if too long
repressed, acquires a social content that
carries the national movement beyond
its original center of gravity and results
in a social revolution. Unfortunately, the
change which thus takes place is the
establishment of a form of dictatorship
often more oppressive than the one it
dislodged, and so another fundamental
upsurge i$ necessary before it can be said
that the people have been truly set free.
What is happening in Southeast Asia
is therefore unique in the history of the
world. Democratic governments have
been established in countries with back-
ward industrial techniques, in conditions
of life infinitely inferior to those which
preceded the Industrial Revolution in
Europe. Furthermore, these governments
are assailed by the meretricious claims
of opulent America and by the intellec-
tual dogmatism of Soviet propaganda.
Between the two it would not be sur-
prising if the infant nations faltered and
failed. ,
It would be disastrous for us if they
did fail. And I do not mean disastrous
in a purely military sense. Their failure
would mean an arid polarization be-
tween the industrial power of the United
States on the one hand and the massed
millions of the colored peoples on the
other. What we have to do is to preserve
for mankind the utmost variety of |
choice. For, after all, civilization means
opportunity freely to choose between a
number of proffered alternatives. The
more alternatives there are, the more
civilized we can be said to be.
These nations of Southeast Asia are
trying to do what has never been done
before. They are trying consciously to
organize their economic and social life
by free consent through the instrumen-
tality of representative institutions, and
they are trying to do it with a largely il-
literate people. These are stirred inte
often premature demands by what they
learn of the more expansive life of the
West, and are consequently impatient of
the slowness of the progress imposed by
their own inevitable handicaps,
We did not succeed in revolutionizing
our country by consent. Democracy came
to us after the Industrial Revolution, not -
before. Nor did America ‘do what:
India has attempted. The Fathers of the
American Revolution did not have five
hundred millions of illiterate and half-
starved people to mull over the finer
points of the Declaration of Independ-
ence. The Soviet Union did not do it. At
an early stage it abandoned all hope of
establishing democratic institutions and
forced_its industrial revolution through
by the machinery of the police state.
These are the facts of history, and-I
do not recall them here to quarrel with ~
them. The silliest thing to do with his-
tory is to quarrel with it. But it is neces-
sary to keep all this in mind if we are
to view what is happening in Southeast
Asia with a true sense of historical per-
spective. -
IT IS EVEN more important that the
people of India, Pakistan, Burma, Indo-
nesia, and Ceylon should have a clear
sense of what they are doing and where
they are going. It is not enough that they
are making an industrial revolution, es-
The NATION —
?
« 2
Is There an Alternative ?
There has been a deliberate
ial though that te Tt is SpE necerkty:
ey to prove that men of all shades of
: ‘color can make and manage machines.
That is what is so tiresome about a
E great deal of Soviet propaganda. Only
people blinded by outworn theories of
national and racial inferiority needed to
have it proved that a Russian peasant,
~
Ae hae 7 ae a ; ae
«
=
Sas any other, could learn to be a skilled
mechanic,
What Russia has shown is ae the
economic life of a nation can be planned
and organized purposefully, and that
technical progress is possible without the
propulsions of private profit. What Rus-
sia failed to show was that this can be
done without a centralized bureaucracy
and without the compulsions, fears, and
disciplines of the monolithic state.
It is not political democracy that is on
trial in Southeast Asia. It is democracy
as an instrument of revolutionary
change. And the fate of mankind may
depend on the outcome.
DEFENSE OR DEPRESSION
TO WHAT extent is the American
economy dependent on defense expendi-
ture? The Russians, of course, believe
that the prosperity of big business} at
least, derives from war preparations,
and their view is not inconsistent with
the recent performance of the stock
market following the peace overtures.
Indeed, it has received considerable sup-
port. within the United States from
circles normally considered above suspi-
—cion by the Yahoo from Wisconsin. Be-
fore the election Eisenhower himself
noted that the current prosperity was to
a considerable extent war-financed. On
September 6, 1952, Business Week te-
marked that industrial capacity “‘is get-
ting so large that it now takes a con-
sumer-goods boom plus a king-sized de-
_ fense program to keep everyone busy.”
More recently U. S. News and World
Report, surveying the distribution of de-
fense contracts, found that between
_ June, 1950, and June, 1952, the top 100
‘contracting corporations received $43,-
800,000,000 worth of prime defense
contracts, or 62.4 per cent of all those
worth $10,000 or more, and concluded
that ‘‘arms is essentially big business.”
- For various reasons, however, Amer-
_ ica’s economic welfare need not be con-
Sidered absolutely dependent on the
_ defense program. Although $181,000,-
000,000 has been appropriated for de-
_ fense since Korea, only $87,000,000,000
had been spent by February, 1953.
“stretth-
ARNOLD A. ROGOW is a member of
the Department of Political Science of
ihe State University of Lowa.
out’’ of the program and hence relative-
ly little interference with business as
usual. Thus far defense production has .
largely come out of increased output and
has not reduced civilian consumption
and non-military investment.
On the other hand, the $87,000,000,-
000 already spent has had a stimulating
effect on business activity, and it is even
possible to argue that the present level
of defense expenditure is the decisive
element in the current prosperity and
will be a vital anti-recession influence
for some time. Indeed, it is the thesis
of this article that economic wéll-being
in the years ahead will require either a
further expansion on the defense sector
or more radical political and economic
reforms than any that have been previ-
“ ously attempted.
Support for this thesis emerges clear-
ly from an examination of the present
scale of defense business in a number
of key industries. Of the top 100 prime
defense contractors, 9 are automobile
manufacturers; and of the top 10 con-
by Arnold A. Rogow
tractors, which together hold more than
twenty billion dollars’ worth of defense
contracts, or 28.7 per cent of the total,
3 are automobile companies. The Ford
Motor Company, which ranks third
among automobile contractors, does not,
unfortunately, publish its accounts. But
for seven of the automobile concerns in-
formation based on company reports is
available and is presented in the table
below.
The defense business of not one of
the seven companies, it will be seen,
amounted to less than 14 per cent of its
total business in 1952; for four com-
panies it was approximately one-third,
and for one company almost two-thirds
of total business. General Motors almost
doubled and Chrysler more than quad-
rupled defense volume between 1951
and 1952. Moreover, at the end of 1952
all the companies had substantial back-
logs of government orders. A General
Motors official recently estimated that
even with a 20 per cent increase in total
business over 1952, the company’s de-
THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY AND DEFENSE
Rank among Value of Net sales, Defense business
prime defense contracts year ending as percentage of
contractors, June, 1950— December 31, total business
June,1950—— June, 1952. ($ millions)
Company June, 1952 ~ ($ millions) 1951 1952 1951 1952
General Motors 1 5,489 7,466 7,549 105. “19
Chrysler 3 2226 neue OA ie OL: 3 14
Studebaker 7, 747 20372585 — 36
Packard 24 407 178 234 aoe
Willys-Overland 27 387 220 302 Zi, * 32
Reo 3L 316 D134 150 — 66
Kaiser-Fraser 33 303 — *57 — *39
* First 9 months of 1952.
Bias whe
Foyt Ga Pe
Ragas
fense business would amount to 20 per
cent of the total.
Five of the top ten defease contractors
are aircraft companies; between June,
1950, and June, 1952, they obtained
contracts totaling almost $7,500,000,-
000, and at the present time the entire
industry holds about $25,000,000,000
worth of government contracts. Since
Korea the industry has not published de-
tailed accounts, but evidence available
suggests that it is almost entirely de-
pendent on defense contracts. The
United Aircraft Corporation, which
holds fifth place among the top 100
contractors, in 1952 transacted 86 per
cent of its business with the government,
an increase of 2 per cent over 1951. The
percentage of defense to total business
was probably not less for the other
major aircraft producers.
The dependence of the aircraft indus-
try on defense contracts is of course
unique, but the defense business of a
number of more diversified industries is
still impressive. In steel the defense vol-
ume in 1952 amounted to 15 per cent of
the total. Last year the government took
50 per cent of the output of machine-
tool manufacturers and about 60 per
cent of the output of the electronics in-
dustry; between 10 and 20 percent of
the total business of the largest farm-
machinery concerns was on government
contract.
BUT PERHAPS the most significant fig-
ures are those describing the relationship
between the defense program and full
employment. At the end of 1952 private
and public employment, including the
armed services, totaled approximately
66,000,000. According to government
figures, 7,000,000 workers were directly
or indirectly engaged in the defense
program, and 3,600,000 persons were
in the armed services. In other words,
about 10,600,000 persons, or almost one
out of every six employed, were involved
directly or indirectly in defense.
The crucial question of course is:
What would that one out of every six be
doing if he were not employed in the
defense program? If “peace broke out,”
would he find employment in non-de-
fense work or would he be unemployed ?
No certain answer to this can be given,
and it is well to keep in mind that fore-
casts of mass unemployment after
World War II proved incorrect. On the
456
other hand, the cold war is not World
War II all over again. Economic factors
which were important during and after
the war are not present today; indeed,
the contrasts between the two economic
situations are striking and sobering.
In the first place, the present labor
force does not contain any substantial
number of “‘expendables.”” In recent
years, according to the Department of
Commerce, the civilian labor force has
received no large influx of adolescents,
housewives, or people past the usual
retirement age. Nor, since Korea, has
the number of hours worked in any
large sector of the economy been appre-
ciably extended. Both these things oc-
curred on a large scale during World
War II, and therefore, says the Com-
merce Department, “full employment in
the immediate post-war period was con-
sistent with a considerable reduction
from war-time peaks in the total of mili-
tary and civilian employment and in
working hours—a situation which is
present to only a small extent today.”
Secondly, during the cold war, in con-
trast to World War II, no substantial
reserve of savings, private or business,
and no considerable backlog or demand
for either consumer or capital goods
have been built up. In 1952 business
added approximately $26,500,000,000
of new plant and equipment without
scrapping much of the old plant, and
the outlay in 1953 is expected to reach
the record figure of $27,000,000,000.
This increased capacity has made it pos-
sible to satisfy civilian requirements and
defense needs.
As a result, there is little likelihood
that consumer demand can be expanded
sufficiently to absorb any substantial
shift from defense to consumer goods;
indeed, there is considerable doubt that .
it will continue at its present rate.
According to Business Week, 44 per
cent of all automobiles in use are
only three years old or less, compared
with 28 per cent in 1949; 60 per cent
of all refrigerators are post-war models.
Moreover, output of automobiles, tele-
vision sets, and home appliances is cur-
rently running ahead of demand. It is
also worth noting that muck of the con-
sumer demand in the last few years has
been financed by borrowing. Instalment
debt has increased 36 per cent since
Korea, and according to a recent esti-
mate, consumer credit now represents
10 per cent of disposable income.
All the signs, in short, suggest that a
recession is a probability unless in the
next few years defense spending rises
a
above present levels, or appropriations ‘
for Point Four and non-defense govern-
ment expenditure are greatly increased.
The choice seems to be between a “wart-
fare’ state and an all-out welfare state.
Moscow, of course, will influence the
decision, but in the final analysis, assum-
ing no Soviet aggression, the choice
will be made in Washington. A welfare
state under Republican auspices is not
out of the question, but it could not be
set up easily.
It would require, first, a substantial
shift of power from industry to the gov-
ernment. Business would be represented
less in the government and labor more
than at present; and the total effect of
taxation, redistribution of income, social
services, and controls would be to reduce
the business share of wealth and influ-
ence. The warfare state, however, leaves
the status quo fundamentally untouched.
Industrial leaders staff the key positions
and make the basic decisions. Taxation
is not designed to redistribute income,
social services are not extended, and
controls are held to a minimum. The
whole tendency of the warfare state is to
consolidate business power through a
meshing of public and private interests.
A second difficulty is the public’s ap-
parent unwillingness to accept any en-
lightened alternative to the warfare-
state solution. Politically it is easier to
expand the defense sector than to insti-
tute welfare measures or generate sup-
port for Point Four. And, clearly, Point
Four would: be an adequate solution |
only if it represented a conscious attempt | ~
to. distribute billions of dollars of pur-
chasing power annually across a world
which includes the Iron Curtain coun-
tries. Unfortunately, ‘the question
whether, in peace time, the nation is
willing to pay taxes to feed and equip
a good part of the world needs only to
be raised to be answered.
The NATION.
ee dns nah gs
*
Pr reedoni
of the
Printed Word
> By J. R. Wiggins
[Herewith we inaugurate our own “Voice of America,” an
occasional feature bringing to our readers condensations of
or excerpts from speeches which we consider of special in-
terest but which have received little or no notice in the press.
]. R. Wiggins, managing editor of the Washington Post,
is chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of
the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the.membership
of which has been constituted a special group to study the
possible threat to press freedom contained in Senator Mc-
Carthy’s questioning of James Wechsler, editor of the New
York Post. The speech from which the following excerpts are
taken was delivered before the Maryland Library Association.
—EDITORS THE NATION. }
HEN a Congressional committee summons an editor
before it and subjects him to hours of secret question-
ing and examination and interrogation, every man to whom
the printed word is sacred must feel rising out of his cultural
subconscious the warnings of history. At the first signal of
such invasion the mind goes rushing back through the cen-
turies to earlier examples of printers summoned before the
bar of the House of Commons in England, to editors harried
from their homes by hostile governor's councils and vengeful
assemblies in the American colonies.
And when members of Congress sit in judgment to decide
_ what bookssmay be appropriately left upon library shelves,
other memories are stirred. As individuals we may be in agree-
ment with members of Congress on the faults and flaws of
many literary works. We may deplore, as Congressmen de-
3 plore, the inclusion of some publications on lists of books
sent abroad as representative of our culture. But those with
‘an eye on the past can hardly fail to feel an instinctive anxiety
about government in the role of book critic.
However objectionable some political ideas may be, Amer-
‘ican citizens have a right to know about them, to form their
own judgments of them, to arrive at their own devices for
_ dealing with them. Ignorance is certainly not our refuge, and
our principles are not so poor or our philosophies so weak
‘as to require the protection of censorship against the competi-
tion of rival philosophies or systems.
WHEN Congressional investigators, however well inten-
tioned, invade with their i inquiries the schools and churches—
even though they interrogate only individual teachers and
/ churchmen and not the institutions as such—other fecollec-
tions are stirred. In 1687 James II created a commission to
exercise jurisdiction over Magdalene College at Oxford.
Among the three commissioners, it is interesting to note, was
ee.
ihe
4+
Sir Thomas Jenner. These three commissioners turned out the
duly constituted authorities of the college, with whom they
disagreed on religion, and pronounced the ejected fellows
incapable of ever holding any church preferment. It was an
act of infamy that remains fresh in English minds these 250
years later.
When political leaders have the power to move against
the church, they are in‘constant danger of being led into abuse
of that power by men motivated by religious hates. Religious
leaders are peculiarly vulnerable to the sort of conspiracy that
one Robert Young attempted against the Bishop of Rochester
in the reign of William and Mary in 1692. An accomplice of
Young concealed in the home of the Bishop of Rochester
a document containing the forged signatures of many associ-
ates of the Bishop, binding them to action against the King.
The forgery was sufficiently plausible so that the Bishop
was summoned before the privy council and questioned. He
succeeded in establishing his innocence. Then the Bishop re-
turned quietly to his residence at Bromley. :
In our time, we have also seen a bishop unjustly accused.
What malice filled the files of the Un-American Activities
Committee with reckless and ill-founded charges against
G. Bromley Oxnam we may never know. That so formidable
a dossier could have been assembled against a man so innocent
of the least affiliation with or sympathy for communism is
sufficient warning that innocence is no protection against this
sort of damage. As long as Congressional committees are will-
ing to become the repository of libelous and scandalous
charges against churchmen, there will be no lack of rogues to
supply their files.
ONE FATAL weakness marks the Congressional investiga-
tions of the press, libraries, schools, and churches. Most of
these inquiries have not been concerned with the development
of information essential to the act of legislating. Little legisla-
tion has emerged from them. These Congressional committees
have been performing essentially judicial functions. In many
cases, they have combined executive, judicial, and legislative
functions. As Madison has wisely observed, the concentration
of legislative, judicial, and executive functions in a single
body is the very definition of tyranny.
The legislature is especially deficient as a court of justice,
and its deficiencies have been well understood in Anglo-
Saxon countries for 300 years. Macaulay has well stated them:
However clearly political crime may have been defined
by ancient laws, 4 man accused of it ought not to be tried
by a crowd of 513 eager politicians of whom he can
challenge none even with cause, who have no judge to guide
them, who are allowed to come in and go out as they
choose, who hear as much or as little as they choose of the
accusation and of the defense, who are exposed, during the
investigation, to every kind of corrupting influence, who are
inflamed by all the passions which animated debate natu-
rally excites, who cheer one orator and cough down another,
who are roused from sleep to cry Aye or No, or who are
hurried half drunk from their suppers to divide.
Though our legislative body may have improved in sobriety
and demeanor, many of the solid objections that Macaulay —
makes against all legislative bodies acting in judicial capacity
still are valid.
457
BOOKS
The Ethics
STUDY ‘IN POWER: JOHN D.
ROCKEFELLER, INDUSTRIALIST
AND PHILANTHROPIST. By Allan
Nevins. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Two
Volumes. $10.
By Keith Hutchison
ONSIDERING the central role of
big business in the American drama,
there have been all too few dispassionate
studies of its evolution. The many jour-
nalistic essays in this field have usually
varied between the extremes of hostility
and sycophancy. Professional scholars,
as Professor Nevins points out in his
preface to “Study in Power,” have faced
two handicaps in undertaking business
histories and biographies. On the one
hand, corporations have been reluctant
to make their records available; on the
other, books founded on such records
have been suspect as uncritical.
Although an increasing number of
corporations are now opening their
archives, not all have learned that it is
unbecoming to attach strings to this
gesture, Some, indeed, employ scholars,
at temptingly handsome, fees, to write
company histories under the supervision
of their public-relations departments.
Whatever the value of the resulting
product as institutional advertising, as
history it 1s apt to be beneath contempt.
Needless to say, Nevins’s book is not
of this kind. He incurred no obligations
in gaining access to the Rockefeller and
Standard Oil files, and it is clear that he
has made every effort to deal judicially
with their contents and the mass of other
material he has brought under’ review.
But if Nevins has not been seduced by
living Rockefellers, I do feel that he
has, in a sense, been oyerawed by the
mighty dead one, whom he depicts as
a good man who committed many evil
acts usually from the best of motives and
with generally healthy consequences.
This paradox, as I shall try to show
later, leads to some strange conclusions.
KEITH HUTCHISON, a contributing
editor, was formerly The Nation’s finan-
cial editor.
458
of John D.
Nevins, of course, tackled this subject
once before when he wrote “John D.
Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of Amer-
ican Enterprise’”’ (1940). The subsequent
discovery of a long-lost mass of papers
persuaded him to reassess the evidence.
Actually, the omissions in the new
book, which is more than 400 pages
shorter, bulk larger than the additions.
In 1940 the author dealt at length with
Rockefeller’s parentage and childhood.
Now he hurdles these preliminaries in
one brief chapter and omits many other
family and personal details. Less justi-
fiable is the compression of his account
of the Ludlow massacre, the omission of
any reference to the Corrigan lawsuit,
and the total disregard of the labors of
Ivy Lee, the public-relations expert who
labored to change the public idea of
Rockefeller from devil to saint.
Again, in 1940 Nevins gave much
space to a highly critical analysis of
Henry Demarest Lloyd’s “Wealth
Against Commonwealth,” the _histori-
cally important exposure of the Standard
Oil monopoly that appeared in 1894.
In this book the -indictment of Lloyd
as a “hysterical” and ‘inaccurate’ writer
remains, but the detailed evidence sup-
porting the charge has been truncated.
It seems to me, however, that on this
matter amplification was desirable in
the light of an article by Professor
Chester McA. Destler in the American
Historical Review of October, 1944.
Destler, chairman of the Department of
History at Connecticut College, chal-
lenged Nevins’s treatment of Lloyd,
pointing out that “Wealth Against Com-
monwealth” had been accepted as im-
portant and accurate by many reputable
historians; indeed, Nevins himself in his
biography of Grover Cleveland (1932)
had described it as “‘a searching expo-
sure, amply buttressed by details.”
In justice to Lloyd’s memory Destler
undertook a painstaking examination of
Lloyd’s citation of sources and concluded
that with minor exceptions his state-
ments were supported by his documenta-
tion. Further, while defending the
honesty of Lloyd’s reporting of the
famous Buffalo oil case (1887), he ques-
tioned Nevins’s own account of this trial,
in which the managers of a Standard:
controlled company were found guilty
of criminal conspiracy.
Nevins replied to Destler vehemently
and at length in the April, 1945, issue
of the American Historical Review, but
makes no reference to the controversy in
this book. It is not a contest that can
be adjudicated in the course of a review,
but since Nevins repeats his charges
against Lloyd, it is unfortunate that he :
has buttressed them less strongly than
before.
Moreover, whatever may be said
against Lloyd, the fact remains that many
of his conclusions are sustained by Nev- |
ins. For instance, while Nevins shows
that Lloyd erred in foisting the parent-
age of the South Improvement Company
on Rockefeller—it was a railroad bastard
—he agrees that the plan to give mem-
bers of the company rebates not only on
their own oil shipments but on those of
their competitors was zealously promoted
by the Standard Oil directors. “Of all
devices for extinction of competition,”
he writes, “this was the cruelest and
most deadly yet conceived by any group
of American industrialists.”
When this scheme was exploded by
public indignation Rockefeller went
quietly to work on “our plan,” which
involved the purchase of enough refinery
capacity to give Standard practical con-
trol of the industry. There was talk at
the time, and long after, of undue
pressure being used to force mergers,
and no doubt knowledge of the excep-
tionally favorable freight rates Standard
was able to command encouraged firms
to accept the terms offered. However,
many refinery owners when threatened
by the Rockefeller embrace accepted the
classic advice to victims of rape: they re-
laxed and enjoyed it. Only much later
did some of them, like the Widow
Backus, about whose case Lloyd was
clearly misinformed, complain of insuffi-
ciently compensated seduction.
One of the worst features of the con-
- solidation campaign which continued “|
from 1872 to 1878, by which date
Standard controlled eleven-twelfths of
the refining industry, was the secrecy that
accompanied it. Thus Camden’s Parkers-
burg refinery, after being absorbed in
1878, continued to pretend independ-
ence in dealing with railroads and pipe
The NATION
*
ous,” or
' shows the crushing of that competition,
i
| Policy
|
|
eceit,” eae see by Rockefelles,
cits ““unsparing censure.” —
- Space forbids quotation of more than
one or two other examples of Nevins’s
condemnation of the methods. by which
Standard built its monopoly. He speaks
of its officers “juggling with truth’ on
the witness stand; he refers to their
“ugly tactics” in seeking to block inde-
pendent pipe lines: he shows them buy-
ing political and newspaper influence,
although their activities of this kind
were relatively restrained compared with
those of some business notables of the
“Heroic Age.”
But while condemning Standard Oil,
Nevins also defends it. If its means were
often bad, he says in effect, its ends
proved good. If unethical methods fos-
tered its growth, its success owed much
more to superior organization and tech-
niques. Above all, it replaced competitive
chaos by order—a conception dear to
all monopolists, political and industrial.
IN HIS 1940 PREFACE Nevins spoke
of himself as ‘a convinced believer in a
free competitive economy.’ He does not
b repeat the phrase in 1953, and in fact
he appears to have developed a horror
of competition, for he seldom uses the
word without attaching to it some such
opprobrious adjective as “savage,” “‘ruin-
” “wasteful.” And while he
in oil as in many other industries, as
a ruthless process often carried out with
utter disregard for the laws of God and
man alike, he seems to justify it in the
name of economic progress. ‘Had our
Our Changing Foreign
FOREIGN POLICY WITHOUT
FEAR. By Vera Micheles Dean. Mc-
Graw-Hill. $3.75.
Vera Micheles Dean has written, since
1938, a number of books-on American
foreign policy, dealing with “Europe-in
Retreat” in Hitler's day and with “‘Rus-
sia: Menace or Promise?” in the days
when some other Americans, too, could
not make up their minds how to answer.
the question. Today she rightly points out
May 30, 1953
ss
“pace ‘been sow Bet, our achievement
weaker,” he writes, “had we not created
so swiftly our powerful industrial units
in steel, oil, textiles, chemicals, elec-
tricity, and the automotive vehicles, the
free world might have lost the First
World War and most certainly would
have lost the second.”
Offensive as this point of view is to
American moral tradition, it is not easy
to attack. It is true that revolutions, in-
cluding industrial revolutions, are not
made with kid gloves. It can be argued
that if men like Rockefeller had fol-
lowed the Ten Commandments as
strictly in their business dealings as in
their personal lives, our industrial de-
velopment would have been much
slower. It is possible that fair profits,
earned by strictly lawful means, did not,
in the last century, provide sufficient in-
centive to the taking of great risks. It
may be that we owe our startling ex-
pansion of wealth in part to those ‘“‘rob-
ber barons” who had the audacity to
evade the laws and accumulate by sharp
practices sufficient profits to accelerate
the rate of capital formation.
If these things are trae—and Nevins’s
logic is as persuasive as it is shocking—
then economic theory must be revised
to take account of both the positive dis-
utility of Christian ethics and the eco-
nomic function of chicanery. In fact, we
revert to the philosophy of “The Fable
of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Publick
Benefits,” in which Bernard Mandeville
horrified his eighteenth-century readers
by contending that religious or legal
restraints on the satisfaction of selfish
desires were harmful to society.
New Books in Brief
that all free nations agree ‘‘that an
aggressive Russia, armed with all the
dread attributes of the police state and
Communist parties in other nations sub-
servient to Moscow’s aims, threatens the
security and freedoms of the Western
world as well as the independence of
all other nations.”
The United States has taken the lead-
ership in defending the world against
this danger. But it must implement its
moral principles with concrete actions
—not only when aggression threatens,
but in the daily give and take of world
affairs. Mrs, Dean suggests some ways
in which this can be done. Many of her
suggestions are to the point and should
be considered. Events so far have shown
that she is right in her insistence that
the ultimate difference between Demo-
crats and Republicans in the conduct of
foreign policy may prove to be a differ-
ence not so much of essence as of degree.
She expects that Eisenhower, more effec-
tively than if he had been a civilian, will
be able to curb war-minded military
officials and politicians. The new Ad-
ministration can follow a policy of nego-
tiation more easily than the Democrats
because no one outside a lunatic fringe
could possibly accuse it of being soft
toward communism. Thus Mrs. Dean,
in a book written after the new Admin-
istration came into office, looks rather
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ee EE
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ieee ares
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ee
5
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hopefully to the future and the possi-
bility of an American foreign policy
without fear.
_A Diarist on Gide
RECOLLECTIONS OF ANDRE GIDE.
By Roger Martin du Gard. Viking.
$2.75.
Brief excerpts, admiring but candid
and sometimes malicious, drawn from
the journal kept for thirty-six years by a
fellow-novelist of Gide’s who was also a
Nobel Prize winner. Few men, it would
appear, knew Gide better and few ad-
mired him more, this side idolatry. But
the foibles, and worse, of the great man
get their full share of attention—the
slovenliness of his personal habits, the
extravagance of his precautions against-
drafts and chills, the childish egotism of
his demands upon the time and atten-
tion of his friends, and above all the in-
clusiveness of his assumption that he
need only say “I am what I am and must
do what I do’ to excuse anything and
everything. Perhaps little that is new is
added to Gide’s own accounts of his
proselytizing zeal for the cult of homo-
sexuality and his brief flirtation with
communism, ‘but it is all seen from a
slightly different angle. Du Gard is ob-
viously and in his own right a diarist of
a very high order.
The Past Revitalized
LIFE OF THE PAST. By George Gay-
lord Simpson. Yale. $4.
An introduction to the study of fossil
life, the science of paleontology, which
is at once readable and scientifically
authoritative, making its appeal to the
general reader and scientist alike, has
long been overdue. In the present vol-
ume America’s most distinguished pale-
ontologist, has given us such a book.
In the hands of Professor Simpson the
life of the past is revitalized, and its
study becomes not only exciting but an
enlarging experience in the understand-
ing of life itself and man’s relationship
to it.
After a brief historical account of
the development of ideas in paleontol-
ogy, Professor Simpson goes on to dis-
cuss the various means of preservation
of animals as fossils, the geologic time
scale, the €conomic applications of pale-
ontological knowledge, and an absolute-
ly fascinating chapter on fossils as living
460
~
things. In the chapter on the diversity of
life the principles of classification are
clearly analyzed, and could be read with
profit by many a professional.
After discussing the theories of evolu-
tion Professor Simpson, in his last chap-
ter, answers some questions concerning
the practical uses and theoretical con-
sequences of the science that reveals the
course of evolution, paleontology. Man,
he concludes, fulfils no supernal purpose.
“He is not the creature of uncontrollablé
and undeterminable forces, but his own
master. He can and must decide and
manage his own destiny.”
“The Gandhi Girls”
THE WOMEN IN GANDHI’ LIFE.
By Eleanor Borton. Dodd, Mead. $4.
A Gandhi biography that concentrates
on the women who influenced his -early
life, and those who, in his later years,
served -as his disciples—‘“the Gandhi
Girls,’ as- Vincent Sheean called them.
Especially interesting are the stories of
his mother and her great influence in
shaping his character and beliefs; of his
relations with Kasturbai, his wife, often
bitter and difficult in the early years of
their marriage, always a mirror of his
own changing ideals; of Madeleine
Slade, who worshiped him as a god and
served him for many years; and of
Sarojini Naidu, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit,
and many others who worked with com-
plete devotion to realize his dream of a
free India. By studying Gandhi from
this angle the author throws new and
interesting light on his life and char-
acter.
British Health Service
THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE
IN GREAT BRITAIN. By James
Stirling Ross. Oxford. $7.
The National Health Service was first
proposed by Winston Churchill's coali-
.tion government in 1944. No change in
its major principles—universal coverage, |
comprehensive medical services, and sup-
port primarily from general tax revenues
—was made by the Labor government,:
which enacted the law in 1946 and
began its operation July 5, 1948. Mr.
Ross gives us the best account of the
origin, organization, and conduct of the
service that has yet appeared, He takes
us down as late as June, 1952, when
some important. improvements in the
family physician’s role were made. In
his detailed account of organization and —
of the service in action he shows how —
all its features are bound up with the
pre-existing system of medical care and :
with the traditions of local and national
government.
The book is especially adapted for
American readers, correcting errors of
fact and perspective which have been
disseminated in this country by poorly
informed tourists and correspondents
and by the medical spokesmen imported :
from Britain by the American Medical
Association. Mr. Ross is frank in his
own evaluations, temperate in his criti-
cism even of the tactlessness of “Nye”
Bevan, and gentle when in his Note on
Opinion in America he suggests to med-
ical and lay leaders of opinion in both
nations that “if there is still a hatchet . *
lying anywhere about, let us bury it and
light our pipes.”
English Drama
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH DRAMA,
1660-1900. Volume I: RESTORATION,
DRAMA, Volume II: EARLY EIGHT-
EENTH-CENTURY DRAMA. Vol-
ume III: LATE EIGHTEENTH-CEN-
TURY DRAMA. By Allardyce Nicoll.
Cambridge University Press. Each Vol-
ume $7. ,
These are the first three of five
proposed volumes, of which the two
still to come will deal with the nine-
teenth century. Those now available rep-
resent a revision of books previously’
published under the same titles and con-
stitute the most complete summary avail-
able of the drama of the period con-
sidered in the light of historical scholar-
ship. Almost too full of names, dates,
and documents for cursory reading, they
are nevertheless indispensable as refer-
ence works. There are very full play
lists, innumerable references to other’
scholarly works, and appendices docu-
menting various disputed points in
theatrical history.
Haitian Folk Religion
DIVINE HORSEMEN. The Living
Gods of Haiti. By Maya Deren. Thames
and Hudson.’ $4.75.
This study of Voudoun, the folk re-
ligion of Haiti, penetrates deeply into
the psychology of primitive man and
his concept of the universe. African in
The NATION
res
h Indian and Christian modie
as, Voudoun is a subtle and com-
P system of explaining natural phe-
ren nomena and the mysteries of life and
death in human and comprehensible
terms. Unlike most books on the subject
“this is a serious attempt to understand
foudoun and to explain the origins and
__ meanings of the elaborate rituals.
From Rodin to Roszak
SCULPTURE OF THE TWENTIETH
_ CENTURY. By Andrew Carnduff
_ Ritchie. Museum of Modern Art. Dis-
tributed by Simon and Schuster. $7.50. -
_ Written to accompany the current ret-
_ fospective exhibition of sculpture, this
_ survey of trends from Rodin to Roszak
illustrates most of the pieces in the ex-
hibition and many major works which
could not be included. The 176 plates
form the most useful selection of mod-
_ ern sculpture yet published. The text at-
tempts something very difficult—an or-
ganic outline of the development of
sculpture since 1900, preceded by some
account of the work of Rodin, who pre-
| Cipitated either directly or by inspiring
counter-development much of what has
occurred in the past five decades.
The table of contents, which divides
this sculpture into seven groups, seems
over neat, and the illustrations do not
always appear to fall within the division
concerned. A careful reading of Ritchie’s
text will show, however, that he uses his
divisions as points of reference and not
as so many strait-jackets, and it will be
_ found that the work of a single sculptor
_ is broken up-with perfect justice accord-
“ing to the ideas Ritchie is developing.
_ Thus the very late work of Lachaise lies
_ close to Brancusi’s purification of the ob-
_ ject, while the main body of his work .is
_ an extension of Maillol’s’ classically in-
; spired idealization. In the same way Lip-
| chitz is shown to have developed from
_ Cubist dissection to freely moving bronze
_ forms which have helped to swing very
recent sculpture back to the expressive
_ values of Rodin. Among major clarifica-
“tions offered by this book are the
"interpretation of Rodin as primarily a
| bronze sculptor and of Seated Youth as
Pete mesa
ae cee re
Films
Manny Farber
N A seventy-minute feature called
“Bright Road,’ M-G-M_ has _re-
fashioned the story of “The Quiet One,”
a Levitt-Loeb prize-winning documentary
that dealt with the rescue of a blocked,
bewildered colored boy, new methods of
education, and common-sense therapy.
Here, in Emmett Lavery’s script, a
pretty Alabama school teacher—demure,
devoted, glowing with Christian en-
deavor—breaks through the shell of a
perverse juvenile named P. T. (“It don’t
stand for nothing’’), the shame of Vine-
dale school.
While the tale leans rather heavily
on the idea that all becomes well when
the wand of modern psychology is
waved, and the view of boyhood is
forcibly patterned to make this outcome
possible, the movie has a surprise gift of
humor and humanity. Negro actors, not
unlike others, have too frequently fitted
themselves.into a stereotype that makes
them either caricature or figures of
sentimentally sterling worth. The new-
comers in “Bright Road’ —a dozen kids
plus two adults (one of them Harry
Belafonte )—cause one to be more acute-
ly aware of the burdened propagandist
portrayals of Canada Lee, the exquisite
clichés of Ethel Waters, the oversensi-
tivity of James Edwards, and the servility
of Hattie McDaniels. What I’m trying to
say is that this all-colored cast does not
accommodate itself to an audience’s
ready-made ideas and so brings to the
screen a. fresh spontaneous life.
Some artful scenes reveal the boys’
classroom behavior, a mixture of swag-
ger and glee. A small spectacled kid
stalls on the trip from blackboard to
seat to run his hand across each student
as though he were a slat in a picket
fence. A born cynic throws tipster com-
ments at a chum having trouble with
long division. Another shrugs through a
ridiculous description of his vacation ex-
perience. This is all enacted with an air
of special and private knowhow about
humor and an easy grace that make the
teacher’s correct manners and speech
seem hopelessly wrong.
But for the rest, too much of the
film is idealized out of reality. The
teachers are up on all the latest trends
in child psychology and dish it out in
globs. The songs are done in the calcu-_
latedly intimate, mink-soft voices used
by so many popular singers; the deli-
cately chiseled profiles seem too univer-
sal. The only apparent sufferer is the
_new teacher, Dorothy Dandridge, who
goes in for worried pantomime and
mumbles such things as ‘‘Oh Lord, let
me say the right words for once.” Since
Miss Dandridge offscreen is one of those
quick bright songstresses who rely less
on voice than on an ability to tell a
story with a sensitive and emotional face,
this is rather nice to watch.
ARM YOURSELF AGAINST ALL WITCH HUNTERS
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Music
B. H. Haggin
S usual the New York City Ballet
presented no new works during the
first week of its present season; and
watching the beautiful performances of
‘Four Temperaments,’ “Concerto Ba-
rocco,” and “Symphony in C’ I found
myself realizing how these great Balan-
chine abstract ballets were like great
pieces of music in the fact that they
could be seen again and again and each
time it was a newly revealing, exciting,
and deeply satisfying experience. Also I
noted a remarkable change in LeClercq’s
dancing: in the short interval since the
CONCERT AND RALLY
TO
RESTORE OUR SCHOOLS
TO FREEDOM
SPEAKERS:
JUSTICE HUBERT. T. DELANY
Court of Domestic Relations
PROF. BARROWS DUNHAM
Author of “Giant in Chains”
ROSE RUSSELL
Legislative Rep., Teachers Union
PROGRAM:
HARRIET WINGREEN
Concert Pianist
JEWISH YOUNG FOLKSINGERS
Conducted by Bob De Cormier
and Madeline Horowitz
LOUISE AND BOB DE CORMIER
CARNEGIE HALL
5ith St. at ith Ave.
Friday, MAY 29, 8:15 P.M.
Tickets: 50¢, $1, $1.50, $1.80, $2
Auspices: TEACHERS UNION OF N. Y.
206 West 15th St., N. ¥. WA 4-5524
PROF. FREDERICK SCHUMAN writes:
“a source of warmth and inspiration."*
For a LIFT and to Fight McCARTHYISM
Own and Play
MANDEL vs. McCARTHY
actual recording of the sensational
televised hearing
12 minutes — 78 r.p.m. — $2.00
FREEDOM DISCS
Box 182, Audubon Station, New York 32
ALFRED DRAKE
in
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462
winter season she had eliminated her
former angularity and acquired a fluid-
ity which filled out the time in the sec-
ond movement of “Concerto Barocco”
with a quietly continuous flow of beauti-
fully contoured movement; and_ this
quiet continuity was one manifestation
of a greater technical strength that. was
evident in the greater security of the
series of arabesques in the second move-
ment of “Symphony in C.” All this in
addition to the elegance and distinction,
the force of presence and projection that
have always been extraordinary.
Watching “The Prodigal Son’’ I ap-
preciated again Balanchine’s power in
dramatic ballet—the way almost nothing
in this piece is presented literally, almost
everything in dance metaphors that
amaze one each time with their imagina-
tive originality and force. And I also
appgeciated again Moncion’s powers asa
dramatic dancer. But the son’s pulling
himself up into his father's arms at the
end doesn’t work right; and I wish
Balanchine would take time to figure
out a way of achieving the effect I re-
member in the 1929 performances.
IN ADDITION TO the warmth and
purity of thirteen-year-old Gerard Pou-
let’s playing in Mozart’s Violin Concerto
K.216 (Remington) I should have men-
tioned the extraordinarily sentient inflec-
tion that makes this one of the most re- ,
markable and beautiful performances on
records; and the playing of the orchestra
under his father’s direction also is out-
standing. On the other hand I am bound
to mention the few slides and other
such momentary excesses in the boy’s
playing that one can only hope will dis-
appear rather than get worse in the
years ahead.
And I would like to express more
strongly my feeling about the unusual
character and power of Janacek’s Sla-
vonic Mass (Urania).
The record Italian Baroque Music
(RCA Victor) offers the beautiful Vi-
valdi Concerto in A minor, No. 8 of
“L’'Estro armonico”’; his Sinfonia No. 2
in G, a lesser work; and two fine Con-
certi Grossi by Marcello and Geminiani,
‘
all excellently performed by the Socie
Corelli. Vivaldi’s Cantata “Cessat
Omai” and an excerpt from Carissimi’s
oratorio ‘“Giudizio Universale,” sung
well by Luisa Ribacchi, I found less in-
teresting.
A few of the pieces that Mozart wrote
for “Les Petits Riens’’ (MGM) are en-
gaging; the rest are uninteresting. On
the same record are the charming Scar-
latti pieces that Tommasini orchestrated |
brilliantly for ‘The Good-Humored
Ladies.” Good performances by the
Covent Garden Opera Orchestra under
Braithwaite.
Charming also are the early pieces
that Respighi orchestrated in
Birds’ and the Suite No. 2 of Ancienti
Airs and Dances for the Lute (Van-'
guard). Excellent performances by the’
Vienna State Opera Orchestra under Lit-:
schauer.
Chopin’s beautiful Piano Concerto
No. 1 gets a fine performance by Gyorgy
Sandor, playing in the traditional style
but with good taste, and the Philadel-
phia Orchestra under Ormandy (Colum-
bia). :
The fast movements of Mendelssohn’s
“Scotch” Symphony are quite engaging,
the finale especially so. Solti’s perform-
ance with the London Symphony (Lon-
don)—excellently paced, impressively
controlled and poised, sensitive in inflec-
tion, coherent in shape—confirms pre-
vious impressions of him as outstanding
among conductors of today. Steinberg’s
performance with the Pittsburgh Sym-
phony (Capitol) is inferior in all re-
spects and less well reproduced.
Tchaikovsky's Suite “Mozartiana”
gets a heavy-handed performance by
Fistoulari with the London Philhar-
monic, and is cut (MGM). Better
played are a few excerpts from the un-
familiar opera ‘The Slippers” which I
presume are not the music Gerald Abra-
ham said “ranks with the best Tchaikov-
sky ever wrote.”
In Mahler's Symphony No. 1 one
hears the Mahler mind operating in its
completely individual\way with youthful’
freshness and engaging results. Borsam-
ski’s performance with the Radio Berlin
Symphony is good; its sound is better on
the Urania record than on the Vanguard.
One hears the same mind operating
in the Symphony No. 7 (Urania), but
strangely, endlessly, with results that
fascinated Arnold Schénberg but don’t
The NATION
vO hes
est Be Roshaud’ areas with
the Radio Berlin Symphony is good.
‘The first two of Delius’s North Coun-
tty Sketches are beautifully wrought,
_ though excessively long, evocations of
autumn and winter; the last two I don’t
cate for; and I like only a couple of
_ loveiy passages in “Eventyr’’ (Colum-
bia). Beecham’s performances with his
Royal Philharmonic are good.
Art N otes
— <_< << —- «= a= == aa au
| NATHANIEL POUSETTE. DART, a
* frequent exhibitor, presents a series of
% very small landscapes in water color. A
few are abstractions; the others sketch-
_ like fragments of outdoor’ scenes—
_ beaches, farms, houses, trees, and the
| like—Passedoit to June 6.
_ AMERICAN ABSTRACT ARTISTS in
their seventeenth annual show present
| oils and sculptures by fifty American
artists. Among the more familiar names
_ ate Joseph Albers, Henry Botkin, Perle
_ Fine, A. Trumbull Mason, George L.
_ K. Morris, and Charmion von Wiegand.
—Hacker to June 30.
SUE FULLER, well-known printmaker,
_ plays with ‘colored string and space
within a deep frame to create complex
_ shapes and movements. Her colors are
_ gay and exciting, and her new medium
"has definite possibilities —Bertha Schae-
fer to June 6.
-RHEA BROWN has recorded her im-
| pressions of a recent trip to the Carib-
bean in a number of post-impressionist
oils, water colors, and drawings.—H~wgo
to June 6.
ATHENA SANTOZE HSU, distin-
guished Chinese woman painter and
- profesor of painting at Teachers’ College
_ if Formosa, has had many exhibitions in
the Orient. This is the first in this
country. Her style is a decorative blend
_- of Eastern and Western techniques; her
subjects are flowers, mountains, figures,
and birds.—Chapellier to June 9.
_ NANCY GALANTIERE has exhibited
in several group shows, principally in
_ the West. Her imaginative paintings of |
horses and dragons are abstract-expres-
_ sionist in style and done in sensitive and
_ bright colors—Grand Central Moderns
to eg a y
— it eee aed ed.
oa ie << ox = ser
o
ee mae ee
Letters
Improbabilia and Politics
[The following brief comment on one
aspect of current literature was solicited
for use in The Nation’s Spring Book
issue of May 8 but arrived too late.
Ward Moore, author of “Greener Than
You Think,” has another novel, “Bring
the Jubilee,” scheduled to appear in the
fall.}
Dear Sirs: Either as novelist or critic I
am one of the most unsatisfactory people
in the business to give an appraisal of
current or recent or classic improbabilia
—alias science fiction or fantasy—be-
cause I am strongly opposed to the seg-
regation of literature by caste. It seems
roundabout to read novels because they
deal with possibilities just as it seems
over specialized to read others because
they treat of Cape Cod, or adolescent
frustration, or elephant shooting.
Novelists use a particular medium be-
cause it offers the best vehicle for the
purpose they have in mind. This pur-
~pose may be to turn an honest buck the
very hardest way, or to entertain, or to
change something. Improbabilia have
been used by the best of their narrators,
from Plato and Sir Thomas More
through Dean Swift to H. G. Wells and
Ray Bradbury, as vehicle for comment
The NATION
[|] with Harper’s Magazine .. .
The NATION
on contemporary society. Moved by
anger and pity, the politically dissatisfied
writer often turns to improbabilia as the
ideal form for displaying not only the
shortcomings of the civilization in which
he lives but the remedy, or the disaster
if some remedy is not applied. No doubt
this is why science fiction has been
officially condemned in the Soviet Union.
Paradoxically, at this particular mo-
ment, when social comment is urgently
called for, too little is being offered.
Unquestionably this is partly due to the
activities of Senators and Congressmen
who equate political purity with intellec-
tual sterility. It is partly-due to a new
self-consciousness, a new sense of re-
sponsibility among writers who habitu-
ally use this medium. 1953 has produced
0 “1984's,” nor is it likely to. Though
there have been some good anthologies,
no novels or collections of stories of
even second rank have come out. The’
present seems to be a moment of pause,
perhaps of stocktaking.
When the medium is considered re-
spectable again and its use does not
stamp one as a writer of space opera, it
is more than likely that the number of
adult novels cast in this form will rise
again, They will be political novels
primarily perhaps, but also philosophical
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THE FIFTH AMENDMENT
The Nation will soon pub-
lish an authoritative
analysis of the Fifth
Amendment, prepared in
light of today’s headlines,
which the Editors believe
will be read and com-
mented upon as widely as
anything this magazine
has published in the last
decade. The authors are
Laurent B. Frantz, Law
Librarian of Drake Uni-
versity, and Norman Red-
lich, a member of the
New York bar who has
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Subscribe
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TODAY!
Crossword Puzzle No. 517
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
be es
ts
sugeeueseane
Pty tet ts
Beene
ee
SEE ZEEE
re
re
Teas
Bee
eee ee
aT eT | El
ACROSS
1 One bitter olive might be a choice
offering, in case of authenticity.
(F-25028;
8 Are city maids still to be remem-
bered? (9, 3)
10 Thrown like the sort that suggests a
strong point in English literature.
10)
11 Frightens animals. (4)
13 A boast of away ’way back? (6)
14 Concerning certain inner tubes, it’s
the wrong wagon to repair bodily.
8
16 Having threefold symmetry. (8)
17 Robert, rather than Thomas. (6)
19 This is no different, when charged.
(4)
20 Chief of the order hymenopter. (10)
22 Roth’s, when the remainder of the
bill is light. (5-7)
23 Something about two-faced people
which not all of us like to see? (6, 8)
DOWN
1 Empty vehicle on the hill-top? (No
damage done, despite the report.).
(5, 9)
2 What Jeremiah is after is not a
mental disturbance. (12).
8 A little bit of England, transplanted
to the Union of South Africa? (4, 6)
7 1D MADWORT; 18,
ue finished up 22 with a sort of 19.
6
4
5 23 run here. (8)
6 The way to extend an opening in
a
9
many papers? (4)
Would dne py the freedom of the
corral? (5, 9)
He who creates my one, perhaps,
doesn’t necessarily leave me 22. (12)
12 Not a teller, as suggested, but in a
vaguely related business. (10)
15 Fare for Noah’s son on the river of
song? (3, 2, 3)
18 The best known inventor of the
movies? (6)
21 If this fish went by, it would be fat.
(4) .
~e~
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No, 516
ACROSS :—1 and 9 TWO-TONE Soa seit).
5, 20 and 29 THE WORST IS YET’ TO
COME; 12 EASELS; 15 MATTER; ae
ETHI VAL ; 17 and 31 PINK LADY; :
LOW-DOWN; 23 STOP; 2
SHOWBPRS:; 33 IN ALL; 34 ALI; 35 ALF 10;
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Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's ‘‘ground rules.'* Address
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Dic wsririotat
and Migicns, now that Anthony Boucher
fh. “steel the way so clearly—as dis-
from the theological pre-
IC. S. Lewis.
‘ated space opera and the
xt disguised as fiction will
\ppear in the more flaccid
éndency toward preciosity,
a recoil from the horrors of
doubtedly exert its pull on
Jse fantasy has been labeled
° E “pessimistic.” This will be
of “+ interest only to. those
a
fancie: ianner rather- than matter;
the tc as will want good novels,
whether } are in the improbabilia
form or the realistic or romantic
mood.. And for many of us “good”
carries the connotation of concern with
the moral problems -of our society, for
though books may not change the times,
the times produce books which charac-
terize them. WARD MOORE
Topanga, Cal.
Misleading Title
Dear Sirs: The fact that the findings and
techniques of the social sciences, clinical
psychology, and even psychoanalysis may
be abused in advertising is a point well
made by Ralph Goodman in a recent
article in The Nation {Freud and The
Hucksters, February 14}. However, the
title of the article is misleading and
seems unfair to psychoanalysis and its
practitioners.
The reference to Freud is particularly
ironical because despite the relatively
greater acceptance of psychoanalysis in
this country than in any other, Freud ex-
- pressed his anxiety about a certain prag-
matic tendency here to exploit the basic
sciences. Freud feared this even in the
field of medicine. His explicit wishes for
analysis were to alleviate suffering and
along with other disciplines to advance
human culture and thus help to prevent
war. One can well imagine how he
would regard any anti-social exploitation
of analysis.
Though a psychoanalyst, I am not pro-
testing because the master’s name may
have been taken in vain but rather be-
cause as an old reader and supporter of
The Nation and a Nation Associate I re-
gard the title of the article as an indica-
tion, among others, of what seems to be a
hostile trend toward analysis. Certainly
a kind of know-nothingism or flippancy
which labels psychological tests and
sociological techniques as ‘‘Freud”’ is not
in keeping with either the usual sophis-
tication of The Nation or its liberal point
of view... . I. PETER GLAUBER
New York
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ee
Printed in the U.S. A by StuiNeeRG Press, INg., Morgan & Johnson Ares., Brooklyn 6, N. a ess 178
EPISCOPAL!
* Of
sixty-one chu
to President
nesty for t
ists convicte
Act, forty-four
jans. There are 3
all of them retired excep
Mallett of Nor
Bishop Nash
alin Nee ait tk Tec an cae
So
: The others:
q Arkansas; Bishop Me
Pa ; Minnesota ;
kam =: Arizona; Bis
Utah; Bishop Pars
fornia.
[ae
: . er A
Add Your Name
to Theirs
A FEW OF THE MANY WHO
HAVE APPEALED FOR AMNESTY
Prof. STRINGFELLOW BARR
Rev. SHELTON HALE BISHOP
Dr. ALGERNON D. BLACK
Rabbi ABRAHAM CRONBACH
Rev. KENNETH RIPLEY FORBES
Miss ELIZABETH P. FRAZIER
Rev. KENNETH deP. HUGHES
FRANCIS: FISHER KANE
Dr. CORLISS LAMONT
Rev. EDWARD D. McGOWAN
Dr. ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN
The Rt. Rev. NORMAN B. NASH
Rev. GEORGE LYMAN PAINE
BEN SHAHN
Rev. MASSEY H. SHEPHERD, Jr.
Prof. PRESTON SLOSSOM
PAUL SWEEZY
Dr. H. H. WILSON
(The persons listed above acted independently,
and are not among the sponsors
of our Committee.)
NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO WIN
AMNESTY FOR THE SMITH
ACT VICTIMS
Dr. Edward K. Barsky, Choirman
Carl Marzani, Treasurer
667 MADISON AVE., ROOM 611
NEW YORK 21, NEW YORK
ANS LEAD AMNESG@ ‘Puz:
APPEAL FOR COMM
the one hundred and
rchmen to appeal
Truman for am-
he eleven Commun-
d under the S
are Episcopal-
even bishops,
t Bishop
thern Indiana and
of Massachusets.
Bishop Demby of j;
Elwain of
Bishop Mitchell of 6
hop Moulton of
ons of Cali-
mith
UNISTS | By FRANK W. !
AVANESTY!
Dear NATION Reader:
Here is something you cay do about McCarthyism—help'
win amnesty for America’s political prisoners! ;
As long as there are political prisoners in our federal peni-
tentiaries, there are bound to be McCarthys in the Halls of :
Congress.
The 14 American men and women now in prison for their
“teaching and advocacy” are Communists. But democracy, not,
Communism, has suffered the more grievous wounds in the
two years since the Supreme Court upheld the constitution-
ality of the Smith Act.
Thought-control legislation is the meat on which McCarthyism feeds.
Amnesty for the victims of the thought-control Smith Act would go far ;
to curb those who seek to destroy our Bill of Rights and wreck our efforts
to achieve world peace.
Campaigns to win amnesty are not new in our country’s history.
Amnesty was won from Presidents Wilson, Harding and Coolidge after
the first World War. Amnesty grants have been wrested from the fascist
government of Spain, the monarchist government of Greece, the ‘reac-
tionary government of Turkey, the center government of Chile, the
liberal government of Guatemala. ;
We welcome the release of William Oatis, which followed amnesty decrees
in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania and the Soviet Union.
More than five hundred leaders of American public opinion have appealed
to the President for amnesty for those convicted under the Smith Act. Almost
every trade union—CIO, AFL and independent—is on record for repeal of the
Smith Act. The United Packinghouse Workers-CIO and Ford Local 600, UAW-
CIO were among the first to take the logical next step and ask amnesty for the
Smith Act victims.
On June 4, 1951, Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas and Hugo
Black, in their dissenting opinions, warned that the Smith Act is inconsistent with
our democratic traditions. By June, 1953, the wisdom of their stand is spelled out
in the McCarthy-McCarran assault on the rights of all Americans.
, Our Committee has designated June 4 to July 4 “Amnesty Month.”
We urge that you speak out now for amnesty—alone or in concert with others,
through a letter to President Eisenhower or through the press.
_ Defend your right to say what you think by defending the rights of those
with whom you may disagree!
Dr. Edward K. Barsky, 667 Madison Avenue,
Room 611, New York 21, New York.
I enclose $ to help finance the amnesty campaign.
Please send me __________ copies of the brochure listing 500 distinguished
Americans who have appealed for amnesty, and copies of the petition,
“Free the Victims of War Hysteria!”
Please send me more information about your Committee.
Namen ——E——E——eeeeeee
Addrese_ EEE EE EE Eee
City.
Zone____ State.
2 eS lll !, Ul ao A
- F , iy
ee é . ‘ 7 4
ae Il: LELAND OLDS ON ATOMIC POWER
UF DRLIN 6 52.
BLIC isan) %
Si \ Beringane, a Calif.
TH
“Nation oul
s 6, 1953 _—_ r-—OOoOrrorrrer L j
a f
Does ;
Silecmce ‘
| | ;
(am
NY
Mean q
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THE FIFTH AMENDMENT CONTROVERSY | 5
oe by Norman Redlich and a
WEEK
| SINCE
|1865
Laurent B. Frantz
Letters
Ss ee ee eee ee ee ee ee ee Se ee ee ee See Ge GE GS Ge Gee Gs cee
Challenging Mr.
Wittenberg’s Article
Dear Sirs: In his excellent article How
to Say ‘No to the Demagogues [issue of
May 9} Philip Wittenberg counsels wit-
nesses before Congressional inquisitors
to challenge their authority to inquire
into political opinion. That is precisely
what nine of us from Hollywood did—
and we went to prison just the same.
No one of us invoked the Fifth
Amendment in refusing to answer ques-
tions about trade-union and. political
affiliations. All of us, to use Mr. Witten-
berg’s phrase, raised “‘the clear issue of
the committee’s offensive conduct,” cited
the secrecy of the ballot, the Bill of
Rights, the impertinence of the inquiry.
It seemed to do no good.
While I might be inclined to agree
when Mr. Wittenberg deplores the need
to invoke the constitutional privilege
self-incrimination—and I cer-
tainly agree that the inquisitors have so
distorted facts as to make such invoca-
tion in itself appear a confession of
guilt—I would ask him: please, what
else can a witness do these days? When
the challenge to the committee's author-
ity is answered by a contempt conviction
good for a yeayin prison and a perjury
conviction—''provable”’ by the testimony
of any hired perjurer the inquisitors
choose to trot out—can bring five, what
would Mr. Wittenberg suggest to keep
other decent citizens out of jail? None
against
of the nine men from Hollywood, I am ~
sure, regrets the time he served for
challenging the House un-Americans.
But we are all anxious to see that no one
else is forced to pay such a price for
defending our traditional freedoms.
To my layman’s mind—which be-
comes increasingly unimpressed by at-
torneys’ apparently endless faith in the
courts- -Mr. Wittenberg misses the point
of the-whole show: that the inquisitors
are not interested in the law or even in
the witnesses they pillory. They are the
spokesmen and the agents of the most
reactionary and fascist-minded sections
of big business and they have a job to
do: to black-list, intimidate, destroy mili-
tant defenders of the democratic rights
of the people and to silence those who
might in any way challenge the authority
of their principals,
San Francisco ALVAH BESSIE
New York
{It is true that the Supreme Court re-
fused to review the conviction of the
Hollywood Ten. Mr, Wittenberg, how-
ever, raised an issue which is not based
directly on the Bill of Rights. What he
rgues is that the inquisitorial hearings
have become in effect “trials and thus
represent an encroachment on the judi-
cial function. To our knowledge, the
Supreme Court has not been asked to
directly on this issue—EDITORS
THE NATION. }
pa SS
Rediscovers Us.
Dear Sirs: Thanks for the article by
Philip Wittenberg. I shall file it for fu-
ture use. I am a little ashamed to confess
that it was this article which prompted
me to buy, and thus rediscover, your
estimable journal: Today I was standing
in a super-market queue, discussing the
article with a friend whom I met there
when the man behind me, a stranger and
very ‘‘conservative” looking, broke in
and said, “The Nation is the only maga-
zine which has the right to call itself
one in the whole country. In fact, it’s the
only newspaper we have!”
JEAN PURGELL
Orchid for Beale
Dear Sirs: The article Teacher as Rebel
His War for Freedom by Howard K.
Beale in the May 16 issue of The
Nation is outstanding in its readability
and perspicacity. It is refreshing to find
an author who sheds new light on this
tremendous problem of freedom to
learn and at the same time writes suc-
cinctly. and clearly.
RICHARD BARNES KENNAN,
Secretary, National Commission
for the Defense of Democracy
; Through Education
Washington
Voice of Liberalism
Dear Sirs: Allow me to thank you for
the courage and level-headedness re-
peatedly evinced by The Nation since its
partial reorganization a few months ago.
Always liberal, always dynamic, today it
is More consistent and fearless than ever
before. The so-called neo-conservatives
led by the paradoxical Peter Viereck
deplore its influence, and Elmer Davis
has told them in print that The Nation
as
ie fear. I hore Mr. Davis
*
mistaken. As the journal of advance
liberal- opinion that The Nation now
definitely is it should command a wide
and appreciative circulation. We need: it
to speak for the America of Jefferson,
Jackson, Cleveland, Wilson, and Frank-
lin Roosevelt and his brilliant brain
trust. ‘
The Eisenhower Administration is
hopelessly blind and ignorant. It is con-
verting the once democratic republic
into a predatory plutoctacy tempeted
only by dread of a major depression. ‘As
The Nation has said editorially, the
Dulles foreign policy, particularly as
exemplified by its promises and deeds in
Indo-China, is thoroughly reactionary
and stupid. Mr, Dulles is an interng-
tional lawyer, not really a diplomat, He
doesn't’ know obsolete colonialism and
discredited imperialism when he is
forced to deal with them. He is another
Charles E. Wilson; to him, what is good
for big business is good for the country.
How long will the people who trustéd
the Eisenhower crusaders and orators
cling to their delusions and fancies?
La Jolla, Cal. VICTOR S. YARROS
The Old South
Dear Sirs: In your issue of March 21
I noted an article by a neighbor of ours,
Howard Snyder of Canton, Mississippi,
in which he gave his impressions of the
change that has come .over the old
South during the forty years he has re-
sided in our state. With most of the facts
of this article we are in hearty accord.
However, some-of the statements aré
quite shocking to an old-timer of the
deep South. When he speaks of the
“poor benighted hill farmers” being
“soaked and saturated with hate for the.
Negro,” we feel that it is a gross mis-
representation of the old South forty or
even sixty years ago.
I was born and bred in the hills of
Mississippi, the son of a tenant~farmer,
and from my earliest recollection have
been intimately associated with Negroes.
When I became twelve years of age,
father was able to own his own land,
and had Negro tenants on his farm and
occasionally employed Negroes at wages
until I was -full grown and went to
college. We boys worked along with
them on the farm, splitting rails, build-
ing fences, and sharing every. other ex-
perience pertaining to rural life. —
As for mistreating: the Negroes, our
father never laid a lash on a one of
(Continued on page 491)
“/Valion 4%
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
ie ee
RIES
eka maa
Republican Party. Had he used similarly cautious words
about Taft’s brush-off of the United Nations, he might
The Shape of Things
TART. TPO TN PL
i have started the chain reaction that would ignite World ¢
. Revolt of the Puppet War III. It would have been a big and possibly fatal ff
_ From the time the Korean war began The Nation has Munich. “
_ been almost alone in pointing out how seriously the Syng- This he has forestalled, and in doing so he has both a
i‘ man Rhee regime compromised the whole action under- recaptured some degree of executive authority and shifted A
_ taken in the name of the United Nations. Not only was __ the balance of power away from the fanatic periphery of
,
i
=
4
Et PERTH CT
_ plainly, firmly, and for
-Syngman Rhee regarded by Asians as an American pup-
pet, he obviously enjoyed the special favor of General
MacArthur and his military successors. When the U. N.
army, first pushed into North Korea, Rhee’s political
police followed right after, to establish his control in the
conquered areas and “cleanup” the unreliable elements.
_ And although the U. N. ultimately forced the recall of
Rhee’s terrorists, his claim that all of Korea should come
under his rule as soon as it was liberated was never for-
mally turned down. Nor was his assumption that unifica-
tion would be achieved by force of arms rather than by
political measures after an armistice.
Today we reap the consequences of this series of
blunders. The erstwhile puppet, grown great on Ameri-
can arms and flattery and dollars, has not only rejected
the truce terms proposed by the U. N. command but
threatens to-fight to prevent their being carried out. As
this week began, President Eisenhower and his advisers
were obviously even more concerned about their Korean
ally than about their Korean enemy. Suppose the Com-
munists should accept the terms offered—or other rea-
sonable terms—would the United States use its decisive
military and economic power to force the South Koreans
to yield? The choice is a horrid one, but we brought it
upon ourselves.
Foreign Policy: Ike’s or Taft’s?
The President had to repudiate Taft. He had to do it
“direct attribution.” For the
Senator put before him a clear alternative: he was forced
to choose between his own foreign policy and that of the
Congressional isolationists, between the fiction of party
harmony and the survival of the Western coalition.
Mr. Taft may have thought the President would shilly-
_ shally again. His capitulation on Morningside Heights
last September 12 was a small Munich, but its immediate
effect was limited to the balance of power within the
his party toward the center, where his own policy natu-
rally rests. Taft's demand that we “abandon any idea
of working with the United Nations” in the East had been
expressed in more typical lingo by John O'Donnell in the
Daily News (May 28). Commenting “cheerily” on the
tonic effect of the Taft speech he remarked:
Did we say cheerily? Ancient as we are and stiff as
the legs may be, we promise to dance at the foot of
Forty-second Street on the day, and soon may it come,
when Uncle Sam forecloses his mortage on the U. N.
house of glass and boots back to Europe the unwelcome
foreigners who have been leeching on us North Amer-
icans since the day when the traitor Alger Hiss set up
the charter in San Francisco back in April of 1945.
This wraps up the opposition line as snugly as any-
thing we have seen.
The Need For Deeds
So My Eisenhower must not imagine that he has done
more than square off at the opposition. The Taft cohorts
will close ranks and fight back; and if he tries to duck
they will have him where they want him. As a soldier
he presumably knows this. But while his rejection of the
Taft position was straightforward, he showed less resolu-
tion in attacking the vicious Dirksen rider—voted twenty
to three by the Senate Appropriations Committee—cut-
ting off this country’s financial contribution to the United
Nations if Communist China should become a member.
(The United States provides more than one-third of the
U._N.’s annual budget.) Questioned on the proposal, Mr.
Eisenhower said only that he considered it a very drastic
cure and would want to think it over before commenting
at greater length.
Weasel words like these are not enough. In fact, if
the President’s assertion of his own policy and authority
is to stick, even strong words will not be enough. As he
has so often advised the Russians, deeds will be neces-
in This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 465
The Present Danger : 467
Magnificent Carnival by Kingsley Martin 469
ARTICLES
The French Crisis
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 470
Does Silence Mean Guilt?
by Laurent B. Frantz
and Norman Redlich 471
The Immunity Proposal
Comment by Francis Biddle,
Telford Taylor, Erwin N. Griswold,
Donald R. Richberg 477
Grab for the Atom:
II. Wanted a George Norris
by Leland Olds 478
Morocco in Turmoil:
I. The Fanatic Colonials
by Alexander Werth 481
Sears, Roebuck:
“Subverting’’ Latin America
by Lincoln Clark 483
BOOKS
Babbitt, Jr. in Two Roles
by John W. Ward 484
The Female of the Species
by Frances Keene 485
New Books in Brief 486
MUSIC _ by B. H. Haggin 489
RECORD NOTES by Robert E. Garis 490
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No, 518
by Frank W. Lewis 492
LETTERS opposite 465
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Assoctates
Victor H. Bernstein Managing Editor
J. Alvarez del Vayo Foreign Editor
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New Yerk, N. Y.. under the act of March 3 ‘1879. Advertising ~
and Circulation Representatives for Continental Europe: Publicitas.
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Three
yeurs $17. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $1.
Change of Address: Three weeks’ notice is required for change of
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new.
Information to Libraries: The Nation 1s indexed in Readers’ Guide to
Periodical Literature. Book Review Digest, Index to Labor Articles,
Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index,
466
Kai-shek and cybipfhan Rt Rhee, do not like. He will have to
do better than in the recent past in consulting with his By
allies and in demonstrating his willingness to operate —
through the U. N. The President has “just begun to
fight” —just barely begun. If he is to save his Administra _
tion and what it professes to stand for, he will have to
ground to regain.
Profits, Yes; Risks: No
A number of recent developments underscore the im-
portance of Leland Olds’s fine series of articles on the key —
policy questions involved in the industrial uses of atomic;
power now running in this journal (see p. 478). On the:
go on fighting, and much harder, for he has a lot of lost ©
same day that North American Aviation exhibited a’
model of an atomic-power generator—it will be com-*
pleted in two years—the Atomic Energy Commission pro-
posed that Congress enact legislation which would “cre-
ate a favorable atmosphere” for the development of
nuclear power for industrial uses by private enterprise.
Representative W. Sterling Cole, chairman of the Joint -
Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, has an- ,
nounced that public hearings on the subject will open on
June 15.
In the meantime, the proposed 30 per cent cut in the
1954 atomic budget may have momentarily dampened the
enthusiasm of big business to “have a go” at atomic
power. Those industries, writes Eric Hodgins in Fortune,
that are most involved in the atom’s commercial future
“gleam at the prospects but quail at the costs’; they do
not want to see atomic power left on industry’s doorstep
“without a large feeding bottle of federal funds.” Both
motivations will be apparent in the Washington hear-
ings. The committee should pay particular attention to
the transcript of a recent conference on the industrial uses
of atomic power which the National Industrial Confer-
ence Board has just released. It details in the most
impressive manner the revolutionary implications not
7
¢
“t
-
merely of atom-generated electric power but of theend-
less profitable uses to which radioactive atoms can be put,
from measuring and automatically controlling the thick-
ness of tin plate on a can to determining how different
kinds of oil save wear in an automobile engine.
Naturally the interested companies “gleam at the pros-
underwrite the tisk without sharing in the profits.
a
Mr. Atom and Mr. Malan
Some witness at the hearings should call the public’s
attention to the fact that atomic power has now pushed
this country into what could prove to be a most em- 3
The NATION
¥
pects”; but they would, of course, like the public to ; |
|
ee a % ae
ing alliance with the Malan regime in South
Africa. Late in May a large uranium-extraction plant was
opened near Daggafontein, the first of a number of such
plants which will be built. Already the world’s largest
producer of uranium, the Union of South Africa will
"now rapidly increase its production; by 1956 it should
be furnishing about 40 per cent of the entire supply used
_ by the A. E. C. Great Britain and this country have
signed a ten-year contract with the Union and twenty-odd
_ mines there under which approximately $650,000,000
_ will be invested, insuring this country about three-fourths
_ of the total output.
t Uranium production in South Africa is certain to be
_ enormously profitable, since it can be carried on there as
a by-product of the business of mining gold. South
Africa’s purchases of American products, which have
fallen off, will now increase rapidly, as will our involve-
_ ment in South African internal affairs. Natives make up
, 90 per cent of the labor in the mines. A strike in the
_ mines, one American diplomat told Edward Hughes of
_ the Wall Street Journal, could “hit Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
_ right in the belly.” Malan’s Nationalists are of course
: elated; they now have what they regard as “an iron-clad
insurance” against any threats, external or internal, to
peace and good order in South Africa. Will atomic
_ power, which might be used to lift the world’s colonial
_ areas to a new level of prosperity and well-being, actually
be used, at least initially, to strengthen white supremacy
and add to the burdens of native peoples? An informed
American public opinion can influence the kind of answer
_ that will be given to this question.
~ Czech Devaluation
Announcing one of the most drastic currency devalua-
_ tions in rectnt history, the Prague radio declared: “We
will not allow that bourgeois elements be enriched.” But
while the “reform” may extinguish any remaining Czech
capitalists, we doubt that it will console multitudes of
» workers or dissuade them from the belief that they have
been swindled. In particular, the concurrent repudiation
of all government securities issued since 1945 means the
wiping out of huge amounts of workers’ savings invested
in this medium—savings which in many cases have been
forced through obligatory payroll-deduction schemes.
The devaluation confirms reports of economic crisis
in Czechoslovakia brought on to a large extent by the in-
sistence of the Communist regime on over-rapid expan-
sion of heavy industry at the expense of production of
consumer goods. This, together with harvest failures,
_ encouraged an inflationary situation and led to discontent
among the workers that manifested itself in large-scale
absenteeism and even, despite police-state sanctions, occa-
sional strikes. It seems improbable, however, that the
| discontent will be allayed, since the revaluation of wages
| and prices which has also been ordered appears to mean
June 6, 1953
Me
ey
ae:
FI ae ew
ES RS
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oe,
pe A Sete A
a serious reduction in real wages. Czech workers, who
can hardly have forgotten that less than twenty years ago
they enjoyed the highest living standards in Eastern
Europe, must be growing increasingly skeptical about
the blessings of communism.
The Present Danger
I. The Crisis in Leadership
LIKE sleepwalkers stumbling toward a precipice, the
American people are moving toward a hazard which
many of them sense but few can clearly see. Watchmen
shout diverse warnings, but the mass of the people, stir-
ring uneasily to a new consciousness, are still only vaguely
aware of the danger. Friends in Europe perceive it and
their warnings have begun to echo here, but not much
time is left to awaken the nation. A thousand Paul
Reveres are needed, as Senator Lehman has suggested,
to ride forth and tell the people that their liberties are
threatened. What is urgently needed is a Committee on
the Present Danger to alert the people.
The present danger is of course “McCarthyism.” This
spring has seen the turning point in the career of the
Wisconsin demagogue who picked up, so to speak, where
Huey Long left off. For the first time, oddly enough,
the Senator is being taken—and is taking himself—quite
seriously. In the same week in which the Alsops an-
nounced (April 15) that it was now “almost universally
agreed that McCarthy’s objective is the Presidency,”
Bertrand Russell, writing as if he were looking backward
to the 1950's from a fear-free London, gave American
readers a brilliant account of how McCarthy triumphed
in 1956, The Senator then confirmed these flattering
forecasts by issuing the traditional disclaimer of the
active candidate.
But talk of the Presidency is merely an aspect, not a
cause, of the Senator's new look. His influence, instead
of diminishing, as many expected, has greatly increased
under the Eisenhower Administration, The Bohlen affair,
the Voice of America hearings, the transatlantic clash
with Mr. Attlee, these and a number of other events of
the last four months have changed McCarthy the Irre-
sponsible Bounder into McCarthy the Serious Contender
for Power. Mr. Attlee merely voiced a question that has
been troubling an increasingly large number of Amer-
icans: Is McCarthy so powerful that the President must
listen when he speaks? Now even Sidney Hook is clamor-
ing for “a national movement . . . to retire Senator
McCarthy.” But the rapid enlargement of the Stop-
McCarthy forces has curiously failed to provide champions
willing to take on Goliath. Who is there to lead the
fight against fear demanded, with almost hysterical
emphasis, in sO many recent editorials, speeches, and
sermons? The Eisenhower Administration does not in-
467
i vos
tend to force a showdown with McCattlay. The President
emerged from the fight over Mr. Bohlen’s confirmation
victorious but worried, and definitely committed to a
policy of avoiding a head-on collision at almost any price
—witness the public humiliation of Mr. Stassen, the
craven handling of Mrs. Mildred McAfee Horton's ap-
pointment, the forced resignation of Theodore Kaghan
from the “Voice”
Joseph M. Frankenstein from his post in the High Com-
and the ludicrous failure to
carty through on the appointment of David Lee Shilling-
program, the shameful dismissal of
missioner’s Office at Bonn,
law, wealthy Chicago patron of the Administration, to
the American delegation at the United Nations.
EACH TIME the Administration has been challenged by
McCarthy, except in the Bohlen affair, it has sidestepped
a showdown. The breach between thé White House and
the Senator, however, has widened to the point that Vice-
President Nixon has become a regular go-between, setting
up situations in which McCarthy can pose as the Pres-
ident’s magnanimous friend and loyal supporter. (“It ts
“to give
him a chance to make an apparently generous gesture
toward President Eisenhower. He will always take it—
a favor to the Senator,” writes Doris Fleeson,
until he is satisfied the Eisenhower luster is dimmed,’ )
But the Administration is cunning as well as fearful: it
wants McCarthy’s help on the budget and other matters,
and it also intends to use him in next year’s Congressional
elections, in which his influence could be decisive in five
key’ campaigns—Illinois (Douglas), Iowa (Gillette),
Minnesota (Humphrey), Montana (Murray), and West
Virginia (Neely). It makes little sense, therefore, to
petition the President to crack down on the Republicans’
most effective demagogue—as some Democrats who
wanted the President as the Democratic nominee in 1948
have been doing. McCarthy’s influence has been linked
with powerful elements in the Republican Party; to break
with him would be to split the party. Nor can the
President repudiate McCarthy without repudiating
“McCarthyism” —the miracle-working formula which has
given the right-wing coalition a new dynamism and co-
gerence. For the President to repudiate McCarthyism
would mean dispelling the fear which reaction exploited
so successfully in the 1952 campaign.
The Democratic leadership is no more willing than
the Republican to lead a crusade against McCarthyism. In
two of the finest speeches of his distinguished career
Senator Lehman has tried to induce the Democrats to
launch “a frontal attack on McCarthyism,” even at the
risk of possible defeat, but the New York Post notes that
the silence in high Democratic circles has been “signifi-
cant and oppressive.” The “old hands” incline to the
view that what-to-do-about-McCarthy is a problem for
the Republicans, not the Democrats. Most of the Dixie-
crats, of course, agree with McCarthy, and the Dixiecrats
468
_-second- and third-rate suspects and subpoena Eleanor —
es So ty 2 eee
are to the Democrats wie ‘the com-fe od Q
the Republicans—the center of the party's s oh; a
least in Congress. Apart from this, the Democratic leader- —
ship intends to place major reliance on local or regional |
issues in 1954. Writing in the New York Times of May 3,
William S$. White reported that “nothing ‘on the horizon’
suggests a general Democratic adoption of the tactic
recommended by Senator Lehman” of going all-out
against the Republicans, “horizontally across the nation,”
on the issue of McCarthyism and civil liberties, rather
than fighting them along regional or vertical lines. In ~
short, the Democratic leaders, like the Republican, if not a
cheer-leaders for McCarthy are either unwilling to opr
pose him or cannot because they are politically isolated in
their own party.
Given the existing dislike of McCarthy—and the re-
cent polls reflect a larger “unfavorable” than “favorable”
opinion—it may seem strange that politicians in both |
parties are so reluctant to grab the leadership of what 4 a
might turn out to be a wave-of-the-future movement, But , |
the explanation is obvious. McCarthy's appeal is to both —
parties and in about equal measure, “The forces of reac-
tion,” Senator Lehman notes, “are actually bipartisan, +
although they appear to have a strategic center in the
present majority party.” In close contests McCarthy’s
influence can be potent, for he can swing normally ~
Democratic votes to the Republican column, and his in- a
fluence is strongest in precisely those areas where the
liberal Democrats have their largest following—in the
highly industrial states. Just as the Republicans are de-.
lighted to have a campaigner who can strongly influence
Catholic voters, so the Democrats hesitate to adopt a
tactic that might alienate many Italian, Polish, and Ifish
Americans.
IT IS this strategically disposed power situation that
enables McCarthy to feel that he has nothing to fear from
the Democratic “left,” which, already punished “and
smeared, he proposes to destroy in 1954. To him the
liberal Democrats in and out of the Senate have always
been “followers of the Communist Party line’; tomorrow
they will be “card-carrying Communists.” A recent car-
toon in one of the labor papers showing a witness assur-
mg a Congressional committee that he is sot and never
has been “a member of the Democratic Party” clearly —
foreshadows the McCarthy line in the 1954 eiection. Al-
ready Westbrook Pegler and his colleagues are demand-
ing that the Congressional inquisitors cease trifling with .
Roosevelt, Justice Frankfurter, Henry Wallace, and Dean —
Acheson,
The crisis in political leadership accents the present |
danger that McCarthyism, meaning the worst bipartisan
reaction, may score heavily in 1954 and even triumph in
1956. McCarthy is well aware of this crisis and exploits —
The NATION _ )
fas
~
&.
x tic following ie dohtiruing ‘his attacks upon the
_Republican-directed State Department, so he delights his
_ Republican fans by stepping up the campaign against the
FR SE ELI PE
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fellow-travelers of Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson,
and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now he has begun to talk
about protecting “small business’; next year—who
krows?—he may appear as the “friend” of labor and the
dirt farmers.
BECAUSE his appeal is bipartisan, only a bipartisan
Opposition stands much chance of being effective. In the
. 1930's the extreme right-wing elements of both parties
were numerous, vocal, and fairly well financed, but lead-
ership was lacking and programmatic differences stymied
every effort to achieve unity and compact organization.
The democratic coalition was then united under the
leadership of Roosevelt. Today the situation is reversed.
The right-wing elements have achieved unity and organ-
ization, while the democratic forces are disorganized,
demoralized, and leaderless. The problem is to unite these
factions in an alliance that can protect and even enlarge
the liberal influence in Congress and bring a new ma-
jority to power in 1956. The opposition to McCarthyism
is large and is increasing rapidly, but it cuts across every
party, religious, racial, ethnic, sectional, and class interest.
Precisely because it cuts across every grouping, the exist-
mg- leadership is paralyzed and some new leadership
must be stimulated.
Fortunately partisan organization is not needed in
1954, but even a bipartisan guerrilla army requires some
organization. It need not be elaborate. If nearly a million °
coal miners can carry out a successful strike stategy by
simply interpreting the raising and lowering of John
L. Lewis's, eyebrows, it should not be too difficult for a
Committee on the Present Danger to rally the opposition
to McCarthyism. In the meantime let those who oppose
this evil demand the kind of leadership that will not
compromise with it. Let them demand it in every group
to which they belong and in every relationship of their
‘lives. There is not enough time to bring new organiza-
_ tions into being, and the doctrine of guilt by association
-would seriously limit the effectiveness of those that might
be formed. The problem is not to bring new forces into
being but to set existing forces in motion. Every day the
Present danger is being more widely realized; already
‘new stirrings can be noted in the labor movement, in the
churches, on the campuses. The mystic chords of memory
can yet swell to the chorus of the union if they are
touched again, as surely they will be, by the better angels
— of our nature.
Next week we will deal with another aspect of the
present danger: the necessity for clearer understanding
of McCarthy’s tactics, of how these tactics can be coun-
tered, and, above all, of how zot to fight McCarthyism.
_ June 6, 1953
Magnificent Carnival
London
All countries need their symbols of unity and their
opportunities of pagentry; they are both happier and less
dangerous when these flow from’ the tradition of the
country. This is the only sensible way to regard the
Coronation.
Queen Elizabeth, as the saying goes, “has got every-
thing.” She is young and attractive; she has a son and
daughter whose pictures, as they climb in and out of the
drawing-room windows, suggest to every mother in the
country that the home life of the Queen is after all very
much like theirs. The-Duke is as handsome as a prince
should be. He is at home as a sailor and an air pilot and
looks fine in either uniform. Almost every woman in the
country subconsciously identifies herself with the Queen;
her Coronation, at which the Archbishop crowns her and
her husband is the first to pay homage, is surely the
supreme fulfilment of feminine desire. If every woman
is a Cinderella at heart, the Coronation is a fairy story in
which we can all share. Amid cheering crowds the
gingerbread coach with its pantomime footmen and
circus horses rolls along, and out of its windows, smiling
on an enchanted world, leans the young Queen herself,
with her glass slippers barely hidden and Prince Charm-
ing by her side.
I am told that this royal triumph is due to the deep
machinations of cunning men who give us every day
more monarchy in our newspapers and more religion on
the B.B.C. Such a propaganda element does exist; it has
been at work ever since privilege began to fear democ-
racy. It is less necessary, however, today than it was
forty years ago and less even than it was in the thirties.
For our society is floating on a tide of unreason. Men
believed in the thirties that they could influence events.
Today they feel disillusioned and helpless. They respond
to every “human interest” item in the press, to every-
thing intimate and non-political, to the royal fairy story,
more than they did twenty years ago because they feel
unable to face the affairs of the world. In 1953 news-
papers have found that the public appetite for monarchy
is unlimited. They have not been able to supply enough.
If we deplore this, we are deploring a malaise of our
age of which the worship of monarchy is one of the least
important and Jess unhappy signs. No doubt the extrava- —
gant lengths to which it goes is a symptom of the same
disease which started fascism on the Continent and gives
McCarthy so much power in America today. But what
a contrast as a symptom! If British democracy does no
worse than this, we shall have little to complain of. The
public is not under any illusions that we shall be saved
by magic or that the Coronation is anything more than
a magnificent carnival.
KINGSLEY MARTIN
469
The French Crisis
Paris
A WEEK of consultations and ihterviews
confirms my earlier impression that*Pres-
ident Auriol is confronted this time with
a crisis that cannot be dismised as just
another manifestation of France's “crazy
politics.” Technically its origin may be
related to the fact that the majority in
the present National Assembly has not
yet found its point of equilibrium, while
its instability has been increased by the
anarchical situation of the Gaullist dep-
uties, left free to act by the General's
decision to abolish his party. But the real
cause must be sought ‘in the fruitless
attempt of the French government to
combine two irreconcilable policies: con-
tinue the war in Indo-China and at the
same time build a strong economy that
will permit France to fulfil its obliga-
tions to the Atlantic coalition.
Americans have been told by those
unable or unwilling to understand the
present economic difficulties of France
that while every American’ is burdened
by taxes the French do not pay taxes at
all. This, of course, is not true. Every
French citizen carries a greater tax bur-
den than his American counterpart. Bare
figures do not tell the story. One must
take into consideration the standards of
living in the two countries, the value and
stability of the currencies, and many
other factors. On the lower income levels
a Frenchman after paying his taxes finds
himself in a much worse situation than
the corresponding American, who can
count on a relatively stable dollar and
arrange his business or personal budget
accordingly. The French taxpayer does
not know what the value of the franc
will be six weeks ahead. At present the
franc is greatly overvaluated. The official
rate is 350 francs to the dollar. On the
marché parallel (diplomatic language
for the black market) francs sell today
at 412 to the dollar, but the realistic ex-
change rate, based on the franc’s true
value in terms of what it will buy, would
be 600 or 700 to the dollar. I could
give many other proofs of how French-
470
men are taxed—directly and indirectly,
visibly and under various disguises—far
beyond their capacities.
M. René Mayer did not discover any
way of convincing Washington that
France must either negotiate with the
Vietminh leaders and put an immediate
end to the Indo-China war or cut its
other military expenses, reduce by half
its present commitments to NATO.
Washington demands that France man-
age both obligations at once. Since that
could not be done through ‘normal
political methods, M. Mayer asked the
Assembly for “‘special powers,’ which
would have meant a new delay in the
unavoidable task of ending the Indo-
Chinese war. The special powers were
refused him, and the crisis followed.
I do not ignore the subsidiary though
also important factors that contributed
to his fall—the opposition of the distill-
ing interests, the economic egoism of
various financial and business groups
with influence over the deputies, and so
forth. But if the fundamental fact is
missed—the fact that the war in Indo-
China is ruining France and that from
left to right impatience and outright
anger are increasing as it drags on year
after year—nothing about French poll-
tics will be understood. We shall have
only the irritated or ironical American
ptess comments repeating the old canard
that the French are irresponsible indi-
vidualists and that France cannot be
“governed.”
FROM THE first day of the crisis Pres,
ident Auriol exercised his experience and
talents to try to find a way to put to-
gether a stronger coalition. A broaden-
ing of the coalition to the left was
difficult so long as the Socialists remained
convinced—as the recent elections indt-
cated—that opposition was more reward-
ing than participation in the govern-
ment. But in spite of President Auriol’s
unusual public pressure on them to take
the responsibility of government, the
Socialists refused; so Paul Reynaud was
asked to rally the other kind of majority
—a-right-to-center instead of a center-
to-left majority. Reynaud’s experiment
turned out to be one of the most illu-
minating of this crisis, which in every
aspect is so much mere serious than
those preceding it. Since it is impossible
today for the right to come to power
through the normal play of politics,
Reynaud attempted a parliamentary
coup d'état by proposing to the Assembly
the alternative of either supporting the
government whatever its program might
be or committing hara-kiri by automatic
dissolution and demanding new elec-
tions if it voted the government out.
The most important feature of his
performance was his bold admission of
the awakening of the workets, which
Nation readers will recall was stressed
in this column a couple of weeks ago.
He challenged the bourgeois parties to
recognize the existence of that Still un-
materialized “‘rally of the left’ which
was looming on the horizon. In order
to underline how seriously he took the
menace of a return to some kind of
popular front, under a new form of
course, he addressed his argument chiefly
to Pierre“Cot, without doubt the other
most brilliant speaker of the Assembly.
In the dialogue between these two was
concentrated the essence of the present
political situation in France today. .
But Reynaud’s condition was rejected
by a substantial majority, and Auriol
turned next to Mendés-France, favorite
of the left. Although undoubtedly he is
one of the men best fitted to handle the
mounting economic and financial crisis,
his uncompromising opposition to the
indefinite prolongation of the Indo-
China war and his support of negotia-
tions with Moscow reduce the likelihood
‘of his obtaining the backing of the old
"majority. Thus it looks as if within a
few hours or a few days the country
would have another Prime Minister little
different from those of the last. three
years. And all the problems of France
will remain. 5
The NATION
DOES SILENCE MEAN GUILT?
by Laurent B. Frantz and Norman Redlich
[The unusual amount of space given to
this article is an indication of the im-
portance that the editors attach to it.
To assure its widest possible distribution,
reprints have been ordered which are
available at cost to individuals and
groups.
The authors have had broad experi-
ence in constitutional law, Laurent B.
Frantz is the Law Librarian of Duke
University; Norman Redlich, a member
of the New York bar, has contributed to
legal publications. |
MESSE “Cert Pee
YO OO HE
THE ancient right to refuse to answer
incriminating questions, embodied in the
Fifth Amendment and in the laws or
constitutions of every state, is now being
put to its most vigorous test since its
_ inception in England eight centuries ago.
In an era of ever-expanding Congres-
sional inquiry into personal beliefs, the
privilege of invoking that right is the
only effective legal weapon now available
for the protection of witnesses. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the investiga-
tors have attacked it as a legal technical-
ity which shields Communists and Com-
munist sympathizers. What is surprising
is that even the critics of current investi-
gations have condemned the use of the
Fifth Amendment by “uncooperative”
witnesses. The often repeated charge
that the privilege is being “abused”’ re-
| veals a lack of understanding of its
nature and of the legal, moral, and
}| practical reasons which compel witnesses
_ to use it. And it ignores the key position
which the privilege occupies in our con-
_ stitutional framework.
The number of witnesses who claim
| the privilege increases daily as Congres-
| sional inquiries reach into new areas of
| American life. Typically, the Fifth
Amendment is invoked when the witness
| is asked questions about his affiliation
with the Communist Party or’ other
organizations characterized as subver-
sive. As a result of the generally. ac-
} cepted assumption that those who claim
‘* ie right not to answer have some-
; Ju e 6, 1953
rm
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=
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SK Sag
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thing to hide, witnesses who do so have
been subjected to severe economic and
social penalties. In the current Congres-
sional investigation +into schools and
colleges, for example, most witnesses
who have refused to answer have subse-
quently lost their jobs or been effectively
black-listed. New York City interprets
its charter as requiring the discharge
of any employee who refuses to answer
questions for Fifth Amendment reasons.
Although the faculty of the Harvard
Law School voted against expelling two
students who refused to answer a Con-
gressional committee, it is generally
thought that they will be unable to gain
admission to the bar of any state. A
recent statement by a group of university
presidents, while setting forth a work-
able concept of academic freedom, ac-
cepted the idea that the status of a
person invoking the privilege must be
“reexamined.” Even the American Civil
Liberties Union has refused to disap-
prove the discharges of teachers and
United Nations’ employees who had in-
voked the Fifth Amendment.
EXCEPTIONS to this trend have been
few. he Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1951 refused to take any
action against Dirk J. Struik, professor
of mathematics, when he refused to
answer questions asked by the House
Un-American Activities Committee. (He
was later suspended when indicted under
a state statute for Conspiring to over-
throw the Commonwealth of Massachu-
setts.) Harvard University, while con-
demning the conduct of three professors
who invoked the privilege, refused to
discharge them, since they are not Com-
munists at the present time. The recent
convention of the American Association
of University Professors resolved that
invoking the Fifth Amendment “is not
in and of itself justifiable cause for the
dismissal of the faculty member,” but
it also felt constrained to add_ that
“this statement is not to be construed
as advising or generally approving such
action by teachers under investigation.”
If a non-lawyer were to read the
simple words of the Fifth Amendment,
the right to avoid self-incrimination
would appear very limited indeed. It
says simply, ‘"No person . . . shall be
compelled in any criminal case to bé a
witness against himself.’ But the courts
have held that the privilege may also be
asserted in civil cases, grand-jury pro-
ceedings, legislative inquiries, and virtu-
ally every other form of official inquiry.
A similar meaning has been given by
the courts to the various state provisions.
Underlying this broad interpretation of
the privilege is the deeply ingrained
notion in Anglo-American jurisprudence
that no person shall be forced to give
testimony which may subject him to
criminal punishment. Criminals and non-
. criminals alike are afforded this protec-
tion; without it, the power of the sov-
ereign could easily make it impossible to
distinguish the guilty from the innocent.
It is no mere coincidence that the decline’
of térture as a recognized mode of ques-
tioning and the rise of a person’s legal
right to refuse to testify against himself
were almost simultaneous developments
in English history. For in a judicial sys-
tem in which the accused must answer
all questions, the police may be tempted
to get the answers they want by any
means available.
BECAUSE police authorities are thus re-
quired to obtain outside evidence against
the accused, the rule has been attacked
by prosecutors and investigators as an
impediment to justice. The necessity of
making a thorough and objective in-
vestigation of cases often seems like an
unduly burdensome task, especially when
the short cut of grilling the suspect
might achieve more immediate results.
But the history of our criminal law offers
ample ‘evidence that there are no real
short cuts to justice. Sir James F.
Stephen, historian of the English crim-
inal law, has made a detailed comparison
of a group of English and French trials.
471
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In the English trials there was no power
to question the accused. In the French
trials the questioning of the prisoner was
the high point in the proceeding. He
concluded not only that the English
procedure was more dignified and hu-
mane but that “in every one of the Eng-
lish cases the evidence is fuller, clearer,
and infinitely more cogent than it is in
any one of the French cases.’’ Despite the
intense criticism to which it has been
subjected, the provision against self-
incrimination remains an essential ele-
ment in the whole pattern of procedural
safeguards which seek to redress the
terrible imbalance which might othes-
wise exist between the state and the
_ accused.
The “No Inference” Rule
It is a strange commentary on our
times that the exercise of so basic a right
should be treated as sufficient ground
for depriving a person of his livelihood.
There is no legal justification for the
conclusion that anyone who refuses to
say whether or not he is a Communist
must be one. In the federal courts and
in most state jurisdictions the law per-
mits no inference of guilt from a claim
of the privilege—against either the ac-
cused or an ordinary witness—and
neither Court nor counsel can make any
adverse comment upon it. As a practical
mattér, to allow the inference of guilt
would destroy the protection of the
Fifth Amendment, because the witness
would then merely be given a choice be-
tween a verbal confession and a silent
one.
The no-inference rule is a recogni-
tion of the fact that an innocent person
could be forced to give testimony which
would make it easier for the government
to prove a case or which would make
him appear guilty in the eyes of the
public. Indeed, the witness who feels he
has committed no crime but may never-
theless be jeopardized by his own testi-
mony has a clear right to claim the
privilege. His is one of the situations
for which the privilege was particularly
designed. To assume otherwise would be
to assume that innocent people are never
accused of crimes.
Contrary to popular belief, the fact
which the witness is privileged to with-
hold does not have to be a crime or any-
thing from which a crime could be
directly inferred. It is enough that the
472
fact might furnish a link in a chain of
evidence nveded for prosecution. A re-
cent Supreme Court case held a witness .
justified in refusing to say whether she-
knew the names of the state officers of
the Communist Party. Another was held
privileged to withhold knowledge of the
whereabouts of a person who was being
sought as a grand-jury witness. No crjm-
inality could be attributed to mere know]-
edge of these facts, but the question was
“incriminating” in the special and highly
technical sense required by the privilege,
because it called for information which
might. prove helpful in a prosecution
brought against the witness. That the
information might prove helpful to a
prosecution certainly does not’ warrant
the assumption that the witness com-
mitted a crime, It would be absurd to say
that a person may protect himself from
the consequences of his statements if
he is guilty but not if he is innocent.
This, however, is the precise absurdity
on which any inference of guilt drawn
from a claim of privilege must neces-
sarily rest.
If the no-inference rule is accepted in
a courtroom, where the atmosphere is
calm and the charges against an ac-
cused are specific, it should certainly be
accepted in a legislative committee
room, where a witness is often interro-
gated under bright lights, in the presence
of newspapermen and photographers,
and where the inquiry roams across the
whole terrain of past associations and
beliefs. Legislative committee hearings,
together with the political setting in
which they are held, have created a ‘situa-
tion where the exercise of the privilege’
Senator McCarthy
is even more “necessary han
room and where any inference of &
even less justified.
“Conspiracy” Pitfall
Witnesses today appear under circum- °
stances emphasizing the importance of
withholding a fact that might furnish
only a link in a chain of evidence. Many
of the “‘anti-subversive” laws passed by
Congress and the states make it a crime
to “conspire” to do an unlawful act. Ina . :
conspiracy prosecution the basic link in
the chain of evidence is the association:
of two or more persons. If the jury finds
that the purpose of the association was
to commit a crime, the association itself
is treated as criminal, even though the
crime which the conspiracy allegedly
sought to achieve was never committed.
The process of proving a conspiracy is
dangerous, and the danger is compound-
ed in prosecutions for political conspira-
cies, for here the defendant's conspiracy
consists largely of acts which would
normally be considered protected by the
First Amendment.
In a prosecution for conspiracy to
violate the Smith act, for example, most
of the evidence deals with participation
in meetings at which public issues were
discussed in a peaceful and orderly -
manner and nothing whatsoever was said
about overthrowing the government. It
deals with the distribution ,of publica-
tions in which the most imaginative in-
terpreter could find no unlawful doc-
trine. The jury’s belief that these acts
were done in furtherance of an ultimate
unlawful purpose transforms these acts
and many more like them from constitu-
tionally protected political activities into
parts of a “conspiracy”? to “‘advecate”’
violent revolution. Thus, if a witness has
attended a meeting with no “intent” to
overthrow the government, his attend-
ance can nevertheless be used as proof
of his participation in an unlawful con-
piracy because the jury might have differ-
ent views as to his “‘intent.’’ It is there-
fore obvious. that all questions which
might tend to show an association be- -
tween the witness and persons or groups
regarded as subversive—itself a nebulous
term—are questions on which the privi-
lege may be claimed, even though the
witness knows these associations were
wholly innocent. The association itself
is a possible link in the evidentiary chain
for a conspiracy prosecution, Such re-
The NATION
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Senator Jenner
fusals to disclose political associations
need not, by any means, be confined to
associations with the: Communist Party.
The same chain of reasoning by which
Communists have been convicted of con-
spiracy to advocate violent revolution
will serve equally well to convict any-
one who has participated in any activity
involving Communists, if a jury cares
to draw enough inferences regarding the
witness’s intent. For example, today
membership in the Communist Party
exposes a person to an indictment for
conspiracy to teach or advocate violent
revolution. Tomorrow membership in a
group dominated by Communists could
be used for the same purpose, regardless
of the innocence of the member.
As Congress and the states pass other
loosely drawn laws designed to curb
subversive activity, the possibility in-
creases that an innocent witness may
furnish testimony which can lead to his '
conviction. For example, in the Internal*
Security Act of 1950 Congress has made
it a felony, subject to ten years’ im-
ptisonment and $10,000 fine, “for any
person knowingly to combine, conspire,
or agree with any other person to per-
form any act which would substantially
contribute to the establishment within
the United States of a totalitarian dicta-
torship.”” Whether the constitutionality
of this blunderbuss statute will be up-
held, and if so what application of it
will be permitted by the courts, will
not be fully known for a long time.
Meanwhile many persons guilty of
nothing except an intellectual belief in
principles which some other person
might characterize as “‘totalitarian” are
under its shadow and therefore have an
enormous and indefinable area in which
they may claim the right of silence.
Unfortunately, witnesses today are at
a loss to know whether a seemingly
innocent act can be used as part of an
June 6, 1953
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ey
’
evidentiary chain to prove a crime. In
the Harry Bridges case, for example, the
defendant's views on trade with China
were deemed relevant as showing that he
committed perjury in denying Commu-
nist Party membership. In the Rosen-
berg case the collection of mofiey to aid
refugees from Spanish fascism was
deemed relevant as showing a motive to
comm4g espionage. If, after all, we have
reached the stage where a civil servant’s
criticism of Nationalist China creates
“reasonable doubt’ as to his loyalty,
can san innocent witness be blamed for
standing on the Fifth Amendment when
asked questions about -past associations
or beliefs?
The Waiver Problem
Thus far, we have discussed the
wide range of testimony which could
incriminate innocent witnesses in an age
of steadily increasing political crimes.
This, however, is only a part of the
problem. It does not in itself explain
why a person who may never have been
a member-of the Communist Party will
invoke the amendment when asked about
such membership. Nor does it explain
the frequent phenomenon of a witness
who announces that he will answer
anything about himself but nothing
about other people. Why does this wit-
ness, who appears willing to tell about
shis own affiliations, claim the privilege
when asked if he was ever a member of
the Communist Party? Basic to an under-
standing of this problem is a concept
which is rarely mentioned in public dis-
cussions of the Fifth Amendment but
which presents the Congressional witness
with what is probably his greatest diffi-
culty. The concépt is the complicated
legal doctrine of waiver. The precise law
of waiver in this field is still obscure and
its very obscurity intensifies the witness’s
problem. The main theme is this: by
voluntarily disclosing an incriminating
fact—that is, a fact which could lawfully
have been withheld—the witness is
deemed to have waived his privilege
with respect to any fact related to the
one disclosed. A witness who is willing
to answer some questions is faced with
a serious problem—that of what facts
are “related” to the fact he has already
disclosed. To the extent that a fact is
related, he can no longer withhold it,
for he will be told that he has ‘‘waived”’
the privilege. The dilemma in which
witnesses are placed has been cogently
summed up by Justice Black in a dissent-
ing opinion: “On the one hand, they
risk imprisonment for contempt by as-
serting the privilege prematurely; on the
other, they might lose the privilege if
they answer a single question. This view
makes the protection depend on timing
so refined that lawyers, let alone lay-
men, will have difficulty in knowing
when to claim it.”
In a practical sense, the-witness who
claims the privilege too soon can usually
correct his error before going to jail.
He probably will be allowed to purge
himself of contempt by answering the
question. But the error of claiming the
privilege too late can cause irreparable
disaster. The only safe course for a
witness who feels that at some point he
will refuse to answet is to claim the
Representative Velde
privilege as early and as often ‘as pos-
sible. Only in this way can he be fairly
sure that he will not be trapped into
unintentionally waiving the privilege.
Refusal to Inform
The effect of this waiver problem
in current investigations is enormous.
A witness, let us say, may have been at
one time a member of the Communist
Party or some other organization now re-
garded as subversive. Twenty years ago
his membership in such an organization
certainly would not have been con-
demned as it is today. The witness might
be perfectly willing to testify freely
about his. own activities, which he re-
gards as entirely innocent. Generally,
however, Congressional committees use
witnesses as a means of getting informa-
tion about other people. A witness who
473
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admits past membership in a subversive
organization will then be asked to give
the names of his associates. These asso-
ciates may have been completely inno-
cent of any subversive activity. They may
have attended meetings years ago with
no intent to harm the country. Many in-
tellectuals in the 1930's toyed with Com-
munist ideas and were interested in
Marxist thinking. To reveal the names
of these people could easily place inno-
cent men in jeopardy. But the witness
who has admitted his own membership
can no longer refuse to testify about
someone else because he has waived the
privilege against self-incrimination. One
thing is completely clear about the law
of waiver: if the witness elects tq talk
freely about himself and then fefuses to
name others, he can be sent to jail for
contempt. The Supreme Court specifical-
ly so held in the Rogers case.
The witness in this situation—and it
is a very common one—has exactly three
choices and no more: (1) he may be-
come an informer and thereby, perhaps,
gain the committee’s confidence and ap-
proval for himself; (2) he may testify
about himself, refuse to name others,
and go to jail; (3) he may claim the
privilege in regard to himself despite
the fact that he would have preferred
not to do so, and thus retain his right
not to inform. To be an informer is
morally open to those who approve the
purposes of the investigation, but it is
difficult to see how anyone who regards
the current investigation as an assault on
freedom of thought can conscientiously
place others in the committee’s line of
474
attack. The second choice is illegal. It is
also somewhat quixotic, since it involves
an election to go to jail rather than exer-
cise a clear constitutional right. Persons
who regard themselves as defenders of
liberties hold the Fifth
Amendment in low esteem if they can
even criticize a witness—let alone justify
his discharge from a job—because he
civil must
‘made the third choice. /
This dilemma is even more acute for
witnesses who may never have been
members of subversive organizations.
Though not a member himself the wit-
ness may have known Communists or
Communist sympathizers in the past or
may have attended Communist meetings ;
at the invitation of a member. The wit-
ness may know other innocent people
who attended meetings at which Com-
munists wete present. He does not wish
to be an informer, but the only way to
avoid it is to invoke the privilege against
self-incrimination when asked about
membership in the Communist Party. If
the witness denies membership and the
line of questioning proceeds, the next
question may be, “Did you ever attend
a Communist meeting?” This starts the
very process of informing which the wit-
ness seeks to avoid. Thus even the non-
member is forced to give the public
impression of membership in oes to
avoid informing.
When a committee discovers that a
witness will invoke the privilege, it often
deliberately subjects him to the most ex-
treme forms of publicity, and in the
presence of newsmen, radio broadcasters,
and TV cameras proceeds to torture
¢
him Sia acta aiheioees
couched in the form of questions, ‘socks
as “Were you a spy?” “Were you not in
a position to pass secret information?”
“Were you engaged in treasonable activ-
A witness who claims the privi-
lege on such questions easily furnishes
ities ?””
a Roman holiday for the newspapers. But -
he may be boiling with rage and frustra-
tion while he doggedly follows the ad-
vice of his lawyer that the only safe
course, ‘legally speaking, is to claim the
privilege on a// incriminating questions.
The entire problem is nicely illus-
trated by the case of Lillian Hellman,
who made a bold but futile effort to re- -
solve the dilemma. Having received an
Un-American Activities Committee sub-
poena, Miss Hellman wrote the commit-
tee offering to talk freely about herself
if she could obtain assurance that she
would not be compelled to inform on
others. The committee refused to make
any such bargain, and Miss Hellman was
compelled to claim the privilege on ques-
tions about herself.
Judge Jerome Frank of the Second
Circuit Court of Appeals has suggested
an answer to the problem created by the
concept of “waiver.” He has argued
that the waiver has no place in an inves-
tigatory proceeding. It was originally
intended to prevent a witness ‘ftom. |
harming the opposing side by presenting «
one side of the case and then invoking
the privilege against self-incrimination.
Since, in an investigation, there is no
adversary to be harmed, it is Judge
Frank’s contention that the witness
should be permitted to invoke the privi-
lege at any point in the proceedings.
Adoption by the courts of this rule
would eliminate one major reason why .
people who are willing to talk about
themselves still invoke the privilege
against self-incrimination when asked
about their activities.
Fear of Perjury
Perhaps the major factor inhibit-
ing witnesses from answering today is
the fear of subsequent indictment for. ”
perjury. For example, a person may at
one time’ have considered joining the
Communist Party, as many hungry or
disillusioned people did in the 1930's.
Perhaps he attended meetings of the party
and discussed the possibility of member-
ship with other people.-In conversations
with others he may have defended the
“
The NATION |
viet Union and voiced
“today sound communistic.
is person may have abandoned these
_ ideas many years ago. If, however, he
happens to be a prominent professor or
scientist or government employee who
has been attacked as a Communist he
knows that the Department of Justice
stands ready to indict him for perjury. If
he is asked, ‘Have you ever been a mem-
_ ber of the Communist Party,” a wise
_ lawyer should certainly advise him of
_ the advantages of invoking the privilege
_ of not incriminating himself. If he tells
_ the truth and answers “No,” he may be
_ indicted for perjury, and the govern-
ment may be able to build up a fairly
. strong case to show membership in the
- Communist Party. It is difficult to prove
negative propositions. The witness may
be able to offer little beyond his own
word as direct evidence that, he was
_ never a member. He will be tried in an
_ atmosphere highly unfavorable to his
cause. The most innocent witness can
feel little confidence that, once accused,
he can be sure of acquittal.
aye et a. ogre
THE CASE of. Professor Owen Latti-
more has made the threat of perfury
so real that no witness can ignore it. Lat-
timore was indicted for perjury because
there were minor discrepancies in his
testimony and because he allegedly lied
in denying that he was a “Communist
sympathizer.’ He had been subjected to
_ grueling investigation for weeks. Is there
a witness who can be sure that after a
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4 o0 at ad ee
lengthy examination some points in his
testimony will not be at_variance with
another person’s testimony, or even with
_ his own testimony of an earlier date?
» Can anyone be sure that ideas which he
_ may have expressed would not be char-
_ acterized by an ambitious prosecutor as
: “sympathetic” to communism? It is true
_ that Judge Luther Youngdahl dismissed
"aspects of the indjctment relating to Lat-
- timore’s alleged Communist sympathies
_ because they violated the First Amend-
ment. But the government is appealing
this decision. In the meantime the threat
B of a Lattimore-type indictment hangs
_ over every witness. And even if Judge
~Youngdahl’s decision is upheld, the
_ threat of being indicted for minor dis.
crepancies in testimony will remain.
It must be remembered that the prob-
lem of perjury runs both ways. A wit-
ness may not only fear his own indict-
ed 6, Se
i
|
mes =”
ment. He may be reluctant to answer
questions about someone else’s activities
for fear that his version of an event will
differ fromm the other person’s version.
Honest men can have different recollec-
tions of the same event. In this respect,
the problem of not wanting to be an in-
former has been compounded by the
possibility that the witness's testimony
could be used to indict someone else for
perjury. Of course, the fear of perjury
indictments either against himself or an-
other party does not give a witness a
legal right to remain silent. But if he has
that right for some other reason, it may
strongly influence him to exercise it.
We can therefore suggest at least the
following reasons why a witness who
feels himself wholly innocent of any
crime may need the privilege and may
have a right to it: (1) he may have done
or said or joined something which was
innocent in its own context, and may not
be criminal even now, but which might
be offered as evidence against him in a
criminal case; (2) he may be willing to
answer questions about himself but is
forced to invoke the privilege for fear
that any answer will constitute a waiver
and will compel him to be an informer;
(3) he may be moved by the fear that
the truth would expose him or someorre
else to the danger of a perjury prosecu-
tion in which the cards would be stacked
against the defendant. There is also a
fourth: he may simply disapprove of the
investigation itself and the methods by
which it is conducted so strongly that he
feels he cannot conscientiously give it any
more cooperation than the bare minimum
legally demanded of him. None of these
situations is at all hypothetical or far-
fetched. They are all highly character-
istic of the type of investigation under
discussion. They compel the conclusion
that a witness who invokes the privi-
lege is not necessarily guilty of anything.
The Amendment’s Critics
Despite these valid reasons for in-
voking the Fifth Amendment, many
people continue to attack the privilege
and demand that it be restricted in scope.
Let us examine some of their assertions.
It is claimed, first, that the privilege is
being used more extensively than ever
before and in a way not originally in-
‘tended. This is a strange charge, indeed,
for it implies that the fault is with the
witnesses. Actually, it is the interroga- “
tors, not the interrogated, who have
wrought the change. The increasing
number of anti-subversive laws form the
legal basis for the invocation of the
privilege. As more acts become criminal,
and as Congress investigates to see
whether these criminal acts have oc-
curred, it follows logically that more
questions will tend to incriminate. This
is the purpose of the privilege. To con-
demn it for this reason is to deny the
very basis for its existence.
Another charge leveled against the
privilege is that Congress can ask few if
any questions which the witness is not
privileged to refuse to answer. Doubt-
less this is annoying and inconvenient
for the committees, but there is nothing
Startling or improper about it. It merely
reflects the fact that the committee is in-
vestigating the guilt or innocence of the
witness. When the witness is treated in
effect as an accused, and the subject mat-
ter of the proceeding is really the ques-
tion of his guilt, the hearing has become
something very close to a criminal trial.
Under these circumstances the witness’s
privilege should acquire a scope corre-
sponding to that available to him if he
were a defendant in a criminal trial. In
such a trial the privilege of the accused
is not a right to decline to answer par-
ticular questions. It is a right to refuse
to be questioned at all.
THE PRIVILEGE is being criticized by
some as an interference with the in-
vestigatory function of Congress. But
Congress has no general investigatory
function. It has a function, merely inci-
dental to its duty to legislate, to find
facts needed as a guide to legislation.
Facts needed for this purpose seldom are
and seldom could be withheld on Fifth
Amendment grounds. Frequent claims
of the privilege are a sure sign that the
committee has departed from its consti-
tutional role and is attempting to usurp
the judicial function of determining the
guilt or innocence of particular individ-
uals, The McCarthy, Jenner, and Velde
type of investigation is becoming a trial
to such an extent that efforts to intro-
duce some aspects of court procedure
into it are being seriously discussed. That
the privilege should be used to curb
this judicial role is entirely proper.
When committees hold trials, most con-
stitutional rights are ignored—trial by
jury, the right to know the nature and
475
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cause of the accusation, the right to con-
front and cross-examine the accusers,
and the right to have compulsory process
for the production of evidence for the
defense. The tendency of the Fifth
Amendment to impede the development
of trial by committee is one of its most
important virtues. Its loss or serious im-
pairment at this moment would imme-
diately jeopardize the whole structure of
procedural standards which the Consti-
tution lays down for trying questions of
personal guilt.
Limiting the Fifth Amendment would
also seriously impair the rights guaran-
teed by the First Amendment. Of what
use is the right of free speech if a Con-
gressional committee may compel the
speaker to disclose his beliefs with the
aim of using them as proof of criminal
conduct? Will men continue to speak
freely if they may be compelled to jus-
tify their views in the hostile surround-
ings of a Congressional committee? The
power to compel disclosures of any
type of conduct for purposes of penal-
izing the witness necessarily involves a
certain amount of control over the area
476
x
investigated. Such power may be harm-
less and necessary as long as the investi-
gation is in fields which the government
may properly regulate. When this power
is used to investigate the field of dis-
puted political ideas and theories, the
freedom of «thought that the First
Amendment was intended to secure is
under dangerous challenge.
The effort to limit this threat to free
expression has occupied scores of excel-
lent legal minds in numerous test cases.
All the principles suggested have been
rejected by the courts. Only when the
Fifth Amendment was used has victory
been won. If a witness decides to fight
the committees at all, the weapon is not
a matter of choice. The experience of
hundreds of witnesses before him, trans-
mitted to him by his lawyer, shows that
he can fight only with the Fifth Amend-
ment. Under the
privilege acquires a special constitutional
significance it might not have in more
normal times. It has become an indis-
pensable shield for the protection of
rights under the First Amendment.
Without it the power of investigating
these circumstances
_ effective limit. ;
When all these factors are considered, 4
what becomes of the argument that those”
and penalizing “idea
who invoke the privilege should lose
their livelihoods because it is the duty of
every American to “‘cooperate’’ with the ‘
committees? This approach pretends to
accept-the Fifth Amendment, yet asserts
a duty to answer which the amendment
denies. It pretends to view the Mc-
Carthyite investigations with alarm, yet
requires unconditional cooperation with
such investigations, above and beyond
what the law itself requires. The extra-'
legal pressures thus generated tend to
bestow on the committees the power of
compelling testimony which the Consti-
tution attempted to withhold.
Modern Inquisition
The occasions on which the privilege
is currently being invoked are dramati-
cally and significantly parallel to those
in which it had its origin. It was devel-
oped by religious dissenters to protect ”
their freedom of belief and association;
in England it brought a halt to the pro-
cedure by which the church inquisition
hauled dissenters before it, forcing them
to reveal their beliefs and to inform on
their coreligionists. These religious dis-
senters, despite brutal maltreatment,
courageously answered with an argument
that marked the birth of our privilege.
They did not contend that they had com-
mitted crimes which they had a right to
conceal. On the contrary, in the word:
of Judge Jerome Frank, they “‘consid-
ered it no disgrace to commit the crime
of heresy; they were proud of their
heresy; if, without fear of punishment,
they could have confessed» to what the ~
law denounced as heretical acts, they
would have been glad to do so.” They
urged that the whole proceeding was il-
legal because they felt that no man was
bound to be his own accuser. :
This stand was first taken in the
twelfth century. In the Revolution of the
1640’s the Puritan argument was vic- ,
torious, first among the people, then in
Parliament, and finally in the courts. It”
was the origin of the privilege. Later the
privilege was extended to include the‘
right of silence for the defendant in a
criminal trial and then to all persons in
any official proceeding. Historically
speaking, the essence of the privilege is
that beliefs and associations based on
‘The NATION |
: f Lea a
ma y ‘mac 1e subject
in inquisitorial investigation.
_ The technique of the inquisition is
not limited, however, to religious bodies.
Basically, it is a form of criminal pro-
cedure. Whenever a court can set itself
in motion without a formal complaint
and with no effective limits to its field
of investigation, and whenever the court
itself acts as the accuser, the investigator,
and the judge at the same time, the tech-
nique of the inquisition is being used.
When Congressional committees con-
cern themselves with problems of in-
dividual guilt or innocence, they tread
dangerously close to this type of pro-
cedure. Throughout its history the in-
quisition has proved frightfully effective
as an instrument for stamping out re-
ligious, political, or any other form of
dissent regarded as dangerous. When-
>ever and wherever ideas have been re-
garded as dangerous, the inquisition has.
flourished. And its success has depended
on its ability to override the witness's
- right to refuse to answer.
The Fifth Amendment today is under
a two-pronged attack. One is the “im-
munity” bill pending in Congress [see
following comment} which would auth-
orize committees to compel the witness to
answer and to provide that he may not
thereafter be criminally prosecuted for
anything he may say. The Department of
Justice has attacked this bill because it
might give immunity to people who are
about to be indicted. But there are other
more serious defects. There is no way to
guarantee that an individual state will
not prosecute on the basis of the testi-
mony. Nor can the witness be freed from
the technically non-criminal forms of
punishment, such as restrictions on the
right to certain types of employment, to
yse a passport, to use the mails, or to
_ hold office in unions.
The other form of attack against the
privilege is the pattern of systematic eco-
nomic and social penalties imposed on
those who exercise it. These are as severe
and coercive as most legal penalties and
therefore tend to deprive the privilege
of its efficacy. It is no coincidence that
* this attack comes at a moment when the
_ privilege is once more needed for the
very purpose which gave it birth. The
effort to control thought breeds inquisi-
torial methods. These, in turn, demand
that the Fifth Amendment be overcome
or evaded.
June 6, 1953
yect of
The public has not been made aware |
of the important place the Fifth Amend-
ment occupies im our constitutional
framework. Nor has it been made aware
of the valid ethical and legal reasons
that may compel witnesses to remain si-
lent. Today, as in the past, the voice of
the inquisitor again demands, ‘The wit-
ness must answer.” This is the same cry
that was heard in seventeenth-century
England, in Salem, in Nazi Germany,
and is heard today in Eastern Europe
and other parts of the world. The only
answer is the clear command of the Eng-
lish common Jaw: “No man shall be a
witness against himself.”
THE IMMUNITY PROPOSAL
{The immunity bill . mentioned by
Messrs. Frantz and Redlich in the closing
paragraphs of their article very nearly
passed the Senate without debate of any
kind (see editorial, The Senate Sleeps,
in The Nation of May 23). Senator Har-
vey Kilgore, aware of the far-reaching
implications of the measure—known as
S 16—did a public service in soliciting
comment on it from a number of promi-
nent legal authorities. Excerpts from
some of the replies follow.}
THE witness, under the proposed pro-
cedure, is protected from federal pros-
ecution but not from any state ac-
tion. . . . Why not consider adding a
provision that before any witness is com-
pelled to testify, he be given the specific
right to counsel, and to: cross-examine
any witness who may theretofore have
testified against him?
FRANCIS BIDDLE,
Former U. S. Attorney General
SENATOR McCARRAN’S bill, as surely
you have noted, empowers a majority
of any Congressional investigating com-
mittee to grant immunity. I am entirely
in accord with Senator Kefauver’s belief
that the Attorney General should be
brought into the picture before any such
immunity is extended. Indeed, I am not
sure that Senator Kefauver’s proposed
requirement of mere notification to the
Attorney General goes far enough. It
seems to me that if the Attorney General
is not in accord . . . it would be pref-
erable to require a vote of the house of
Congress (Senate or House of Repre-
sentatives, as the case may be) as a
prerequisite to the grant of immunity.
TELFORD TAYLOR,
Former United States
Prosecutor at Niirnberg
IT IS my own view that such legislation
would be unwise. I recognize the diffi-
culty that confronts investigating agen-
cies when testimony is refused on the
ground of privilege. From the legal
point of view, it seems clear that the
only way to get testimony from that par-
ticular witness is to grant him immunity
from prosecution. Nevertheless, the harm
that may be done through the granting
of immunity seems to me to outweigh
the gains....
ERWIN N. GRISWOLD, ~
Dean of Harvard Law School
I MUST express my feeling of doubt as
to the wisdom of giving Congressional
committees the right to override the con-
stitutional objection of a witness by
granting him immunity from prosecu-
tion on self-incriminating testimony
which he may be compelled to give.
Where a claim of privilege is made by +
a witness in judicial proceedings, the
judge has an opportunity to weigh the
desirability of obtaining evidence against
the undesirability of granting immunity,
particularly if he has specific issues be-
fore him to aid in his judgment. But
where a committee is making an investi-
gation it will be peculiarly difficult for
the committee to weigh all the possible
evil consequences of a grant of immunity
against the very uncertain good conse-
quence of compelling the particular testi-
mony which is sought.
DONALD R. RICHBERG,
Noted constitutional lawyer
[We think it would be helpful if our
readers would express their opinion of
S 16 in letters to Senator Kilgore or to
their own Senators or Congressmen.—
EDITORS THE NATION. }
477
sto
ee
i
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Bate
eke ie he
GRAB FOR THE ATOM
II. Wanted: a George Norris . . by Leland Olds
IN THE coming battle over the Atomic
Energy Act we face the Muscle Shoals
issue of the 1920's on
scale. In the Harding Administration
they gave away Teapot Dome. But they
a grander
never succeeded in giving away Muscle
Shoals because Uncle George Norris,
great Ne-
braska, stood in the way. The Muscle
Progressive Senator from
Shoals power plant in the Tennessee
River, authorized for defense purposes
during World War I, became the corner-
stone of the Tennessee Valley Authority,
which brought the country a new era of
widespread use of electricity at low rates
and influenced resources development in
all parts of the world.
Just over a generation ago Senator
Norris, as Republican chairman of the
Senate Committee on Agriculture, began
his long fight to assure Tennessee Valley
power for the people. He blocked the
Harding-Coolidge attempt to turn over
the government-owned plant to private
interests. Twice he got through Congress
a bill “setting up the prototype of the
Tennessee Valley Authority. The first
bill was pocket-vetoed by President
Coolidge. The second was vetoed with a
message by President Hoover. But Uncle
George had won. For Muscle Shoals be-
came a symbol of the power issue in the
1932 Presidential campaign, and he had
his answer as he stood on the dam in
January, 1933, with President-elect
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
During World War I the Muscle
Shoals power plant was authorized to
provide power to produce nitrates for
explosives. Fifteen years later it became
the nucleus of a great program which
made low-cost power available to munic-
ipal power systems and rural coopera-
tives throughout the Tennessee Valley,
showed the way to wider use of im-
LELAND OLDS served as member and
then chairman of the Federal Power
Commission for many years under Pres-
ident Roosevelt. The third article of this
series will appear next week.
478
proved fertilizers to redeem wasting
farm lands, raised living standards,
brought new economic health to an en-
tire region, and put competitive pressure
on private companies throughout the
country to reduce their rates. The private
power industry does not intend to see
atomic power, born of World War II,
blossom into similar developments all
over the United States.
But the power monopolies are not
presenting the people with that clear-
cut issue. They know that America is
proud of the TVA and of what it has
accomplished. In fact, only a few years
ago they had Opinion Research, Inc.,
take a poll to find out whether their
multimillion-dollar propaganda
paign against public power was success-
ful. They were shocked to learn that
63 per cent of those polled favored the
TVA. They found also that the same
percentage thought it would be a good
idea to have TVA’s in other parts of the
country. So the so-called Electric Com-
panies’ Advertising Program turned its
guns on “creeping socialism.”
The campaign against this bogyman
reaches the people through every medi-
um of advertising and public relations.
It serves as groundwork for the cam-
paign to turn over atomic energy to
private companies. But here the propa-
ganda is a baited hook. What private
monopoly is offering the people is a
quicker and cheaper voyage to the new
promised land of atomic power. It
charges that the present law means fed-
eral monopoly, that federal monopoly
is holding back the development of
commercially feasible atomic power and
rendering the entire program more
costly. It cites the automobile and tele-
vision as examples of what can be ac.
complished by American ingenuity under
Cam-
the stimulus of the profit incentive and ~
urges the virtual renunciation of the
atom to “competitive private enterprise”
as the key to progress.
Let us> examine this line to see
whether it does not reveal many of the
—
characteristics of the proverbial gold-
brick. The questions which we shall
naturally want answered are: (1) Has
development oft the peaceful -uses of
atomic energy progressed at a reasonable —
rate under the existing Atomic Energy |
Act? (2) Does turning over the atomic
business to private enterprise offer better
prospects of progress? (3) Is there
any reason why we should be rushed
into making decisions which will pro-
foundly affect our civilization for gener-
ations ?
THE SIMPLEST ANSWER to the first
question is that it is but a moment in
man’s technological history since the first
atomic fire was lighted and controlled.
In fact, it is only just over twenty years
since the neutron, the bullet which splits
the atom, was discovered and thirteen
years since a start was made in using
these bullets to produce atomic fission
and chain reaction. Compared with the
ages between the time when a mythical
Prometheus brought man the gift of fire
and the invention of the steam engine,
the rate of atomic progress under gov-
ernment control has been phenomenal.
In fact, had man waited for private
enterprise to transform Einstein’s great
equation into useful atomic energy, a
century would probably have been
needed for the accomplishment of any-
thing comparable to what has been done
under government direction in the last
decade. Remember that some fifty years’
elapsed between Faraday’s discovery that
rotating a wire loop through a magnetic
field would produce electricity and the
day when the first dynamo lighted an
electric bulb.
Progress under the Atomic Energy ~
‘Commission has by no means_ been
limited to development of atomic wea- y
pons. Great forward steps have been‘
taken in providing radioactive isotopes ,
(particles) which are making revolu-
tionary contributions in medicine, agri- |
culture, and industry; the atomic-power q
program is well under way under the |
The NATION ©
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‘Farly in 1951 the A. E. C. muipaneed
~ that in cooperation with industrial con-
cerns. it was exploring the possibilities
of their participation, on their own ini-
tiative and with their own resources, in
developing the use of atomic energy for
power purposes. A few months later it
received four proposals from eight cor-
porations working in pairs—the Mon-
santo Chemical Company and the Union
Electric Company of Missouri, Detroit
Edison and the Dow Chemical Com-
pany, Commonwealth Edison and the
Public Service Company of Northern
Illinois, and Pacific Gas and Electric and
the Bechtel Corporation. (The Detroit
Edison combination has since been
joined by a number of other electric
utilities).
THE Monsanto Chemical. and Union
Electric team came up with a proposal
that the government build a pilot plant to
produce power, with plutonium as a by-
-product; then private industry might
build a full-scale plant at its own ex-
pense. Dow and Detroit Edison pro-
posed a joint study to be followed by
_the building of a full-scale atomic-
power plant without going through the
pilot-plant stage. The Commonwealth
Edison. group proposed a public-private
undertaking in which the government
would build a reactor to produce power
and plutonium, permitting private com-
panies to build and own the generating
equipment’ and sell electricity to the
Meanwhile Westinghouse and Gen-
eral Electric have been constructing reac-
tor power plants for atomic-powered sub-
, marines. On March 31, the A. E. C.
-— announced that the first of these experi-
mental engines was in operation at its
_ testing station in Arco, Idaho. These
“submarine plants may eventually pro-
* duce power at somewhere between two
and five cents per kilowatt- hour. This is
high compared with five-to-eight-mill
power in coal-fired steam electric sta-
tions, but a reactor power plant which
Westinghouse is designing for a larger
naval vessel will more nearly approxi-
mate the size of a utility steam plant. and
costs should come down.
Walter H. Zinn of the Argonne Na-
- tional Laboratory (A. E. C.) predicts
bi June 6, 1953
p- that the country will have a central-
“station nuclear-fueled power plant oper-
ating four or five years after “‘we have
definitely decided to construct and oper-
ate such a plant.’ He is already run-
ing an experimental “breeder reactor”
which is providing enough power to
light the small building in which it is
housed. This is probably the world’s
first atomic-powered plant.
The latest authoritative word comes
from Dr. W. L. Davidson, director ‘of
the commission’s Office of Industrial
Development. He says: ‘Nuclear electric
power is already a fact, not mere fancy.
In two separate reactor projects the
A. E. C. has generated token amounts of
electricity employing nuclear fuel as a
source of heat.”
Dr. Davidson points out, however,
that the prime purpose behind these ex-
perimental reactors was something other
than power, and that while there had
been considerable research and develop-
ment work on the general problem, no
construction of major projects for the
production of economic electric power
had yet been authorized. He estimates
that the cost of power from such a plant,
if approved, would be about double the
kilowatt-hour costs of power from con-
ventional fuel plants, or about fifteen
mills. He predicts that at least ten years
will elapse before nuclear power will be
generally competitive with power gener-
ated from coal, oil, or gas.
The time required for successful re-
sults is variously predicted as from
three to ten years. Altogether, the con-
clusion seems warranted that pressure to
amend the Atomic Energy Act is due to
the fact that commercially feasible
atomic power is so close to realization
rather than to lack of progress under the
Atomic Energy Commission.
THIS BRINGS US to the second ques-
tion: whether we can expect greater
progress if development of atomic power
is turned over to private enterprise. Here
s
‘we are concerned with something very
different from the development of an
industry based on the invention of some
new gadget or synthetic material. We
are dealing with a great new energy
resource that is vital to our whole way
of life.
Samuel B. Morris, general manager of
the Los Angeles Department of Water
and Power and former dean of engineer-
ing at Stanford University, has given a
simple answer to the contention that
Opening up atomic-power development
to private enterprise would let in the
fresh air of competition. Presenting the
report of the Committee on Atomic
Policy of the American Public Power
Association, Mr. Morris said that the
electric-utility industry is essentially a
monopoly and not a field of dynamic
ptivate, competitive enterprise. To open
the field of atomic power to private
Lelie,
patents would, in effect, pile monopoly
on monopoly. Citing the country’s tele-
phone colossus to illustrate his point, he
suggested that the increasing rapidity of
modern invention, by opening the way to
a chain of patents, would foster a con-
tinuing monopoly in the vital field of
atomic power. He stressed the fact that
patents are not always a stimulus to
production.
The energy-resources field offers many
examples of the tendency to hold back
rather than expedite development of
competing products. In two cases the
situation is strikingly parallel to the pro-
posed use of atomic energy as a new
industrial fuel—namely, the synthetic
production of motor fuel and gas from
coal and the extraction of oil from our
vast shale deposits. In terms of both
conservation and national security, bring-
ing both processes to the point of com-
mercial feasibility is probably as impor-
tant as tke application of atomic energy
to production of electric power. But
both products would be competitive with
what the big oil companies have to sell,
479
a
a A
and private enterprise has shown no
zest for their development.
The story of halting progress in the
synthetic production of motor fuel and
gas from coal is particularly revealing.
Started years ago by the Bureau of
Mines in cooperation with the Uni-
versity of Utah School of Mines, the
undertaking was subsequently moved
to Pittsburgh and finally wound up
during the 1940’s in the hands of
Standard Oil of New Jersey and its
close relative, Pittsburgh Consolidation
Coal Company. To date these corpo-
rations have given no evidence of com-
petitive drive to bring to fruition this
contribution to our energy-resources
economy. Meanwhile the Bureau of
Mines has been making considerable
progress in producing gasoline and
Diesel fuel from coal at its recently
completed demonstration plant at Louisi-
ana, Missouri. But as the “Bituminous
Coal Annual” tersely puts it, the urging
of the Bureau of Mines that private
industry ‘“‘proceed immediately on a
large-scale basis with establishment of a
synthetic-fuels industry . . . provoked a
stiff debate with the National Petroleum
Gouncil on the economics of making oil
from coal.” And, significantly, the item
for continuation of the bureau’s work in
this field has so far been cut from the
1954 federal budget.
SIMILARLY, although the Bureau of
Mines pilot plant at Rifle, Colorado, has
brought the cost of producing gasoline
from oil shales to within two cents of
that for the regular petroleum’ product,
there has been no rush on the part of
private enterprise to take over and push
the process to the point of commercial
use. Yet in neither of these fields are
there any of the legislative obstacles to
a complete taking over by private enter-
prise that are criticized as holding back
progress in development of atomic
power. Moreover, the synthetic produc-
tion of oil and gas is probably of more
immediate public interest than the pro-
‘duction of electricity by atomic energy.
For our conventional reserves of these
élite fuels, representing only about 2
per cent of the nation’s mineral energy
resources, are carrying 50 per cent of
the load. By any estimate their service
lives are relatively short, and the country
is depending more and more on foreign
supplies. In comparison, oil imprisoned
480
in the shale deposits of the country is
estimated at eight times our regular
petroleum reserves, and our coal will
probably outlast our oil by hundreds of
years.
Furthermore, natural-gas markets in
the Northeast are crying for more gas
from the Southwest faster than the big
pipe lines can expand their deliveries,
and field prices, which a few years ago
were around four and five cents per
thousand cubic feet, are upward bound,
with fifteen cents predicted within a
year and twenty to twenty-five cents
expected four years hence. These are
prices at the beginning of the thousand-
mile journey to the Northeast, with
many costs still to be added before the
consumer pays his bill. Testimony in
- the Federal Power Commission’s natural-
gas investigation suggests that perfection
of the synthesis of gas from Appala-
chian coal would provide the North-
east with ample supplies at a price
lower than future prices of Southwestern
gas. But such development appears un-
likely to be carried to the point of eco-
nomic feasibility so long as the great oil
companies have natural gas from their
Southwestern reserves to unload at un-
regulated prices.
Instances could be multiplied. Coal
and rail interests unite with the power
industry to hold up a competitive St.
Lawrence River navigation and power
project and oppose the entrance of na-
tural gas into their local markets. Manu-
factured-gas interests in New England
insist on controlling the marketing _of
natural gas in their areas. Altogether,
experience suggests that private industry
may well be more interested in delaying
than in expediting the application of
atomic energy to the field of power.
for a hasty decision on the atomic-energy
issue. The answer seems to be that there
is no hurry at all. All the agitation has
been stirred up by a well-directed drive
to get us to sell our atomic birthright
for a mess of pottage for which we are
not yet really hungry. It is more impor-
tant for the country to be in control of
atomic power when it finally arrives
than to advance the date of arrival a
few years by abdicating to private mo-
nopoly, assuming these to be the real
alternatives.
Atomic power offers no quick road to
lower electric rates. All present concep-
tions of what is practical would only
substitute splitting atoms for burning
coal, oil, or natural gas as the source
of heat for standard steam-power plants.
Spectacular reductions in cost of fuel
would be counterbalanced by the ne-
cessity for increased investment in facili-
ties for developing the heat and convey-
ing it to the generator.
Professor Manson Benedict of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
analyzing the possibilities of an atomic-
power plant in Boston, shows that if
nuclear fuel were obtained at no cost at
all, the allowable power-plant invest-
ment could not exceed $258 per kilo-
watt of capacity to be competitive with
plants using conventional fuels. He com-
pares this with the estimate of Dr.
Donald Loughbridge, assistant director
of the A. E. C.’s division of reactor
development, that the cost of a nuclear
plant, using present-day techniques,
would be something like $500°or $600
per installed kilowatt, and concludes
that “before nuclear fuels could compete
with coal in Boston, it will be neces-
sary to develop a successful breeding
reactor and cut the cost of a nuclear-
power plant in half.”’ A breeding reactor
comes pretty close to perpetual motion
in that it produces more nuclear fuel
than it consumes in the process of pro-
ducing heat, thus providing a much
higher utilization of the uranium
charge.
An unusually farsighted power-com-
_ pany executive, Philip Sporn, president
of American Gas and Electric Company,
says that the chief thing hoped for from
atomic power is that it will lower the cost
of fuel in power production. But he
hastens to add that the most optimistic
The NATION
me? Nae eee ot a a eas eee
SO WE COME to the anal: quest: on: 7 3
whether there is any urgent public need
Ib 3
- MOROCCO IN TURMOIL
t
- estimate of the
a a ae
BS ger 6, 1953
Rotal cost of Pee. As the fuel cost
of power in Boston is only about one-
third of a cent, a 10 per cent saving
would be negligible so far as the average
consumer of electricity is concerned. Mr.
Sporn considers atomic energy chiefly
important as a supplement to coal in
meeting the rapidly increasing demands
for power. He calls attention to the
President’s Materials
Policy Commission that the country’s
electric-energy requirements will increase
from just under 400,000,000 kilowatt-
hours in 1950 to 1,400,000,000 kilowatt-
hours in 1975, with coal’s responsibility
going up from about 90,000,000 to
300,000,000 tons.
There is, however, every indication
that these requirements can be met with-
out turning to a supplementary fuel.
Although coal provides the country with
an extraordinarily wide range of services,
latest reports show that its market is
actually falling off, that mechanization
is counterbalancing increasing wages in
he the — is ie Lelie far
less than its capacity. In 1950 the 416,-
000 bituminous-coal miners averged only
183 days of work during the year in
producing the required 516,000,000
tons of coal. The Bureau of Mines esti-
mates on the basis of 1949 figures that
with employment averaging a 308-day
year the mines could have produced
about 860,000,000 tons. This would
have exceeded the 825,000,000 tons the
Materials Policy Commission figured as
the total requirements of the country for
all purposes in 1975.
So we are driven to the conclusions
(1) that great progress has been made
in the peace-time uses of atomic fission
under the present law; (2) that leader-
ship in the development of synthetic.
energy resources has not come from the
competitive urge of private enterprise
but from the work of.a federal agency;
and (3) that there is no urgent reason
why we should be rushed into a decision
to revise the present set-up before we
have developed public understanding of
the wide range of contributions atomic
energy may make to the future of our
economy.
The chairman of the Joint Congres-
sional Atomic Energy Committee has
just announced a proposed 30 per cent
cut in the appropriation for the work of
the Atomic Energy Commission during
the coming year. This will apparently
mean reduced activity in the develop-
ment of atomic power. Here is an open-
ing for private enterprise to come for-
ward with the proposition: amend the
law and we will provide the funds. But
our answer should be that although the
nation waited until 1933 to get the ad-
vantages of federal ownership of Muscle
Shoals power, the dividends which have
since been flowing to the region and the
country as a whole much more than com-
pensate for the delay.
When the tests on the Atomic Energy
Act come, let us hope that a new George
Norris will arise, with the vision and
courage to preserve atomic power as the
first George Norris preserved Muscle
Shoals.
I. The Fanatic Colonials .
Casablanca
NEARLY six months have passed since .
the Casablanca riots—or “‘massacres’’—
of last December. “And now look at
Morocco! We've got perfect peace,” said
\ M. Boniface, prefect of Casablanca,
when he received me. His staff call him
playfully ‘“‘l’assassin de Claude Bourdet,”
-and M. Boniface proudly claims full
. fesponsibility for having suppressed the
% “Communist-Nationalist’’ riots.
The windows of his vast office looked
*on to the magnificent Parc Lyautey, with
its equestrian statue of the great marshal.
Around the park /es buildings, the six-
_Aeen- and seventeen-story skyscrapers,
THIS is the first of two articles. on
Morocco by The Nation’s Paris corre-
_ Spondent. The second, will be published
_ next week.
rise into the blue sky, This is the heart
of European Casablanca, and not many
Moroccans are seen here. The Moroc-
cans live mostly. in their filthy old
Medinas or in the bdonvilles on the out-
skirts of Casablanca, or, if they are lucky,
in the new “garden cities’ that are
gradually replacing the bidonvilles, those
unspeakable tin-can slums that have
sprung up in the last few years and are
said to house about 100,000 people. It
was here that the December riots started;
they are “the cancer of Casablanca,’’ the
authorities will tell you, ‘a cause of un-
derstandable discontent, and of course
we are doing our utmost to clear them
away.”
European Casablanca is very different.
Building sites cost more than in the
Champs Elysées in Paris. It is a sort of
North African New York. Casablanca’s
by Alexander Werth
population is already about 700,000 and
in a few years is expected to reach a
million or more. It is the biggest port
of Morocco and the only major indus-
trial city, and it exercises an irresistible
attraction on the hungry peasants of the
bled. ;
The French in Morocco are not at all
like the people one meets in France,
Some of them are the sharks and profi-
teers who came to Morocco to make
money quickly by speculating in land
values and buildings and
others have an earnest sense of
materials;
“mission”
and feel intensely superior to the French
at home. “We are no stick-in-the-muds,”
they will say. And one thinks of France,
of provincial France especially, where
people say so often that France is an old,
tired, mismanaged country and really not
a great power any more. No such humil-
481
core or
peor
al,
ity is noticed among the French in
Morocco; they are conscious of being
empire-builders, of having ‘made Mo-
rocco” with French French
money, French technicians. The more
extreme among them hate Paris and
the French government, and worst of
all they hate the Paris ‘‘sentimentalists,”
the “intellectual busybodies’’ who “don’t
understand a damned thing about Mo-
rocco but who will interfere.”
brains,
Among these they single out not the
anti-colonialists of Franec-Tireur or
VObservateur but Francois Mauriac, a
Catholic and conservative who dared to
raise his voice in protest against the
ruthless handling of the December riots,
and talked a lot of nonsense about
France’s duty to be “just’’ and “Chris-
General Guillaume
tian” in its North African policy. To M.
Boniface and his ilk Mauriac is a traitor
—a traitor to his class and a traitor to
France. A young official unde: Boniface
said to me: “If Mauriac had published
his reflections in some philosophical re-
view, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but
to publish them in the Figaro, which
everybody in Casa reads—that was too
much. Doesn't he realize that there are
many good Catholics in Morocco who
might be affected by his bunk about our
“Christian duties’ to the natives?”
I do not deny that I was impressed by
M. Boniface. He has terrific personality,
is full of boisterous bonhomie and su-
perbly conscious of being invulnerable
—whatever Paris says. No one had any
doubts about whom M. Schuman had
in mind when he wrote that certain
officials in key positions in Morocco
were so strongly backed by local financial
interests that no French government
could possibly get rid of themn.
482
Lyautey may still be a hero in Paris,
but his ideas are not popular with the
French extremists in Morocco. Lyautey
believed that the Protectorate should
guide the Moroccans but not interfere
with their native institutions. He was
an enemy of . administration directe,
at least in the long run. Above all, he
wanted to strengthen the central author-
ity of the Sultan, and he wanted the
Moroccans to love the French.
THE OTHER DAY an extraordinary |
thing happened. General Catroux, who
knew Lyautey well in.the past, was going
to Casablanca to give a lecture about him.
Two days before he was to start he re-
ceived a_ letter the Resident-
General, General Guillaume, strongly
urging him to cancel the lecture since it
would undoubtedly stir up trouble.
Catroux’s views were known from an
article he had reeently written for the
Figaro in which he associated himself
with Mauriac’s campaign against the
“un-Christian’”” policy of the French
authorities in Morocco and declared that
it was entirely contrary to the teachings
of Lyautey. Obviously Boniface intended
to get his boys together and make it hot
for Catroux. General Guillaume could
do nothing. I saw him at about this time,
and when I mentioned the matter, he
was plainly embarrassed.
- The “Catroux scandal’ had not
broken when I was received by M. Boni-
face, but I don’t think anything could
embarrass him. He started right off by
attacking Mauriac. Most un-Cartesian, he
said, for a French author to write about
things he knew nothing about. Morocco
was very complicated, very swancé.
“Damn it, I’ve lived here since the age
of six. I speak Arab; I speak Berber; I
know what I’m talking about. They call
us colonialists—well, let them. We
from
haven’t a great armed force in Morocco. -
If the Moroccans wanted- to throw us
out, they could. It’s not true that they
hate us. They like us, and have confi-
dence in us. We’ve done wonders here.
It was a medieval country when we first
came. We've stamped out banditry and
malaria, and people have started thinking
for themselves. We don’t mind that; ‘it
was part of the progress. But it’s still a
very backward country, and one can’t go
too fast—least of all with Moslems. Of
course, we'd like to send a million
Moroccan children to school, and not
a A on er
just 200,000. But we need time and
money. Even so, in 1912 they had
nothing—no schools, no hospitals, no
roads, no telephones. And we've man-
aged all this despite the two wars we've
had to fight.’’
So far so good. But now M. Boniface
came to hotter subjects. “It has all the
possibilities of a democratic country. The
Berbers have strong democratic tradi-
tions—much more democratic than the
centralist and theocratic concepts of the
Arabs.” And then he suggested that the
Sultan was simply an ambitious man out
to increase his personal authority through
his so-called “reforms.”’ “The prestige
of the Sultan was not as great as he liked
to think. The Berber south did not think
much of him. The religious fraternities
throughout the country called him ‘a bad
sherif.’ In Morocco large sections of the
population were opposed to totalitarian
Moslemism and worshiped their local
saints. Neither the temporal nor the
spiritual power of the Sultan was as
great as some imagined. It was France
which had created the central authority
of the Sultan. Morocco was still deeply
divided—quite unlike Tunisia in this
respect.”
“And the Istiglal, Monsieur le Pré-
fet?’ "
“Crest rien. Cest zéro. A few half-
baked intellectuals, with wishy-washy
ideas about Western democracy and the
French Revolution! The Moroccan
people despise them. They picked up a
few ideas from the Communists and off
they went trying to cause trouble among
the proletariat of Casablanca. They also
tried to set up cells all over the place;
didn’t amount to much. Of course, they
were encouraged by the Sultan, who
fancied himself as a kind of Fuhrer!
Young people spouting slogans, waving
flags. A crazy press, too, going in for
blackmail and intimidation. When they
started their nonsense in Casablanca we
had fo put our foot down. We had no
right to be weak. And look at Casa now!
Peace, perfect peace.”
IT WAS a revealing talk. Play off the
‘Berbers against the Arabs; encourage the
feudal lords of the south and the
obscurantist religious fraternities to gang
up against the Sultan—if not to over-
throw him, at least to isolate him more
and more. And so preserve the ‘status
quo, at least for as long as possible.
Bs be NATION
RET EN 8 QTE FTA ES Pe ae
Parr eee
er
*
SB ecviing’ Latin America .
ONE of the mightiest “subversive”
forces in Latin America today, by virtue
of the non-reversible changes it is
effecting in the way of life, is Sears,
Roebuck and Company. In the next few
years Sears is likely to have a greater in-
fluence on conditions south of the border
than the United States has had in the
last eight decades. Its great resources
and technical “know-how,” developed
through the years of its operation in this
country, equip it to make a terrific im-
pact when it enters markets where con-
ditions are roughly comparable to those
in this country in 1900.
Controversy is raging over whether
Sears is a twentieth-century-model bene-
factor—an unofficial instrument of our
“good neighbor” policy—or a traditional
capitalistic exploiter of the Latin Amer-
ican masses. A commonly stated goal of
the numerous national and international
relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction
agencies has. been “to help people to
help themselves.” In’ practice this has
largely meant helping farmers and man-
ufacturers to increase production. The
assumption has been that the consumers
would benefit ultimately as the food and
goods. produced dribbled down to them;
after distributors, jobbers, and retailers
had taken their cut. Sears’s program
starts with the consumer.
Sears launched its revolution with the
‘opening of a modern department store
in Havana in 1942. Openings in Sao
Paulo and Rio de Janiero followed. In
October, 1952, Sears opened its twenty-
first Latin American store in Puebla,
“Mexico. In the five countries where it is
now operating—Brazil, Colombia, Cuba,
Mexico,
and Venezuela—twenty-eight
* possible locations for new stores are
_ under investigation, Sears is watching
and waiting for changes in conditions
that will make it feasible to enter Argen-
_ tina, Peru, and Uruguay. tian
7
‘LINCOLN CLARK is an editor of the
Journal of Marketing and teaches at
New York Uniwersity.
cs lune 6, 1953
In deciding where and when to open
a store Sears studies the area’s purchasing
power, labor and tax laws, and site costs.
In this country stores on the outskirts
of large towns can attract customers by
providing parking lots. In South Amer-
ica, where most people use public trans-
portation, Sears- must locate in estab-
lished shopping districts. Site costs are
therefore high. The land for the Sao
Paulo store cost about twice as much as
an adequate location for the same sized
store in the United States. Sears seeks
what the trade knows as ‘100 per cent
locations.”” Thus in Guadalajara it has
leased space in a building diagonally
across from the Cathedral. Building
costs have been unpredictable from
United States experience. In Cuba and
Mexico they are perhaps half as high
as in this country but in Venezuela 50
per cent higher. Show cases and other fix-
tures—major investment items» in a
modern department store—cost about the
_ same in Cuba as in the United States,
in Mexico and Venezuela about double,
and in Brazil five or six times as much.
LIKE ANY competent merchant, Sears
investigates what its potential customers
want. It is prepared to offer articles that
are in accord with local tastes. Much to
its surprise, it has found that the most
popular styles are generally. the same
as in the United States. One interesting
phenomenon has been the salability of +
soft goods—hats, lingerie, and the like;
while here Sears has traditionally been
looked upon as a good source of hard
goods—baling wire, chicken brooders,
refrigerators, pick axes.
Sears makes every effort to use and
build up local sources of supply if com-
parative costs permit. The percentage of
supplies purchased in the country where
the stores are located varies from about
25 per cent in Cuba to 90 per cent in
Brazil. In the case of furniture high
shipping costs led to having the latest
North American styles reproduced lo-
cally. Importation of some articles is
by Lincoln Clark
limited by law or government edict. In
such cases Sears has been stimulated to
develop local sources of supply at a
faster rate than it would have done if a
free market had existed. It frequently
makes advance payments, lends money,
and provides technical aid to local sup-
pliers in order ‘to obtain goods manu-
factured to its specifications. Then it
presses hard to get delivery on schedule
—a revolutionary Yankee concept.
But perhaps its most subversive in-
novation is its inspection for quality.
In South America as in this country
Sears has been a mighty fighter against
the intrenched marketing dictum “Caveat °
emptor.”” It has introduced instead the
more efficient principle, “Satisfaction
guaranteed or your money back.”
A major deterrent to American ven-
tures into foreign markets is currency
restrictions, which limit the recoyery of
investments and the profits that Amer-
icans can take out of a country. Sears'has
such a ‘long-range view that it regards
this as a temporary hindrance. Placing
less. and less reliance on imports, it has
ample opportunities to invest current in-!
come. Sears looks on the funds it has
already put into the program as
“seed money’’ and is not rushing to reap
the harvest. Not only are profits plowed
in but there is talk of raising additional
capital by selling stock locally.
The amount of attention Sears is
giving to its South American business
does not seem entirely due to its profit
potentialities, since it represents mere
“chicken feed’’ in the Sears empire.
Probably the outlook of Sears executives
is the true explanation. The knowledge
that their company is offering better
values to millions of people and lowering
the cost of living by forcing competitors
to toe the line is an immense psychologi-
cal satisfaction. The Sears program is so
vast and all encompassing that it looks as
if its strongest motivating force were to
Sell the Sears ‘‘way of life’ to the world
—although in the end it may turn out to
be extremely good business,
483
a
er
a eo
BOOKS |
Babbitt, Jr. in Two. Roles
SHAME AND GLORY OF THE IN-
TELLECTUALS: BABBITT,,]R. VS.
THE REDISCOVERY OF VALUES.
By Peter Viereck. Beacon Press. $4.
HERESY, YES; CONSPIRACY, NO.
By Sidney Hook. The Joha Day Com-
pany. $3.75.
By John W. Ward
ROM quite different vantage points
Mr. Hook and Mr. Viereck address
the same problem—the responsibility of
the intellectual for the condition of
freedom in the United States today. Mr.
Hook, writing in the pragmatic tradition
of James and Dewey, believes that
“rights’’ are definable only in the con-
text of history. Mr. Viereck believes that
values are innate and universal. The real
enemy for Mr. Viereck is the pragmatic
liberal who has weakened the value
structure of Western culture so that it
is easy prey to totalitarianism. Mr. Hook
feels quite as strongly as Mr._ Viereck
that today one must choose to be either
pro-Communist or anti-Communist;
there are no areas left in which’ one can
be a -zon-Communist. But Mr. Viereck
is more positive. "He believes one must
choose certain absolute “values.” “To-
talitarianism,”’ he writes, ‘‘is not the op-
posite of naturalistic relativism, as many
liberals believe, but its consequence.”
Since Mr. Hook’s book is an attempt to
work out ‘‘a tough-minded philosophy
to guide American liberals,” one antici-
pates an area of disagreement with Mr.
Viereck, who is continuing his task of
defining a ‘new conservatism’ for
America. Such is not the case. Mr. Vier-
eck and Mr. Hook may differ on pro-
gressive education, but otherwise their
devils and angels are pretty much the
same. Both, having examined the char-
acter of the American intellectual, con-
clude that the chief danger in America
today is his softness toward communism.
Thus both énd their books with an
’
JOHN W. WARD is a member of the
English Department at Princeton Uni-
versity and also teaches in the Special
Program in American Civilization,
484
inquiry into academic freedom. The
facades differ, but the floor plans are
remarkably alike.
“The Shame and Glory of the In-
tellectuals” is a book by an intellectual
for intellectuals about intellectuals. The
glory of the intellectuals was their re-
sistance to Nazism; their shame is their
tolerance of communism. The conflict
today is between the liberal intellectual
and the new conservative bent on the
rediscovery of values. While radicalism
in politics and experimentalism in litera-
ture were once vivifying forces, they are
now cliché ridden and impotent. So in-
stead of George we have Gaylord Bab-
bitt, Jr., fellow-traveler and literary
mandarin.
Recently the intellectual has been
somewhat on the defensive. His plight
has even enriched the vernacular, Ironi-
cally, just after making a unilateral
peace with America—if the recent Par-
tisan Review symposium is a valid index
~the intellectual discovers himself rele-
gated to the egg-heap. But if intellectual
life in America is in shameful condition,
not the least of the reasons is that a book
like Mr. Viereck’s could be written by
_a college professor.
With conservatism in politics Mr.
Viereck argues for a parallel return to
formalism in literature. Yet his bom-
bastic style owes more to Carlyle than to
Dryden. What is one to make of a man.
who can argue for classical humanism
in this fashion ?
Clarity and reasonableness more excit-
ing than visceral enthusiasm or sublime
vagueness. Consequently, special homage
to Samuel Johnson (memo to Modern
Language Association: revise textbooks
accordingly). No more southern Cali-
fornias.
No Untergang, no Decline and Fall; the
regeneration of the West through the
dignity and purity of. Form; man as
personality instead of man as insect.
- The aesthetic sense once more in control
of the utilitarian sense, today inhibiting
it, tomorrow fulfilling it; not only cloud-
ward to ivory towers but earthward to
ivory factories. Except for the lowest in-
dispensable minimum, ‘no more cowering
and groveling before the muscular adjec-
tive ‘Practical’; ringside tipsters whisper
- im on CR ree 4 es os
Re eg , La
anal
he is a mere debating-point champion and
shows poor footwork in wrestling with
angels; through jiu-jitsu, he can be forced
to concede that only death is “Practical”
in the “long run” and that nothing else
“really works” because only death is. “here
to stay.”
Another reviewer has said that Mr.
Viereck’s character as a poet accounts for
his almost obsessive_tendency to play
with words. Quite the contrary. The
poet wrenches language to illuminate his _
subject; Mr. Viereck’s violence results . }
only in a short circuit. That such chaotic,
discourse is offered in support of order
and clarity indicates a corruption of the
intelligence which is manifest on every
level of Mr. Viereck’s book.
I am not so much concerned here with
the fact that the hermaphroditic Gaylord
Babbitt, Jr., exists nowhere outside Mr.
Viereck’s imagination; it simply is not
the case that the political radical and@ _
the Jiterary aesthete have composed a
single personality in recent years. Nor +
do I wish to dwell on Mr. Viereck’s
failure to meet the minimum standards
of decency, as, for example, when, ad-
dressing “my fellow-‘professors,’” he
implies they are the people Sir Winston
Churchill had in. mind when he de-
scribed the Communists as “bloody-
minded professors.” What I especially
want to draw attention to is the self-
contradictory natlire of the book. Exactly
as Mr. Viereck’s style violates his pro-
fessed literary ideal, so his very argu-
ment betrays his explicit thesis.
Mr. Viereck admits to ignorance in
“the field of philosophy, but this does -
not dissuade hif from castigating a
pragmatic tradition based on naturalism
and cultural relativism. With the candor
of one who says, “I don’t know any-
thing about art but I know what I like,”
he announces his inability to speak with
- intelligence in the “value controversy”
but blithely proceeds to do so because
“life goes on; crises confront us; we
must make immediate decisions in value
problems.” What is this but a resolution
of the problem in pragmatic terms? Mr.
Viereck introduces his whole discussion °
of values with an appeal to the emotion
* of common sense—‘‘for reasons it would
take years to prove and which the reader
will either sense in a second or not at
all.” What has happened to the cam-
paign for a revolt against romantic intui-
tion and a return to “pure reason”?
Except for providing a cumbersome hy-
The NATION —
=
2
‘
y
reck ‘contributes no more to te “definition
of the “new conservatism” than to insist
on the inviolable dignity of the individ-
ual. Here we are back where the liberal
tradition began.
Mr. Viereck is shrewd enough to real-
ize that a new current is stirring in
‘America, The openness and indetermi-
nacy of the democratic system become
_ difficulf to bear in a period of crisis. Peo-
ple seek the comfort of ethical, and
sometimes _ political,
for. Intelligence is required to drive the
. bandwagon.
NEXT TO Mr. Viereck, Mr. Hook
profits immensely. One may disagree
; with Mr. Hook, but he is not to be
dismissed. ‘‘‘Heresy, Yes; Conspiracy,
F No” exposes two enemies—the “‘cultural
vigilante’ of the McCarthy stripe who
would destroy heresy, and the
istic liberal’’ who, obsessed with civil
“ritual-
liberties, would allow conspiracy to
destroy freedom. The ritualistic liberal
is of course Babbitt, Jr., stripped of his
mandarin robes. Mr. Hook believes that
fear of communism is the ‘‘obvious main
~ cause” of cultural vigilantism. I disagree.
Communism is the occasion, not the
_cause of McCarthy. America’s anxiety
_. makes McCarthy a possibility; what
motivates McCarthy is a less simple mat-
ter. Mr. Hook believes that the source
of ritualistic liberalism is the alienation
__ of a small but strategically placed num-
ber of intellectuals. He feels that by
criticizing American institutions the rit-
ualistic liberal plays into the hands of
communism, since neutralist sentiment
.in Western Europe is based on the be-
‘lief that the United States is no better
than Russia. Here I feel Mr. Hook ex-
aggerates grossly. Europe's distrust of
the United Stdtes owes far less to in-
‘transigent critics of American policy than
to the disgrace of Senator McCarthy.
It was not the New Statesman and Na-
tion but the London Times which re-
cently argued that “the fears and sus-
| __ picions which center around the person
{
{
2 POE Se ON TY
of Senator McCarthy are now real
enough to count as an essential factor
in policy-making for the West.”
In his first chapter Mr. Hook writes,
“Truth is sacred, but a person whe re-
_ vealed it knowing that it would be used
June 6, 1953
absolutes. But
shrewdness is not what the situation calls -
ol Te BAe LAS
to destroy his country i is a d wattor.* One
_ hardly knows what to make of this sur-
prising sentence. From its context Mr.
Hook is obviously rot considering scien-
tific truth, which is involved in national
security, but moral or philosophical truth.
To make truth subservient to national
policy is to justify an idea by its conse-
quences in a most disturbing fashion. It
is this line of reasoning which underlies
Mr. Hook’s. attack on critics of America.
The same premise informs his chapter on
the Smith act. Although he disapproves
of the act Mr. Hook thinks repeal would
be unwise because the act is popularly
supposed to be directed against the Com-
munist Party and abolition of it might
weaken public sentiment against com-
munism. The logical conclusion to Mr.
Hook’s argument, and one I would ex-
pect him to disavow violently, is to put
the state in the seat of reason.
Mr.. Hook’s major effort is an ex-
tended analysis of freedom in the
schools. Here he does the academic com-
munity a real service by challenging it
to think through many of its assump-
tions. He concludes that one who merely
believes in communism must be allowed
to teach, since belief involves heresy, but
not one who joins the party, since
membership involves conspiracy. Mr.
Hook is careful to keep the discussion
out of the area of freedom of thought
by insisting that joining the party is an
act and should not be confused with
belief. But this seems to be a dangerous
casuistry. The tradition of American
justice has always been that one is re-
sponsible only for personal acts. Once
admit that membership in a group is an
act and one of our traditional safeguards
is lost. Moreover, by Mr. Hook’s own
pragmatic standard, it seems to be an
inoperative distinction. The principle
will catch everybody but the Communist.
Mr. Viereck and Mr. Hook do, how-
ever, point to ane major problem—the
widening gulf between the business
community and the intellectuals. Perhaps
We are. over-sensitive to the split. Anti-
intellectualism seems the dominant rather
than the minor trend in American his-
tory. The recent brief interlude in which
the intellectual seemed to find an hon-
ored place in our society may have been
more of an exception’ than the current re-
volt against the “‘egg-head.” Someone
has yet to write the study of anti-intel-
lectualism which will put today’s prob-
lem in proper perspectivé. Whoever
does will need these two books.
The Female of the Species
THE NATURAL SUPERIORITY OF
WOMEN. By Ashley Montagu. Mac-
millan. $3.50
By Frances Keene
D* MONTAGU, an anthropologist
of note and a facile popularizer, has
done an important service to men and
women equally in gathering under one
provocative title much hitherto dispersed
information. His main thesis is that ‘‘the
liberation of woman means the liber-
ation of man, for until women are
freed from the myths which at present
impede their psogress, no man can be
free or mentally completely healthy’;
and as he goes about proving this he
stresses repeatedly that equality in free-
dom has little to do with identity or
likeness. -
The book recapitulates available data
FRANCES KEENE is a frequent con-
tibutor to The Nation’s book pages.
which prove that woman has “‘as good”
a brain as man’s and that the size of it,
in proportion to her frame, is even some-
what larger; the author trots out the
by now familiar fact that women stand
up better under a variety of severe
strains, including concentration-camp
pressures, than do men; and he gives the
first capsule explanation that has ever
made sense to this layman at least of why
men die younger than women: “The fact
is that the female is constitutionally
stronger than the male and only muscu-
larly less powerful. . . . The male pays
heavily for his greater body build and
muscle power. Because his expenditure
of energy is greater than that of the fe-
male, he burns himself out more rapidly,
hence dies at an earlier age.”
There are certain points one would
challenge or like expanded. For instance,
provocative as is Dr. Montagu’s remark
that Freud “mistook the great cultural
emphasis placed by our species upon sex
485
ae ein my
ee a
aa
ee ee
SA eee
as a biologically motivated function”
(author's italics), it should be further
elaborated, for, once the point is raised,
the reader has every right to expect more
serious discussion. Again, in considering
women’s greater to sociability,
Montagu describes this gregariousness as
“the most fundamental of all emotional
qualities.” Surely a human trait is not
di per se a “quality,” and the ill effects
Of this one are as marked as the good;
hence its position at the top of Montagu’s
emotional ladder is seriously open to
In the chapter on muscular
urge
question.
versus biological superiority, the author
concludes that since the ideal of human
(physical) perfection lies in nearness to
= w= tet,
the human infant, woman is more nearly
perfect than man, who has undergone
such toughening changes as growth of
body hair and beard, roughening and
deepening of voice, bulking up of
muscle. Carried to its logical conclusion,
then, the feminine characteristics of the
male homosexual type would be a step
in the direction of this idéal—a conclu-
sion Dr. Montagu does not draw but
which any rational mind would find im-
plicit in his argument.
The book: is soundly
reading. The author has a tendency to
overstate and undersupport his points, ~
but a work of this kind was needed for
the benefit of the general public.
‘
New Books in Brief
The Diplomatic Art
THE DIPLOMATS, 1919-1939. Edited
by Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert.
Princeton University Press. $9.°
This book has a forbidding appear-
ance, seven hundred large and closely
printed pages, written by scholars. Yet
it will be read with sustained interest
even by laymen if they wish to find out
about European history in the two fate-
ful decades between World War I and
World War II. Events are competently
presented through a discussion of the
leading diplomatic personalities’ of the
period, their methods and achievements.
Though the book has no thesis to pro-
pose or defend, it nevertheless will serve
to warn the reader against the distrust
of professional diplomacy so fashionable
after World War I. The advice of trained
observers in the missions abroad was
often neglected in favor of the intuitive
judgments or impressions of non-
professionals or of politicians with
negligible experience in foreign affairs.
The governments and peoples of the
West were more and more inclined to
prefer diplomats who reported what
they wanted to hear to those whose
analyses were more pessimistic but have
been justified by history. Sir Robert Peel
called diplomacy “the great engine used
by civilized society for the purpose of
maintaining peace.’’ Naturally the engine
has to be adjusted from time to time to
the changing conditions of society. For
many decades the United States has had
486
little need and little respect for the art
of diplomacy. A book like this one, in
addition to providing pleasant and in-
formative reading, will perform a use-
ful function by increasing the under-
standing of the potential achievements
and limitations of the diplomatic art.
Nostalgic Epicure
BLUE TROUT AND BLACK TRUF-
FLES. By Joseph Wechsberg. Knopf.
$3.75.
A delectable and nostalgic Bock of
reminiscences by an epicure who has
eaten his way across Europe. Among the
restaurants he has visited are Meiss] and
Schadn in Vienna, where twenty-four
varieties of boiled beef were served,
Gundel’s in Budapest, where the pre-
war wine card ran to eighteen pages and
listed forty-eight different liqueurs, and
the Restaurant de la Pyramide at Vienne,
“the greatest this side of heaven.” Their
most celebrated creations are described
in ravishing detail. Best of all is the
chapter in which an old waiter recalls
the golden age of Maxim’s at the furn of
the century when it was the rendezvous
of kings and famous courtesans.
Greatness and Oddness
A HOPKINS READER. Selected and
with an Introduction by John Pick. Ox-
ford University Press. $4.50,
*
based and easy”
“Glory be to God,” wrote Father
Hopkins in one of his marvelous poems,
for “all things counter, original, spare,
sane " Mates cobert ©
Bridges: “Design, pattern, or a Tam
_in the habit of calling ‘inscape’ is what
I above all aim at in poetry. Now it is
the virtue of ... inscape to be distinc-
tive, and it is the vice of distinctiveness
to become queer. This vice I cannot have
escaped.” Professor Pick’s selection from
Hopkins’s poems, notebooks, and letters ~
brings into sharp focus both the great-
ness and the oddness, the distinctiveness
and the price paid.
The price was painful. Letters to
friends are weary and often banal, full .
of sighs. Landscape and metrics are
studied with compulsive attention. In ~
metrics this original genius was painfully
sensitive to being called aberrant,. and
made special fleas for his correctness.
Landscape he searched continually for
the inscape (the pattern of being) of
cloud or water-swirl or tree: each object
and each momeni seen in its own light,
as in the Taoist approach to nature, but
without serenity. His mind and body
were worn by moral struggles:-the pull
of fame against sacrifice, of distinctton
against the sin of pride. An original
genius seeking his own laws, he was a
member of the Jesuit order which
praised Blessed John Berchmans for
strict observance of their strict rule—
Berchmans who said, as Hopkins wrote
Bridges, ““Common life is the greatest
of my mortifications.”” This is,a soberly
illuminating and an invaluable book, a’
record of a war in the spirit. From the
conflict sprang those shining and inimi-
table poems in which the oddness and
the despair have such a hard time with
the gloria.,
Art as Symbol
FEELING AND FORM. By Susanne K.
Langer. Scribner’s. $7.
One of the aspects of symbolism
treated in Mrs. Langer’s earlier book,
“Philosophy in a New Key,’ was_ its
role in art, and her new work is an ex-
ploration of the theory that the essential ~
nature of art is symbolic. Offering the
definition, ‘Art is the creation of forms
symbolic of human feeling,” she applies
it to all the important forms of art in
turn. Works of art, she says, seem to
create for themselves an_ illusionary
realm from which they speak, as prime
symbols, directly to the perception. This
realm’ she calls the ‘‘virtual.” It is the
space in which a painting exists, the time
The NATION 4
' PGA te
ality A; in the seventeenth century and
ut . to those of ordinary existence
the work of art is free to achieve forms
_ consistent with aesthetic rather than prac-
_tical considerations. The chapters in
which ideas like this are applied to the
particular arts serve as introductions to
_ the aesthetic philosophy of each art.
_ Mrs. Langet’s theory involves many bor-
rowings and illuminating critiques of
other philosophies, like those of Croce
and Bergson, and also provides her with
a method of vigorously tackling such
- classical problems as the imitative func-
_ tion of art, the place of expression and
~ communication, and the relation of con-
~ tent and form.
I New Mediums of Consent
| ESSAYS IN POLITICS. By Scott Bu-
t chanan. Philosophical Library. $3.75.
t3 Mr. Buchanan is extremely concerned
with what he describes as “‘our crisis of
_ consent.” Recalling that Americans are
| committed to the proposition that just
governments derive their power from the
~ consent of the governed, he argues that
_ the institutional mediums through which
- consent has been traditionally given are
no longer adequate. The politically rele-
_ vant institutions today are the many and
varied kinds of corporations to which
we all belong. To preserve our demo-
“cratic processes, we must widen the
basis of participation and control in
© these organizations. Devices must be
created to entble the individual to ap-
| prove or disapprove the actions of those
_ corporate bodies which affect him most
directly. Just how we are to accomplish
this feat remains in doubt. Mr. Bu-
chanan suggests that the corporate form
"of which the T. V. A. is the prototype
_is the most likely recourse. In the light
of the deep-rooted frustration and
apathy everywhere apparent in American
society today, one may feel a degree of
skepticism about the ee of such
a remedy.
A Great Thinker
THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON
SOCIETY. By Bertrand Russell. Simon
-and Schuster. $3. -
The theme of Lord Russell's book
is, of course, momentous; nothing has
been of greater significance in the West-
ern world than the scientific revolution
| June 6, 1953
completed in the technological revolu-
tion of the last hundred years. That it
has transformed the face of the earth,
society, and man is* a commonplace.
What it will make of the future, if there
be one, is the anxious question to which
Lord Russell addresses himself. In brief,
his position is stated in the following
felicitous passage: “Broadly speaking,
we are in the middle of a race between
human skill as to means and human
folly as to ends. Given sufficient folly as
to ends, every increase in the skill re-
quired to achieve them is to the bad.”
Lord Russell does not claim to have
the answer. In general, he hesitates be-
tween a profound pessimism and a
moderate, skeptical optimism which
pleads for population control, world
government, and the cultivation of love
and compassion as possible defenses
against the dangers of power, competi-
tion, violence, and fear. There is not
much that is new in this plea; and per-
haps there is not much that is new in
the book as a whole. A number of
points are treated superficially, and on
some the author even seems to be in-
consistent. But with Russell it is not only
what he says but how he says it that
counts, for the brilliant insights, ingen-
ious formulations, and independence of
mind which he brings to almost every
subject still make him the last of the
great thinkers of our time.
The Father of Digests
THE. LIFE. ANDOCDEATH OF “A
NEWSPAPER. By J. W. Robertson
Scott. British Book Center. $6.75.
This curiously disjointed book by the
venerable editor of that unique British
magazine, the Countryman, may prove
caviar to the general but should interest
students of newspaper history and de-
light connoisseurs of English eccentric-
ity. The Pall Mall Gazette, for which the
author worked in his early years, never
was a commercial success, but for a part
of its career, which ended in 1923, it
was amazingly influential. To a great ex-
tent this was due to three talented but
very different men who edited it between
1880 and 1892—Lord Morley, W. T.
Stead, and Sir E. T. Cook. Of these three
the most original character was the
evangelical Stead, once described as “a
curious amalgam of sensational journal-
f
ist and political seer.” Notable both as
craftsman and crusader, he rather than
Northcliffe was the inventor of the ‘‘new
journalism,” and after leaving the
Gazette, he became, by founding the
Review of Reviews, the real progenitor
of the now vast family. of Digests. Stead
has been unduly neglected since his
death in the Titanic disaster, and it is
good to have this fresh and intimate
account of his career. *
Amusing Villainy
we
SOME FACES IN THE CROWD. By
Budd Schulberg. Random House. $3.
These stories about pathetic sadists,
naive tyrants, and self-deceived egotists
have chiefly an anecdotal interest. The
infinite possibilities of human villainy
are easy to believe in nowadays, but Mr,
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BOOK MANUSCRIPTS INVITED
If you are looking for a publisher, send for our
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Search of a Publisher. It tells how we can publish,
promote and distribute your book, as we have
done for hundreds of other writers. All subjects
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a
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Schulberg gives the point new force by
making the boundless darkness of ill-
will yawn convincingly in the golden
spotlight of success shining on Ciro’s or
the boxing ring. He explores the evil
lurking in such places as radio, movies,
marriage, family life, and the. white-
collar fringes of war. Virtue, when it
appears, is weak, foolish, odd, even gro-
tesque, and seems, on the whole, to be
asking for the trouble it invariably runs
into. Mr. Schulberg gives the impression
of not really being interested in it. It is
a necessary foil for the cruelty whose in-
finite variety fascinates him. The stories
do not probe character too deeply to lose
theic smooth, well-trimmed effect; and
although they manifest a clear knowl-
edge of some of the less attractive as-
pects of American civilization, they are
never too alarming to be amusing.
Work of Young Writers
AMERICAN VANGUARD, 1953.
Edited by Charles I. Glicksberg and
Brom Weber. Dial Press. $4.
The latest issue of an excellent series
of anthologies based on the Writers’
Workshop of the New School for Social
Research. In the past this group has
produced such novelists as William Sty-
ron, Sigrid de Lima, Leonard Bishop,
and George Mandel; it is probably the
richest center of new fiction among our
colleges and universities. Editors, critics,
teachers would do well to check over the
present volume, which may also be of
interest to the general reader. The young
~ writers represented here, it should be
added, do not work according to any
school of critical, theory but directly
out of their own experience, guided by
a flexible and experimental teaching
staff. There are short stories, sketches,
novels in progress, and poetry in the
present volume, all of high quality.
Dateless Comment
THE MILITARY NECESSITY, by
Alfred de Vigny. Grove Press. $3.
The appearance, in a fine translation
by Humphrey Hare, of the three stories
which make up Alfred de Vigny’s ‘‘Ser-
vitude et grandeur militaires’’ marks
the rediscovery of a singular commen-
tary on one aspect of society—military
service, Dateless despite changes in the
aature of conflict and conscription,
488
Vigny’s detailed anecdotes and particu-
larly his preface to them strike deep into
the same problem today. This truly
modern mind saw the nexus between
military and civil life when he wrote:
“We cannot sufficiently forestall the
time when the army is identified with
the nation if we are ever to see the day
when armies and wars exist no more,
when the world consists of but one na-
tion unanimous at last as regards its
social structure—an event which should
already have occurred long ago.” To
most readers Vigny is recalled as the
dramatic and lyric poet, contemporary
of Lamartine, Balzac, Hugo, and a host
more present to us than he in the
ambience of the late Empire and the
Restoration. But in this work, as Edward
Sackville-West has written, he reveals
himself as “a man who had learnt that
few things are really worth saying but
that what must be said had better be ”
said like this.”
The stories are spare, compelling, and
still believable today. The translator’s
enlightening introduction helps us ex-
amine intelligently a world the author
explores with the detachment born only
of intimate knowledge plus compas-
sionate criticism. An important book for
Americans at this time.
Indian Idyl
THE LIGHT IN THE FOREST. By
Conrad Richter, Alfred “A. Knopf.
$2.50.
A brief and touching idyl of Indian
tribal culture in the early days of our
history. The story is that of a white boy,
adopted by the Delawares, who is |
forced to return to the civilized ideals
and “restrained manner of existence”
which repelled the first Americans. The
tone is nostalgic rather than hortatory,
but Mr. Richter has done such a good
job in understanding and sympathizing
with “either side” that he is open to the
suspicion of being an artist.
Life in Harlem
SIMPLE TAKES A WIFE. By Langs-
ton Hughes. Simon and Schuster. $1.95,
These popular and entertaining
sketches of Negro life in Harlem form
an interesting contrast with Richard
Wright's “The Outsider.” Mr. Hughes
is not unaware of the. race problem
either; it is really the central issue of his
Pe eran
book, viewed here from the ‘standpoint
of the common man and with bitter
laughter. But the animal pleasures and
all too human follies of ordinary life,
black or white, are also stressed—the
binding cord of humanity which Wright
temporarily at least has severed. One
may regret only that Mr. Hughes has
made these stories a little too popular -
and somewhat mechanical in execution.
Close to Horror
CHILDREN ARE BORN ON SUN-.
DAY. By Jean Stafford. Harcourt, Brace.
$3.
There is something here that is close
to horror, and several of these stories
flutter in the realm of madness. “The
Interior Castle” is a remarkable descrip-
tion of pain. “The Maiden” is a brilliant
account of a loving and affectionate
German couple—the models of domestic
bliss for an admiring circle of Americans
in Heidelberg—whose marriage was con-
summated in a bath of blood. But this
new volume of Miss Stafford’s stories
has greater range, as well as depth, than
some of her previous work. She has
come to balance the virtuosity of her
talent by a consistent regard for those
who have been exploited by the brutali-
‘ties of civilization as well as by the aber-
rations of psychobiology. She has found
—one hopes deeply it will continue—a _
wider framework for the ogres and suc-
cubi who hover around her pen. These
are excellent tales.
A Negro Family
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN.
By James Baldwin. Alfred A. Knopf.
$3.50.
A mature and skilful first novel by .
a writer of talent. The story concerns
the somewhat morbid relationships of
the members of a Negro family who are
gathered together in a religious sect.
Determined on salvation, they are cast
down by sin. Their tangled histories are
unraveled very well indeed, and only -
the final impact of the novel is somewhat
muffled. Mr. Baldwin has placed him- :
self, along with Ralph Ellison, in the
advanced path of Negro writing today;
he is determined to break out of the
“cage” of his material, which might
also be viewed, however, as the source —
and spring of his art.
The NATION
-
SS
it makes the
Swan Queen with its unbelievable per-
- fection and beauty, and Danilova’s with
its projection of pores force and
B. H. Haggin
IHOUGH Lincoln Kirstein thought
it advisable to step before the curtain
and justify the presentation of Lew
Christensen’s ‘‘Filling Station” by the
interest he hoped it would have for the
_audience as a document in the early his-
tory of what became the New York City
. Ballet, the audience knew better than he
and responded to the piece not with an
interest in it as history but with delight
in its moment-to-moment operation as a
work of art. “Filling Station’ takes its
place with Loring’s ‘‘Billy the Kid’ and
Robbins’s “Fancy Free’’ as one of the en-
during works, one of the classics of
American ballet—brilliant in its observa-
tion, its dance invention, its organization.
5. So brilliant and so eompltily successful
that, as in the case of “Billy the Kid,”
one wonders why the eye and mind that
produced it did not produce anything
as good after it.
I was going to say as in the case of
“Fancy Free’ too; but Robbins produced
several brilliant ballets for musical
shows; and now he has given us ‘The
Afternoon of a Faun,” in which a keen
_ perception about the people of the world
bounded by the walls and mirrors of
the dance studio is presented effectively
in movement keyed to the scale and tone
aa :
- of Debussy s music.
In “Filling Station” young Jacques
_ d’Amboise’s brilliant dancing is exciting
not only in itself but for what it prom-
_ises; Janet Reed again demonstrates her
‘superb gift for comedy; and there are
‘excellent performances by Maule, Bar-
nett, Bigelow, Zompakos, O’Brien, and
_ the rest. And among the good things
about “The Afternoon of a Faun” is
oe, well it uses the special gifts of
~ LeClercq and Moncion—how much it
profits by the way each of them estab-
lishes her or himself as a powerful
_ presence on a stage.
That, I might add, is something—the
only thing—Tallchief doesn’t do; and
difference between her
h —
June 6, gt),
MACDOWELL'S piano concerto No. 2,
played well by Sanroma with the
Eastman-Rochester Symphony under
Hanson, is a gifted American’s expertly
made copy of a _ nineteenth-century
European model. With Hanson’s “‘Ro-
mantic’ Symphony (Columbia).
Loeffler’s “A Pagan Poem’”’ has beauti-
fully wrought details, but isn’t a well-
integrated piece. Rosenthal’s perform-
ance with the Paris Philharmonic is
good; but the extensive piano part is
played on a poor-sounding instrument.
With Scriabin’s ‘Poem of Ecstasy”
(Capitol).
I regret haves to report that Hosrana
Swanson’s “‘Short Symphony,” which got
a New York Critics’ Circle citation,
makes no sense to me. Nor do I like
what I do understand of the mixture of
the traditional and the new in Meyer
Kupferman’s “Little Symphony.’’ Good
performances by Litschauer and the
Vienna State Opera Orchestra (Van-
guard).
I have to report also that John Vin-
cent’s Quartet No. 1, which for Virgil
Thomson “sings and dances its happy
way through four remarkably integrated
movements,” is to my ears diffuse and
amorphous. Good performance by the
American Art Quartet (Contemporary).
A big event is the Schneider Quartet’s
recording of Haydn’s Opus 20 (Haydn
Society). Of the works, Nos. 1, 2, and
3 are very fine; Nos. 4 and 5 are among
the outstanding examples of the genre;
and No. 6 is moderately engaging,
though of lesser stature. As for the per-
formances, one hears this time not only
exciting life in all the parts but the
beautifully integrated ensemble playing
of a quartet of the first rank.
Playing of this caliber is also done by
the New Music Quartet in two engaging
works by minor composers of the
eighteenth century: Stamitz’s Quartet
Opus 14 and Richter’s Op. 5-No. 1
(Bartok).
The Paganini Quartet’s performance
of Beethoven’s Opus 74 (‘Harp’) (on
one RCA Victor record with the previ-
ously issued Opus 59 No. 3) hasn’t the
WHAT ARE
RUSSIA'S REAL AIMS
AND INTENTIONS?
The ANSWERS clearly emerge from
CURRENT SOVIET POLICIES—
The Documents, Proceedings and Re-
lated Material of the Nineteenth
Congress of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union and the Reorganiza-
tion after Stalin’s Death.
This new, basic reference work on
current Soviet policies, of almost
400,000 words, contains a complete
record of the 19th Congress of the
Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.;
the text of Stalin’s “Economic Prob-
lems of Socialism in the U.S. S. R.,”
which clearly outlines Soviet doctrine
and trends for the future (Stalin’s
heirs have not deviated from it) ; the
directives of the Fifth Five-Year
Plan; the revised Party statutes; the
important Soviet pronouncements,
documents and speeches in connection
with Stalin’s illness and death and
the events that followed it, including
the case of the Kremlin doctors and
the reorganization of the Cabinet,
Secretariat, and other governmental
and Party bodies; a glossary, index
and Who’s Who of members of the
Central Committee.
The brilliant critical introduction by
Leo Gruliow places the documents
into proper focus in relation to in-
ternal and world politics. The trans-
lations are from The Current Digest
of the Soviet Press, the authoritative
American source of translation of
Soviet material.
CURRENT SOVIET POLICIES
published by Frederick A. Praeger
is without doubt
THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK
ON RUSSIA AVAILABLE IN
THE WGRLD TODAY
Price: $6.00
(a text edition is also available)
At all good book stores or
use this coupon
FREDERICK A. PRAEGER, Inc., Publishers
105 West 40th Street, New York 18, N. Y.
Please send me ___-__________ copies of
CURRENT SOVIET. POLICIES
4
Name
Address
mS
=
i
Se
Sa AT
fluidity, sensitiveness, and integration of
the recently issued Budapest Quartet per-
formance, but its recorded sound is more
beautiful.
In the fine pre-war Busch-Serkin Trio
performance of Schubert's beautiful Trio
Op. 100 Adolf Busch played with an
agreeable tone that he doesn’t have in
the newly issued performance, and Ser-
kin with a simplicity and fluidity that
also are missing at times in the new per-
formance, where slower tempes induce
him to strain for bigness of utterance
(Columbia).
I have heard Szigeti begin a recital
with a tremulous, wiry tone that became
steady and luminous as he warmed up;
but I have never heard him produce
sounds as shockingly unpleasant as the
ones all the way through Beethoven's
Sonata Op. 96; and since they are not
the sounds that lend themselves to phras-
ing, the playing is without musical in-
terest. In Schubert's Rondo Brilliant
Opus 70 there is better playing of the
violin and the music (Columbia).
Though Leonard Rose plays well in
Franck’s Sonata I find the work less
effective on the cello than on the usual
violin. Leonid Hambro’s playing of the
piano part isn’t always clear. With
Grieg’s Cello Sonata Opus 36 (Colum-
bia).
NATION
The
[ ] with
The NATION
Harper’s Magazine ...
g
Record Notes
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 2:
Backhaus with Vienna Philharmonic
under Krauss (London); good perform-
ance.
Piano Concerto No. 5: Gieseking with
Philharmonic Orchestra under von Kara-
jan (Columbia); fine, though light-
weight performance.
Piano Sonatas Op. 2, No. 2; Op. 57.
(““Appassionata”); Casadesus (Colum-
bia); performance of the early sonata
exaggeratedly dry; that of the ‘‘Appas-
sionata” “alternately violent and coy.
Piano Sonatas Op. 53 and Op 109:
Serkin (Columbia); effective perform-
ance of Op. 109; but “Waldstein” shows
Serkin’s characteristic lapses of control.
Piano Sonata Op. 106 (‘“Hammer-
klavier”); Backhaus (London); mild,
stolid performance that is fantastically
inappropriate.
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2 Rubin-
stein with Boston Symphony under
Munch (Victor); a high-powered per-
formance which really doesn’t take the
music seriously.
Piano Quartet No. 2: Curzon with
members of, the Budapest Quartet
(Columbia); excellent performance.
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air
Symphony No. 2: Toscanini with the
N. B. C. Symphony (Victor); superb —
performance.
GABRIELLI: Two Canzone for double
string orchestra; Munchinger with the
Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (London);
pleasant music in a fine performance.
(With Teleman’s uninteresting Viola
Concerto in G Major).
MENDELSSOHN: Overture, Nocturne,
and Scherzo from: “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream’; Van Beinum with the
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam
(London); fine performance.
Schubert's ““Rosamunde’’ music.)
MOZART: String Quartet K. 458;
Griller Quartet (London) ; fair perform-
ance. (With the fine early quartet
K. 168.)
PALESTRINA: Supplicationes for men’s
voices; Harvard Glee Club under Wood-
worth (Cambridge); superb music; per-
formance crudely inflected. (With other
fine pieces by Byrd, Lassus, Victoria and
others. )
PISTON: Quintet for Strings and Piano;
Earl Wild with the Walden Quartet
(WCFM); each movement begins at-
tractively but fails to carry through any
very impressive musical thinking; per-
formance effective; string tone very dry
and shrill. (With Martinu’s uninterest-
ing String Quartet No. 6.)
SCHUBERT: Sonata in A Minor
(““Arpeggione’”’); Gendron (cello) and
Francaix (piano) (London); good per-
formance. (With Schumann’s Fantasie-
stiicke, Op. 73, and Drei Romanzen, ~
Op. 94.)
STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben; Dorati
with Minneapolis Symphony (Mercury);
routine performance.
Suite from “Le Bourgeois Gentil-
homme”; Krauss with Vienna Philhar-
monic (London); excellent performance.
WAGNER: Siegfried’s Rhine Journey
and Funeral Music from “G6étterdim-
merung’’; Prelude and Liebestod from
‘Tristan’
Symphony (Capitol); fair preformance.
French Art Songs: Debussy, Ravel,
.Chabrier: Jansen (baritone), and Bon-
neau (piano), Rampal (flute), Gendron
(cello) (London); attractively straight-
forward singing of the inconsequential
Chabrier and Ravel songs, which proves
inadequate to the powerful Debussy
songs. ROBERT E, GARIS
(With /
’; Steinberg with the Pittsburgh “
The NAtiOoN
(Continued from inside front cover)
them, as I can remember. And I never
heard of any of our white neighbors
flogging Negroes who worked for them.
There was no hate in the hearts of the
whites “in our neck of the woods’’ for
the Negroes. They were well provided
for with houses about as comfortable as
we had to live in, with wells of good
drinking water. When their larders be-
came scanty of food, they came and were
supplied from our smoke-house with
meat, lard, etc. and with corn from our
crib for meal. When father hired Ne-
groes by the day or week or by the job,
they were fed of the bounties that we
AF TOA: CREE 4 hea
a
_ had, and plenty of it, of course at the
_ seryants’ table in the kitchen. Our
E mother always saw that they had enough.
fy But looking back from the vantage-
; point of the present day, we can see that
_ the Negroes were sadly neglected sixty
; years ago, even forty years ago. So far
é
as we knew, they seemed to be satisfied
with their lot; and the white folk seemed
not to care much whether the Negro
had an equal right to an education, or
to the exercise of his privilege of the
franchise. Indeed, remarkable changes
have taken place in the Black Belt with-
in the life span of some of us, and for
rT TaN
the betterment of both the white and
the Negro races.
Most Southern white people welcome
the present trend for the betterment of
_ the Negro race and are willing to go
- along progressively, in an orderly man-
ner, to provide more adequate facilities
and opportunities for the social, eco-
nomic, moral, and spiritual improvement
of these our neighbors and fellow-
Americans. Truly, a new day is dawning
- in the deep South, for which more and
-more of the right-thinking people of
‘both races are longing and working. But
we who were “brought up” with the
_ Negro would much appreciate kind con-
sideration from those who were not so
fortunate, or unfortunate, as we, when
‘they speak or write concerning us in
_ their eagerness to hurry the completion
of the transformation, whatever that
might be. The transformation must
come about gradually.
Clinton, Miss.
= — ee mt ee =
JESSE L, BOYD
_ Chaplin in New Orleans +
Dear Sirs: Permit me to make one small
correction in William Murray's excellent
article, Chaplin and His Censors [The
Nation, March 21}. It is true that in
June 6, 1953
=
| Hew Orleans is pressure of the Amer-
ican Legion caused RKO Orpheum
Theater managers to ban “Limelight”
after three days. The public reaction,
however, caused an independent thea-
ter ‘to bring it back, and it played to a
packed house every night for three
weeks.
The courage shown by the managers
of the Avenue Theater in presenting this
excellent film should inspire others to
resist the pressure groups that try to
impose their will upon our industries
and institutions,
New Orleans FRANK E, SMITH
Task of Liberalism
Dear Sirs:
nor long remember the platitudes Eisen-
hower is feeding the people, but it can-
not avoid the consequences of his actions
for decades to come. It is rather for the
liberals to hereby dedicate themselves
to the supreme task of defending our
vanishing civil liberties and public do-
main. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this, because we all
have a vested interest in preserving this
nation, so life, liberty, and the just
distribution: of property shall not vanish
as phrases from our land.
I salute The Nation as one of the
finest publications still extant in the
United States. May you never weaken!
WILBUR L, JENKINS
Phoenix, Ariz. \
A Student Speaks
Dear Sirs: I have just read your special
issue (June 28, 1952) dealing with the
problem of How Free Is Free? It was
a magnificent issue. Nowhere else have I
read a series of articles which so clearly
and precisely defined the trend of the
times. I needed something material to
which I could turn to help me solve the
problems confronting all intelligent
thinking people regarding the “‘fear,”
the monster which threatens to choke
free expression and thought. Your issue
has helped me understand the ‘‘fear.”
I am a freshman. in college. In stu-
dent-packed rooms, in the classrooms, on
the college paths, everywhere, people
speak of McCarthyism. Some admire it
—the essence of disillusionment; many
hate it. People speak of the red scare, of
Jenner, or Velde. I have felt that I have
not taken interest enough jn the actions
of these men. I know their names and
their aims but have not developed strong
opinions about their actions. However,
after reading this issue of T'4e Nation,
the confused problems seem to have
The world will little note
focused in my mind. I see the threat. I
hate it now, because I see that if we
allow the McCarthys to run wild in their
investigations, people will not be able
to browse through dusty books, people
will not be able to write what they feel,
to speak what they think; and these are
the silent joys of life and to kill them is
to kill a part of living. .
Thank you, sirs, for this ue issue. It
is a work to be set alongside “Areopa-
gitica,” and even the “Bill of Rights.”
ANTHONY TUTTLE
Ohio
Gambier,
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of |
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PUBLIC RELATIONS 9 aoe of 1 is, in most white—it’s advent i supposed to ,
SSS SS ee is eee trouble. (6, 6
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PUBERTY. ae SW ee This sort of rate shouldn’t be, too
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organizations aid business corporacions {ff | 22 Alter screens in church perhaps. (7) toMlocate 1. B. M.) (9 3
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ae sou ate ae iy 18 One dit-dit-dit, dah-dah-dah, dit-dit-
Costume for musicians, perhaps. (8) at a get them to ‘encircle
The power of a literary vehicle, de-
| scribed as wonderful. (3-5) 19 and 10 across. Proposal to lower the
JESSE GORDON & ASSOCIATES
Public Relations 15
1819 p nroedwe” “New York, N. Y. 17
PERSONALS 20 moe (8) to be regarded with some ae ae “(7, 6 ti looking for
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LEAH OKUN, director
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Red. Rates to July 10 » Louis A. Roth, Dir.
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A pleasantly informal vacation in friendly atmosphere.
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7
FIGHTING
NEWSPAPERMAN’S
BEST PIECES
Ae is contemporary history as recorded day by day—with the urgency of a
diary and the charm of the familiar essay. THE TRUMAN ERA isa collection of
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a lengthy new essay in which the important events and trends of the period are
placed in their historical setting. Much that today is almost incomprehensible
about domestic and foreign policy becomes clear in this “look back” at columns
written at the very moment when the trend of events was determined. Stone’s
news stories capture the full flavor of an event so that the reader understands not
only what happened but why; his columns, distinguished for their tart humor,
serve to illustrate that prophecy can be uncannily accurate when it is based on a
scholar’s knowledge of history.
Published at $3.00 a copy by Monthly Review Press
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ee
NEW ANTI-ISRAEL POLICY?—J. A. DEL VAYO
BURLING AEN .
TT ; @ (eusiic LivhARY ) a
7 a
- ia
' June 13, 1953
_-20¢ a
| by
Jae Chdits' F Clark
Have We
Misread the
-. Constitution?
i _ DISCUSSING WILLIAM CROSSKEY’S
. “POLITICS AND THE CONSTITUTION” \
cs
aa
——
SS ee alin, oe la 2
mee ae cei
ee
The Gideons Bible Case W. Hl. Kilpatrick _ q
| EVERY, Republican Mink | Una F. Carter |
WEEK ia
' |
ee What Moroccans Want Alexander Werth
US.
The Gideons
Bible Case
New York
AT THE request of the editor I am
giving herewith an account of my recent
court testimony in the suit to declare
illegal the Gideons’ proposal to place
Bibles, in the public schools of Ruther-
ford, New Jersey. The specific proposal
of the Gideons was to give to each
public-school. child, unless his parents
disapproved, a copy of the New Testa-
ment (King James version) bound with
the Psalms and Proverbs.
I supported the contention of the
complainant that for the public-school
authorities to cooperate with the Gideons
in their endeavor would violate the his-
toric American principle of separation
of church and state, as recently stated by
the United States Supreme Court in the
Everson case and reaffirmed in the
McCollum case. The court said: “Neither
a state nor the federal government can
set up a: church. Neither can pass laws
which aid one religion, aid all religions,
or prefer one religion’ over another.”
Specifically, I asserted that such action
by the public-school authorities in co-
operation with the Gideons would con-
stitute another instance of the Protes-
tants’ using the public schools to advance
the Protestant religion against Roman
Catholics, who reject the King James
version of the Bible, against Jews, who
reject the New Testament as opposed
to their conception of religion, and also
against those who reject any supernatural
religion,
Because some may mistake my reason
for opposing the Gideons’ plan, let me
explain that my name originated in
Scotland and was brought to this country
by a Presbyterian immigrant in the
eighteenth century. Further, my father
was a Baptist minister, as was his father
before him, and it was out of this family
background that I drew my belief in
the separation of church and state, this
being a strong Baptist doctrine.
Since 1910 the Gideons have been
engaged in the public distribution of
the King James Bible. The New York
1949, carried a
statement by a past president of the
Gideons that they had placed “more
than 3,000,000 Bibles in hotel rooms
outside of New York City” and given
“more than 4,200,000 copies of its spe-
cial edition to school children through-
out the country in the past three years.”
That the intent of the Gideons is to
teach their religion by these distributions
of the Bible is clear from their published
statements. Their 1948 constitution says
that “the object of the Gideons is to
win men and women for the Lord Jesus
Christ.’” This aim is sought by, among
other means, “placing the Bible—God’s
Holy Word—or portions thereof in
hotels, hospitals, schools, institutions.”
That the Gideons mean to teach the
Protestant Christian religion is clear from
their choice of the King James version.
Times of August 22,
@ Nothing is here im-
plied against the Gideons for holding
personally each to his conception of reli-
gion or for teaching it to his children in
his home or Sunday school. The question
is whether the action of the school board
in cooperating with the Gideons to
distribute their Bibles is an infringement
upon the constitutional separation of
church and state. The principal of a pub-
lic school is an agent of the school board,
and the United States Supreme Court has
ruled that action by a school board is
state action (West Virgina State Board
of Education v. Barnette, 1943). The
fact that the Gideons’ New Testament is
given only to pupils whose parents ap-
prove does not exonerate the authorities.
Even so, the Gideons want the distribu-
tion as promising to further their aim of
“spreading the Protestant faith.
When I first went to school, in
Georgia in 1878, the state public-school |
system was only five years old and pub-
lic-school money sufficed for only three
months of ‘“‘free school.’ This free-
school period was administered by a self-
perpetuating board, or ‘‘academy,”
established in 1837, which during the
remaining six months conducted a tui-
tion school. It is not surprising that the
Saeetoe principal Gea
followed his usual \custonir of openin
ft ree te rT
school with the reading of the Bibl |
(King James version).
e These religious features
of the newly established public school —
raised no question of the separation of ©
church and state or of Protestant selfish-
ness,
custom. In some places the local ‘‘acad-
emy
might be under the control of a specific
church board. At that time. the state
constitution forbade appropriation of |
public funds for any sectarian pur-
pose, but in Savannah in 1896-97 two *
Roman Catholic parochial schools were
regularly included in the local school
system, Certain Baptists, objecting to
having public money support these pa-
rochial schools, took the matter to the
courts, and the practice was henceforth 7
forbidden. Then other persons pointed
out the inconsistency of having a Bap-
tist or Methodist board control a public
school and had that practice also stopped.
In such ways all over the country a
clearer conception of the proper rela-
tionship of church and state in the mat-
ter of the public school began to make
itself felt.
But even in 1953 these prachices,
stemming from the remote past of a
‘unified Protestant point of view, still
hold sway in various forms. In many
public schools the Bible (King James’
version)~ is still read at the opening of
the school day and in many the Lord’s —
Prayer (Protestant version) is recited.
Adult citizens are supposed to know
what they do. If the disputed practice
tends, even indirectly, to uphold the —
Protestant religion and if those who —
authorize it know this, or ought to under
the given circumstances, then the prac-
tice is‘aa instance of Protestant selfish- —
ness. WILLIAM HEARD KILPATRICK
DR. KILPATRICK is emeritus pro- |
fessor of the philosophy of education
at Teachers College, Columbia.
Correction: Laurent B. Frantz, coauthor
of the article Does Silence Mean Guilt ?
in last week's issue, was erroneously de-
scribed in early copies off the press as
law librarian of Duke University instead
of Drake University,
might be a Baptist or a Methodist
institution, in which case a public school’
They were simply community |
-
moe tee
1 i
= Sal
Vol ts e 176, Number 24
New York, Saturday, June 13, 1953
The Shape of Things
End of the Beginning
No matter what lies ahead, the agreement in Korea is
the best news since the Germans surrendered on June 6,
1945. The United Nations can rightly assert that aggres-
sion was defeated by the collective action of most of its
members. Whether or not the cost was too high, history
will eventually decide; and relatively few people will
now bother to recall that the war might have ended in
October, 1950, on terms as good as those now accepted,
if General MacArthur and the ROKs had not started the
ill-fated drive into North Korea and brought China into
the conflict. But these considerations, as well’ as the acri-
monious, seemingly endless truce talks, the months of
stalling and haggling, will be shoved into the back-
ground by the overwhelming facts that men are no longer
killing and dying and that the agreement when it came
was one of compromise—a precedent of immense value
to show that settlements with the Communists can be
reached through negotiation and mutual concession.
Skeptics should not forget that the final decision on pris-
oners of wat represented the sacrifice by the Chinese and
North Koreans of one of their most stubbornly held
positions.
- The Difficulties Ahead
t
:
This is not to say that the operation of the armistice or
the political conference to follow will be easy. One has
only to consider the stakes involved and the pitfalls sur-
rounding President Eisenhower: the mounting nuisance
walue of the obdurate Syngman Rhee, the insistence of
Republican Asia-firsters that Russia has won a cold-war
victory in Korea, the prospect of a showdown at Bermuda
’ with Britain and France on the necessity of dealing with
Peking—not only in Korea but in the United Nations,
and on the whole problem of peace in Asia wherever it
arises. At*this moment Syngman Rhee’s capacity for
dangerous mischief is as great as his incapacity to drive
the Chinese out of Korea single-handed. He can do a lot
to sabotage the truce and obstruct progress toward peace,
knowing that the United States could hardly use force to
bring its protégé and ally to terms. As these lines are
written, it appears that he intends to exploit this possi-
bility to the limit in spite of President Eisenhower's
Vator
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
eloquent appeal for cooperation, the offer of a mutual-
defense pact, and his pledge to use all available means to
achieve Korea’s unification,
All these difficulties are on “our side.” But they bear
directly on the greater difficulties that will arise as soon
as the political negotiations with the Communists get
under way. Fortunately those negotiations will not be
conducted by American military men acting virtually on
their own. The political conference will represent all the
belligerents, and in spite of the hostages Mr. Eisenhower
has distributed among his opponents, the Administration
will have to regard the wishes of other powers with im-
mense stakes in the Far East. The political settlement,
when it comes, will inevitably reflect broader interests
and a more varied play of forces. On the enemy side, the
failure of the North Korean aggression and the terrible
destruction of life and phys‘cal values that accompanied
that failure should incline the Communist leaders to
agree to a let-live peace—provided the United States
permits wide discussion of Asian issues at the conference.
Cabinet on the Air
The script for the President's TV show last week was
prepared by one of the leading public-relations firms in
the country. It was a deft performance—smoothly written
and well-paced—even if its “folksiness” was obviously
contrived. It was also full of basic contradictions which
added to its credibility as an authentic Republican docu-
ment. “We're not going to regiment farms,” said the
President. But a minute later Secretary of Agriculture
Benson was proposing to cut down agricultural surpluses
through “programs from the grass roots that will prevent
unreasonable supplies.” Does Mr. Benson intend to
achieve his objective by plowing under the wheat crop of
every third Democrat, and call it “retributive justice” in-
stead of “regimentation?” Then the President introduced
Mrs, Oveta Culp Hobby, who discoursed charmingly on
all the good things her new Department of Health, Wel-
fare, and Education has in store for the country. But she
forgot to mention that her first act as Secretary was to
recommend budget cuts which practically destroyed the
national municipal-health program and which affected
the national education program so adversely that Com-
missioner of Education McGrath resigned in protest.
On the other hand, the President’s brief statement on
foreign affairs was impressive. “There’s going to be no
rep Sea yeep
SW tie bette
ae
= “apa 5 _
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 493
The Present Danger
II. McCarthy’s Tactics 495
ARTICLES
Grab for the Atom:
III. Safeguarding the Future
by Leland Olds 496
New Anti-Israel Policy?
by J, Alvarez del Vayo 500
Morocco in Turmoil:
II. What Moroccans Want
by Alexander Werth 501
Republican Mink:
A Spry, Climbing Animal
by Una F. Carter 503
BOOKS
Have We Misread the Constitution?
by Charles E. Clark 505
New Books in Brief 508
THEATER by Harold Clurman 509
MUSIC by B. H. Haggin 511
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 519
by Frank W. Lewis 512
AROUND THE U. S. A.
The Gideons Bible Case
by William Heard Kilpatrick opposite 493
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Associates
Victor H. Bernstein
J. Alvarez del Vayo
Managing Editor
Foreign Editor
Marty Solow Assistant to the Publisher
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary-Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the U. S. A. by
The Nation Associates, Inc., 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14 Ney.
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at the Post Office
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 8; 1879. Advertising
and Circulation Representatives for Continental Europe: Publicitas.
Subscription Prices: Domestic—One year $7; Two years $12; Three
years $1/. Additional postage per year: Foreign and Canadian $1.
Change of Address: Three weeks’ notice is required for change of
address, which cannot be made without the old address as well as the
new.
Information to Libraries: The Nation is indexed in Readers’ Guide to
Periodical Literature. Book Review Digest, Index to Labor Articles,
Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index
494
Tt Sere
Munich,” he said, “and at the same Hien eee :
to be no risk of a general war.” If not an inspired d
thought, it is at least a reassuring one. And the more we
think about those who would inspire us these days, the
more satisfied we are simply to be reassured.
Judge Goodman Declines
A complicated tax scandal has kept San Francisco in
an uproar since May, 1951, when it first came to light.
In San Francisco to investigate the matter, the House
Judiciary subcommittee took the extraordinary step of
serving a subpoena on Federal Judge Louis E. Goodman.
Judge Goodman appeared but refused to answer ques-
tions concerning the courts on the ground that to do so
would make the judiciary subservient to the legislative
branch of the government. All seven of the Federal Dis-
trict Judges of Northern California in a signed statement
presented to the subcommittee, expressed their unwilling-
ness to testify “with respect to any judicial proceedings.”
“The Constitution,” their letter said, “does not contem- -
plate that such matters be reviewed by the legislative
branch, but only by the appropriate appellate tribunals.
The integrity of the federal courts, upon which liberty
and life depend, require that such courts be maintained
inviolate against the changing moods of public opinion.”
Over the last four or five years, as we have pointed out
from time to time, Congressional committees have been
asserting by implication a power to review if not to fe-
verse the decisions of federal judges. The San Francisco
case is the latest manifestation of this tendency to make
both the judicial and executive branches of the govern-
ment subservient not merely to Congress but to ‘particular
committees. It is a dangerous trend.
Cleric on the Rampage
The Reverend Edward Lodge Curran, president of the
International Catholic Truth Society and pastor of St.
Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn, in a fire-
eating speech made, quite appropriately, to 1,800 city
firemen at a communion breakfast on May 30, denounced —
the United Nations as “moth-eaten, disintegrated,”
urged support of the Bricker amendment, praised “that
great American, great marine, and great Catholic, Sena-*
tor Joe McCarthy,” and wound up by telling his audience
that “the day that Red China is admitted to the United
Nations, the boys in Korea should throw down their arms
and come home.” There is one thing to be ‘said of the ©
go-it-aloners: they don’t mince words. If the Reverend
Mr. Curran speaks in this heady style at breakfast, what
fine wild reckless words must he spew forth at luncheon
or dinner meetings? He has long fancied himself as Sec-
retary of State ex-officio, but we hadn't heard that he had
taken over as commander-in-chief of the United Nations
forces in Korea.
The NATION =
et ae
The Present Danger
Ii. McCarthy’s Tactics
LAST week we called attention to some of the political
factors that have paved the way for Joe McCarthy's
march to power; the Senator, reports the National Com-
mittee for an Effective Congress, “is becoming a holder
of effective power . . . a man who can get things done in
government.” In no small measure McCarthy's success to
date has been based on a general misunderstanding of
the real source of his strength.
A great deal has been written of course about Mc-
Carthy’s tactics—his reckless attacks, his quick retreats,
his use of the big lie—but what has been said somehow
fails to get at the central issue. McCarthy’s basic opera-
‘tional method was first developed, according to Miles
McMillin of the Madison Capital-Times, by the elder
La Follette. ‘Old Bob’ would stake out a single issue,
stamp it with his trademark, and then obstinately refuse
to discuss anything else. The issue, of course, was se-
lected with care. It always reflected some dominant popu-
lar concern. It was charged with emotion, And it was
one on which,La Follette’s position could not be easily
challenged or outflanked. Thus the opposition was forced
to meet him on his own carefully chosen ground. No
matter what the issues seemed to be at the outset, ‘La
Folletteism’’ was the only issue on Election Day.
This, of course, is McCarthy's favorite gambit. He has
selected—the story is that Father Edmund Walsh se-
lected it for him—the dominant emotion-charged issue
of communism. With exasperating consistency McCarthy
refuses to discuss other issues; indeed, he insists that
other issues have no meaning. Since he cannot be out-
flanked on’the right and is quite indifferent to the “left,”
he has staked out a strong ‘position. The dilemma the
opposition faces is crudely suggested in a recent New
York Journal-American editorial:
We should like to ask the “liberals” a few questions.
1. Do you consider communism a danger in the
United States? (If you don’t so consider it, skip the
remaining questions. )
2. If it is a danger, shouldn’t it be exposed and re-
moved ?
3. If it should be exposed and removed, isn’t that
the rightful task of responsible legislative committees?
Baited by his outrageously provocative charges, Mc-
Carthy’s opposition unthinkingly and uncritically says
“yes” to question one, and then starts to argue with him
about propositions two and three. But you cannot argue
with McCarthy. Arguing with him is like arguing with a
chronic anti-Semite; the anti-Semite invents new charges
against the Jews as fast as the old ones are demolished.
June 13, 1953
McCarthy’s exploitation of this basic tactic during the
Jast two years has made him a national issue. It has
forced his opposition to discuss 7s issue, in his terms, on
his premises; in effect, he compels the opposition to col-
laborate with him in building his reputation and pres-
tige. The outstanding collaborators are of course the
newspapers. Having foolishly said “‘yes’’ to question one
above, his opponents then find themselves forced to argue,
first, that they are as violently opposed to communism as
he is and then that their methods of fighting it are more
effective than his. These are hard points to prove, but
other and more substantial advantages accrue to Mc-
Carthy. For example, his unsavory background becomes
quite immaterial. For if the domestic menace of commu-
nism is as great as he says it is, then it really does not
matter that McCarthy is a bit uncouth or that he once
accepted a large gratuity from the Lustron Corporation.
Those who voted for him in Wisconsin last year knew all
about his personal record—and they couldn’t have cared
less. In the same way, if he is right, his methods are apt
to be regarded as unavoidable; you don’t send a gentle-
man and scholar to clean out the toughs in the corner
saloon. The ‘“‘methods’’ of the mongoose may be unfair,
but he kills the cobra.
THE MALANITES in South Africa use the same tactic.
South Africa has more than its share of urgent social,
economic, and political problems. But the Nationalists
do not discuss problems; they discuss apartheid, a crazy
scheme which the leader of the opposition Torch Com-
mando accurately summed up as “the biggest political
hoax in history.” But the hoax works, and the reason
was suggested in a London Times story (April 17) on
the South African election: ‘“The sentiment on this sub-
ject [apartheid] is the strongest permanent emotional
force in South African politics; and the result of the
election goes to show that a party offering a program of
compromise is always at a disadvantage in that country.”
In short, where the struggle for power has been greatly
intensified, a single emotion-charged issue can be most
effective. People must be for or against it; they are forced
to choose sides. Hitler’s anti-Semitism was a similar hoax,
and it worked for much the same reason. On a world
scale communism is unmistakably a threatening reality;
McCarthy's “menace of American communism” is a
hoax. All the same, it is the force which holds the right-
wing coalition together. As the New Statesman and
Nation has pointed out (May 23), “it is a deep social
malaise that finds the same outlet in anti-communism as
that which so many Germans found in anti-Semitism.”
But fear and hatred of communism do not alone account
for the potency of the issue. ‘By voting for McCarthy,”
reported Fred Sparks in a postmortem on last year’s Wis-
consin primary, “thousands felt that they were voting
against Dean Acheson, against the draft of their sons,
495
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Si St ES
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3
-
against the bleeding war in Korea, against the loss of
vey
China to the Reds, against excessive American involve- ©
ment in far-off places.”
It is a mistake, therefore, to keep the spotlight focused
on McCarthy; this is what he wants his opposition to do.
To let it appear that he is the issue 1s to foster the illusion
that with his defeat the nightmare would end, but if
McCarthy were to drop dead, the situation which he ex-
ploits so skilfully Would still be with us. As long as the
“anti-Communist crusade” remains a principal anti-reces-
sion strategy, McCarthy's ambitions neatly mesh with the
larger objectives of important power-groupings.
Just as McCarthy’s tactics provide an admirable
“cover” for the objectives of the interest-groups that sup-
port him, so they divert attention from his miserable
voting record. And here he is truly vulnerable. Huey
Long was a demagogue of the left: wealth was to be
shared, and every man was one day to be a king. But
McCarthy has no social program, and his legislative
achievements are nil. In its issue of October 17, 1952, the
Madison Capital-Times urged Wisconsin farmers “to
avoid being taken in by the biggest political confidence
game in this generation” and warned them “to take their
eyes off McCarthy’s Communist bogyman and look at
how he has been voting on measures that hit the farmers’
ane of McCarthy’ s voting acne on farm legislation
should have turned out a landslide rural vote against
him. To divert attention from this record, McCarthy
could well have afforded to finance the personal attacks
that were directed at him.
But while McCarthy’s tactics cannot be successfully
used by his opposition, he can exploit them with deadly —
effect. For he has possession of certain weapons which
they lack. Should his critics start to press the inquiry into
his personal affairs too energetically or become too vocal
about his voting record—his most conspicuous vulner-
ability—he can always have them haled before the Con-
“A religious war of this character,
writes Lawrence Dennis in a
recent issue of his newsletter, “needs a strategic concept,
a Fuhrer, expert inquisitors, and purges. . . . It is like the
old Indian custom for purging an unpopular chief. {The
Chief} would be charged with an unmentionable vice.
If he admitted it, he was naturally condemned to death
for being so vile. If he denied it, he was condemned to
death for lying. You can’t beat the game under a well-
run inquisition.”
But there are ways of beating McCarthy's game, “and
with these we will deal in next week’s issue.
gressional inquisition.
magnitude, and gravity,”
GRAB FOR THE ATOM
III. Safeguarding the Future .
\
by Leland Olds
THE new technology of the atomic age
must be accompanied by the develop-
ment of new institutions if its full possi-
bilities for peace and plenty are to be
realized. We must head off the drive
to pour the new atontic wine into old
institutional bottles. The story of the
explosive power of atomic bombs may
then be overshadowed by the story of
the new national and international agen-
cies under whose regulation man will
progress toward dominion over the re-
sources of the universe. The Atomic V
Energy Commission provides a proto-
type for such institutions, which will
THIS is the third and concluding article
of a series by Leland Olds, former chair-
man of the Federal Power Commission
and one of this country’s foremost
authorities on public power.
496
transcend without superseding the pri-
vate-enterprise system and by undertak-
ing great projects for the creation of
new inexhaustible resources will be able.
to assure the continuance of the tre-
mendous resource-consuming structure.
reared by private enterprise.
Forward steps in man’s dominion over
resources have always molded institu-
tions. The gift-of fire, domestication of
animals, invention of the wheel, harness-
ing of steam, the dynamo—each_ has
been reflected in the organization of
human society as well as in“its technol-
ogy. Similarly, as the sociologist William
Fielding Ogburn has pointed out, the
social effects of the release of atomic
fission “‘may be many, radical, and pro-
found.”
The atomic age comes at a critical
moment. War's demands, superimposed
on the vast peace-time demands of the
so-called “‘advanced”’ nations, threaten
their own high standards and also the
hopes of other peoples to rise to higher
levels of material progress. If we would
guard the world from such a discourag-
ing future we must foster the institutions
that will open up a new era in the
application of mind as the ultimate re-
source of the universe. So as Congress
turns to consider amendment of the
Atomic Energy Act, let us giance briefly
at the agency it created to preside over
the first stages of atomic development.
The evolution of the new institution
began when the President of the United
States used his war powers to initiate an
unprecedented mobilization 6f scientific
and industrial genius under the army's
super-secret Manhattan Engineer Dis-
trict. But before the first atomic bomb
The NATION:
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ent, and the army therefore appointed
june 13, 1953
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as
a committee on post-war policy. In De-
cember, 1944, the committee recom-
mended consideration of a special gov-
ernment authority to control the funds
and distribution of work in the atomic-
energy field after the war. This authority;
the committee held, should concern
itself not merely with the development
of weapons but with atomic power in
general, including its peace-time applica-
tions.
‘ .
THE ATOMIC Energy Act of 1946,
product of long hearings before an un-
usually able committee of Congress, es-
tablished such an authority in the Atomic
Energy Commission. This commission is
essentially a publicly financed corpora-
tion. In an important sense, the Tennes-
see Valley Authority was its prototype.
Like the T. V. A., the A. E. C. is a new
instrument of democracy, combining the
flexibility of the corporate form with
the responsibility of government in the
field of public investment. Both have
as a primary objective the more effi-
cient use of energy resources to promote
wider economic opportunity. The new
institution, which inherited the govern-
ment’s interests, property, and facilities
in the whole field of atomic develop-
ment, offers tremendous possibilities for
future peaceful conquests in the field of
resources. The institutional dynamics of
the T. V. A., which brought such great
progress to the South, may be used on
a vastly larger scale by the A. E. C. to
bring progress to the world.
The Congressional declaration of pur-
pose set the stage. The Atomic Energy
Act was designed “to effectuate the de-
clared policy of the people of the United
States’ that, subject at all times to the
‘paramount objective of assuring the
common defense and security, the de-
velopment and utilization of atomic
energy shall, so far as practicable, be
‘directed toward improving the public
welfare, increasing the standard of liv-
ing, strengthening free competition in
ptivate enterprise, and promoting world
peace.”
Surely this statement of purpose nwst
stand. And there should be no misin-
terpretation of its reference to private
_ enterprise. The emphasis is on strength-
ening free competition. In other words,
pies the declared purpose of the Amer-
ican people that their control of atomic
energy be used to arrest the monopolistic
trends so pervasive in private enterprise
today. Here is no ground for turning
the development of atomic power over
to private monopolies or for granting
the right of exclusive patents in this
field.
As for promoting world peace, what
greater step could be taken than to use
this new institution as a basis for the
country’s participation in a United Na-
tions organization on the same model,
which would work to eliminate the
international conflicts over the world’s
limited energy resources? What greater
evidence of friendship can we offer to
peoples seeking release from poverty
than to use this new institution to help
them build a strong energy economy
without those foreign-investment strings
which Woodrow Wilson once termed the
“modern form of conquest’ ?
THE COMMISSION set up to effectuate
this purpose is essentially a five-man
board of directors. A general manager
serves as the corporation’s chief admin-
istrative officer, responsible for the
formulation of policies and programs by
the commission’s seven divisions—re-
search, production, engineering, military
applications, reactor development, bi-
ology, medicine, and raw materials. The
Division of Reactor Development has
primary responsibility for the applica-
tion of atomic energy to development of
electric power.
Under the law the commission’s major
programs are directed at (1) assisting
and fostering private scientific research
and development; (2) control of scien-
tific and technical information and the
dissemination of such information to
encourage scientific progress; €3) shar-
ing of information concerning practical
industrial use of atomic energy on a
reciprocal basis as soon as effective safe-
guards against its use for destructive
purposes can be devised; (4) federally
conducted research and development to
assure adequate scientific and technical
progress; and (5) government control
of production, ownership, and use of
fissionable material to assure the com-
mon defense and the greatest possible
exploitation of the possibilities. The
fields in which the commission is directed -
to foster research and development are
‘
broad. They include nuclear processes,
the theory and production of atomic
energy, the utilization of fissionable ma-
terials for medical, biological, health, or
military purposes, and the utilization of
these materials for all other purposes,
including industrial activities,
The law provides that whenever in
its opinion any industrial, commercial, or
other non-military use has been suffi-
ciently developed to be of practical
value, the commission shall report to
the President of the United States,
stating its estimate of the social, political,
economic, and international effects of
such use and suggesting necessary or
desirable legislation. The President is
required to transmit the commission’s
report to Congress with his recommenda-
tions. This provision will unquestionably
serve as the basis for the expected hear-
ings before the Joint Congressional
Committee.
The law provides further that after
this report has been before Congress for
a period of ninety days of active session
the commission may license such manu-
facture and use, in accordance with the
act. And here we come to the place
where Congress gives effect to the anti-
monopoly statement of purpose, for the
licenses must be on a non-exclusive
basis. If activities under any license -
might foster the growth of monopoly, _
unlawful competition, or any other trade
position inimical to the entry of freely
competitive enterprise into the field, the
commission is directed to refuse a license.
The law provides also that if useful
energy is developed in the production
of fissionable material it may be used
by the commission, transferred to other
government agencies, or sold to public
or private utilities under contracts pro-
viding for reasonable resale prices. A
beginning is made here-in bringing
atomic energy under federal power
policy.
FINALLY, we come to a significant fea-
ture of this new institution. For the law
specifically authorizes the commission
to contract with public or private con-
cerns; and in fact from the start its
operations have been carried out largely
by private industry. Great corporations
like General Electric, Westinghouse, and
Monsanto Chemical have been employed
to design, construct, and operate the
plants which produce the essential in-
497
ee
gee
oe
mee
a
a
&
i
gredients of the atomic industry. Al-
together, it is estimated that some 5,000.
firms are participating or have pattici-
pated on this basis.
Thus. the immense creative abilities
of our private-enterprise system, our
scientific institutions, and our univer-
sities have been brought together under
the general guidance of the greatest
scientists of the free world in what ts
essentially a vast cooperative public
enterprise. Throughout, the emphasis ts
on progress, unhindered bythe restric-
tions of private monopoly.
Today the Atomic Energy Commis-
sion is conducting its business, involving
an investment greater than the combined
assets of General Motors and United
States Steel, with only about 7,500 em-
ployees on its pay roll. The rest of the
150,000 workers engaged in the work
are on the pay rolls of private enterprise.
Technically, the atomic-energy industry
may be a government monopoly, but it
is clearly one which can be expanded
into private industry, provided controls
related to the management of this part of
the public domain are established.
SUCH A MOBILIZATION of the tech-
‘nical genius of the free world to bring a
new resource to the point of use is
beyond the capacity of a single corpora-
tion or group of corporations without
the aid of government. It is, in fact,
beyond the scope of private enterprise
as a whole, in amount of capital re-
quired, in risk, and in the nature of the
returns. A new institution like the
Atomic Energy Commission is required
to make possible such great cooperative
effort. In historical perspective we may
see this as the way in which democracy
is adapting itself to a new technological
age without sacrificing the values asso-
ciated with private enterprise. ;
An understanding of the significance
of such an institution is vital to our
progress in the era which lies ahead.
For we are dealing with something
vastly larger than mere command of a
supplementary fuel for production of
electric power, crucial as that may be in
our relations with other peoples. We are
entering an age in which, under pressure
of our tremendous industrialization, con-
ventional resources are diminishing in
the face of rising use. Today the United
States is using some 50 per cent of the
world output of mineral resources, its
498
ere
a ee eS ‘oy ae Uses beret
" percentage rising to 66 per cent for oil.
A nation of 150,000,000 people, we are
tapping the resources of a score of na-
tions for critical” metals, even for the
uranium to make our bombs and keep
our nuclear fires burning. At the same
time, if’ we are sincere in our Point IV
professions, we shall be encouraging
peoples numbering ten times our popula-
tion to increase their: demands upon
these resources. And these peoples are
becoming very conscious of the fact that
the extraction of their natural resources
to meet the needs of the Western world
does not mean rising standards of living
for themselves. In other words, it may
be less important to outstrip the world in
the production of atomic weapons than
to develop institutions which can carry
out a new dynamic conservation policy,
one that conserves by creating resources.
Nearly fifty years ago Gifford Pinchot,
the true father of conservation in this
country, emphasized its significance in
these words: ‘The conservation of na-
tural resources . . . is the key to the
safety and prosperity of the American
people and all the people of the world
for all time to come. . . . Moreover,
conservation is the foundation for per-
manent peace among the nations and the
most important foundation of all.’’ A gen-
eration later, just six months before Pearl
Harbor, Pinchot addressed the American
Scientific Congress on ‘Conservation as
a Foundation of Permanent Peace.’’ The
main point of his address was a proposal
that “the nations of the Americas pre-
pare now for an endeavor to bring all
nations together, at the right moment, in
a common effort for conserving the nat-
ural resources of the earth, and for
assuring to each nation access to the raw
materials it needs, without recourse to
war.” “No nation,” Pinchot continued,
“is self-sufficient in essential raw ma-
terials. The welfare of every nation
x 4s
a ey ae: , . Lee J Pe
z Oe _ a ps a
depends upon access
which it lacks. Fair access to
resources from other nations is therefore 4
an indispensable condition of perma-
nent peace.” He suggested establish-
ment of a commission representing all
the American countries to work for this
objective.
In our post-war world such a commis-
sion would be an agency of the United
Nations. It might have three divisions—
one responsible for conventional te-
sources, one for atomic energy, and one
to push the frontier of man’s dominion
over the resources of the universe to the
point where fair access would no longer —
mean an apportionment from scarcity.
This agency would encourage great pro-
grams for the development of limitless
resources yet untapped, so that each na-_
tion could meet its needs without dimin-
ishing the shares of others. .
TODAY the question is raised whether
there will be enough source materials
for our atomic-energy program. Accord-
ing ‘to information released by the
Atomic Energy Commission, we are now
obtaining such fissionable raw materials
from the Belgian Congo, Canada, and
our own Colorado Plateau. Additional
material is expected from South Africa,
Australia, and other deposits in the
United States. Further search in this
country and abroad is considered likely
to enlarge A. E, C. supplies. >
But what of other nations? As Robert
Maynard Hutchins, associate director of —
the Ford Foundation, recently remarked,
the United States needs atomic energy
least of all nations for peaceful purposes
and thinks it needs it most for military
‘purposes. “If it were not for the fact,”
Mr. Hutchins said, ‘that the United
States, which regards atomic energy as a
weapon, is the center of research and
development in this field, atomic energy
might be coming to the rescue of coun-
tries that are poor in energy and that
are-unlikely to reach a_ satisfactory
standard of living unless they can find
new resources of it.” He mentioned
India particularly as hardly likely to
‘achieve industrialization on a large scale
in the absence of discoveries of coal and
oil or the exploitation of atomic energy.
Similarly, the President's Materials
Policy Commission found that Western |
Europe’s continued economic progress is
endangered by a particularly serious
The NATION: | |
nergy problem. Dependent upon coal as
its chief source of energy, Western
Europe is being forced more and more
to dig coal from poorer seams at greater
depths. This explains the interest of
Great Britain, France, Norway, Holland,
and Belgium in the development of
nuclear power. The republics of Latin
America are also eager for the benefits
of the atomic age and for much the same
reason. In general their fuel resources are
of low grade and limited in amount. So,
all told, nuclear energy can play a great
part in the adjustment of nations to the
new world order. But this will only be
possible if we keep the control of our
_ atomic program in the hands of our new
|
t
wo
ares ee
eS
.
governmental institution and so assure
our effective participation in a United
Nations atomic program designed to
give the energy-poor nations an oppor-
tunity to share in our economic progress.
IN TERMS OF this approach the
atomic-energy program must be recog-
nized as just the first in a series of pro-
grams aimed at sustaining widely dis-
tributed advances in civilization. Such
advances, if freed from the restrictions
of monopoly, hold the promise of end-
ing want everywhere in the world. But
in the field of energy they must unlock
much greater stores than the most opti-
mistic estimates of the earth’s uranium
and thorium suggest are available.
The Congressional hearings which led
up to the Atomic Energy Act are full of
hints that scfence can meet the need. As
Dr. Philip Morrison said, man will not
live the same again for this advance; the
changes which will come are sure and
| . great beyond prediction. “When science
learned to control mechanical and ther-
inal energy,” he said, “we had the early
nineteenth-century maturing of the in-
dustrial way of life. When science_
learned control over electrical energy,
we had the manifold changes which
electricity brought to daily life and the .
structure of nations. When the chemists
understood the nature of chemical
energy, ~there was opened the way to
new materials, to freedom from the re-
strictions of mine and farm, to the
changes which chemistry is even today
still bringing us. Now we have nuclear
energy, based on a more profound in-
sight into and control over matter
itself.”
Some conception of what this new
june 13, 1953
<=
age may bring is provided by the testi-
mony of Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg, direc-
tor of nuclear research at the A. E. C.’s
Oak Ridge national laboratory. To him
the increased production of radioactive
carbon, now a by-product of the atomic
program, offers greater possibility of
providing the world with unlimited low-
cost energy than: the reactor piles which
command so much attention. He said:
“Just as plants synthesize sugar under
the influence of sunlight, so many other
chemical reactions—some of consider-
able importance industrially—can be
made to proceed in the intense radiation
field of a chain-reacting pile. .. . If man
could duplicate this photosynthesis proc-
ess [of manufacturing sugar out of
carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight} first
in the laboratory and then on an indus-
trial scale, the bountifulness of the earth
would be multiplied indefinitely. The
world’s fuel and food supply would be
assured as long as the sun continues to
emit light. . . . If as a result of our
greatly increased production of radio-
active carbon the riddle of photosyn-
thesis is solved, that, and not power
plants or atomic bombs, will stand as
the greatest achievement of nuclear
power.”
Former President Conant of Harvard,
now ambassador to Germany, saw the
same vision in his crystal ball when he
spoke at the Diamond Jubilee of the
American Chemical Society. Looking
ahead to the end of the century, he saw.
the era of liquid fossil fuels—oil and nat-
ural gas—coming to an end and worry
about- future coal supplies increasing.
He saw atomic energy failing to live up
to expectations as a way of lengthening
the period in which man can tap the
energy stored in the earth’s crust. Solar
energy, on the other hand, in his vision
would have significance in 1975, when
the American Chemical Society would be
celebrating its 100th anniversary, and by
the end of the century would be the
dominating producer of industrial power.
THE NEW institutions of the atomic
age, following the pattern of the Atomic
Energy Commission, must be capable of
undertaking such huge resource-creating
projects, unlimited by the rules which
govern investment decisions in the pri-
vate-capital market. They must be able
to finance enterprises offering tremen-
dous gains to succeeding generations
though not profits that can be translated.
into present dollars. They must hold
the resources so created as the inalienable
possession of the people.
Just beyond the horizon are such great
achievements as these: (1) direct trans-
formation of atomic energy into electric
energy without the intervention of the
steam boiler; (2) extension of the use
of atomic fission to other elements than
uranium and thorium, with. resulting
possibilities in the way of transmutation
of matter; (3) ultimate control of the
huge energy released by hydrogen fusion,
the principle of the H-bomb; (4) utiliza-
tion of the sun’s energy through the
photosynthesis process described above;
(5) a revolution in food. supply based
on the same process; (6) harnessing of
the internal energy of the earth, which
Professor $. Devons, British authority
on energy resources, places as interme-
diate between atomic and solar energy;
and (7) large-scale low-cost desalting
of sea water to provide irrigation for
desert areas.
These possibilities can be realized if
we build and maintain the necessary
institutions. A peace-time budget equal
to 10 per cent of what we are spending
for war, if applied to such purposes by
a great public agency like the Atomic
Energy Commission employing the cre-
ative power of private enterprise, would
mean the cooperative utilization of the
only real resource which is inexhaustible
—mind. :
The great challenge to all of us is to
understand the lines along which demo-
cratic society is advancing in the field of
resources and to make sure that any
proposals to amend the Atomic Energy
Act will be weighed in terms of their
effect upon the development of institu-
tions adapted to the atomic age and to
the preservation of this new sector of
the public domain.
8
-- 499
6.
ey eS
EPS aa a
Samal 3 a
New Anti-Israel Policy? —
Paris
THOUGH its role in the Middle East
has greatly diminished, France is follow-
ing very attentively the developments in
the Arab states. This is natural if only
on account of their political and religious
influence over the restless, populations of
Tunisia and Morocco and other Moslem
sections of the French Union. Within
the last few days a meeting of all French
envoys to Arab countries was held at
Beirut to review the entire situation.
From the beginning French diplomacy
has been skeptical about the prospect of
establishing MEDO (Middle East De-
fense Organization). Much earlier than
Mr, Dulles, and before his recent exten-
sive trip, the Quai d’Orsay had come to
the same conclusion as the Secretary of
State—that the creation of a Middle East
defense organization would have to be
postponed because the Arabs are “'so
engrossed with their quarrels with Israel
and with Great Britain or France that they
pay little heed to the menace of Soviet
communism.” But French observers are
convinced that Washington has not given
up its plans for Near and Middle East
security and that what is happening now
is a readjustment of previous ideas and
tactics, following particularly Turkish
advice.
It seems, in fact, that Ankara was the
real center of interest in Mr. Dulles’s
visit to twelve countries. Historically,
Turkey is in a favorable position to exer-
cise its influence throughout that area.
While it is true that the first explosions of
Arab nationalist revolt against foreign
rule, during the nineteenth and even well
into the twentieth century, were directed
against the Sultan-Caliph in Constanti-
nople, these could not blot out four cen-
turies of Turkish dominance. Since the
beginning of the cold war Turkish diplo-
macy, intelligent and daring, has been
questioning whether the process of .na-
tionalist break-up into a number of
“sovereign” but politically immature
states would prevent a counter-process,
based on fear of Russia, toward a kind
500
of new regional unity or organization
that would support the military plans of
the Atlantic coalition—much as the new
Balkan alliance is designed to do. _
Turkish diplomacy, which played so
important a part in bringing the Balkan
pact into existence, realizes of course
that the problem of the Arab states is
quite different. The three members of
the Balkan pact—Greece, Turkey, and
Yugoslavia—had already achieved more
or less internal stability, Greece thanks to
a permanent American “‘presence’”’ which
has been helpful not only in solving the
country’s financial difficulties but also in
surmounting successive crises in the gov-
ernment itself. In the Arab states nothing
was stable and nothing was strong. Even
the two “iron men,” Naguib of Egypt
and Shisheikly of Syria, were having
trouble keeping the extreme nationalists
in line and avoiding irrevocable decisions
which would produce a definitive break
with the West. This was still more evi-
dent in the case of the weaker links of
the Arab chain, such as Iraq. In the
opinion of the Turks the most important
thing to do at present is to try to con-
centrate Arab distrust and hate exclusively
on the state of Israel, diverting it as far
as possible from Britain and the United
States. In their view Israel might. also
be brought into a Middle East defense
system but at a later stage and not as the
“protégé” of the United States.
IN ANKARA officials frankly told Mr.
Dulles that Turkey had concluded that
participation by the Arab states in any
defense organization, on the model of
NATO or of the projected European De-
fense Community, was most unlikely for
the foreseeable future. They recom-
mend elasticity, subtlety, and patience,
a new approach aimed at appeasing the
Arab countries by spending a lot of ©
money there and by convincing them that
the United States would never sacrifice
them under pressure by the powerful
forces in America engaged in the promo-
tion and aid of the state of Israel. In his
June 1 radio address Mr. Dulles pointed
out that the tripartite declaration of 1950
in which the United States, Great Britain,
and France guaranteed the frontiers and
armistice lines of Israel failed ‘‘to re-
assure the Arabs.” It did not surprise ©
French observers when he declared that
the United States must make clear its ©
determination to stand “fully behind that
declaration” in order to calm Arab fears
of Israeli aggression.
Of course every diplomatic operation
in the Middle East has to by-pass the
obstacle of American-British rivalry in
the area. Years ago French diplomacy
might have engaged in a competition
from which France could have benefited
as a third factor. Today this barely sub-
merged struggle only makes it more dif-
ficult for the French to avoid annoying
the Americans by taking the side of the
British and vice versa. French officials
are worried by the dynamism behind the
United ‘States effort to assume leadership
in the Middle East. They know that there
is a point at which Great Britain must
stand firm: it cannot abandon entirely its
hold on Suez—the last strategic route in
the defense of what is left of the old
Empire.
An interesting aspect of the situation’
has been the behavior of the Russians.
Contrary to what has often been charged,
they are not carrying on inflammatory
propaganda against Britain among the
Arab nationalists. They probably prefer
the presence of British military fortes,
which are there exclusively to protect
British interests, to control by the United
_States, which would mean transforming
the Middle East into a strong military
base against the Soviet Union.
To sum up the story, what is expected 3
_here is a mew approach by the United
States to the problem of Mediterranean
and Middle Eastern defense—a slower,
more diplomatic approach, but by no -
fieans Gane ‘that would: micadabeadeneiae
ment of the idea of a Middle East de- _
fense organization or of American domi-
nance in the area.
The NATION ~
See eer ee
Ce sede la
<
‘
+
‘ e
“MOROCCO IN TURMOIL
f
:
IL What Moroccans Want .. by Alexander Werth
Casablanca
FROM the French in Morocco one hears
a little of everything: approval of colo-
nial exploitation in its most blatant form,
insistence that it is France’s sacred duty
to the Arabs to allow them to benefit
gradually from French culture and eco-
nomic planning, the conviction that it
is no earthly use looking too far ahead
—‘Heaven only knows what might not
happen in the next ten years; we've got
to keep the place under control and
see that the 350,000 Frenchmen who
have settled here come to no harm.”
Up on the hill, in the beautiful quarter
of Rabat, the administrative center of
Morocco—a whole city of sumptuous
white villas—I had numerous talks with
French officials and found most of them
a, good deal more reasonable and less
simpliste than the fire-eating M. Boni-
face of whom I wrote last week. They
readily admitted French shortcomings.
Native wages were of course too low,
and the Residence was having to fight
a stiff battle against the rétscence—a
lovely euphemism—of certain employers.
Only 200,000 little Moroccans were at
_ school instead of 1,500,000, but it took
time to train teachers; the situation was
much worse in Pakistan or Egypt or
Iraq. Lots of young Moroccans (“‘sorry,
I can’t recall the exact figure’) went to
French /ycées. It wasn’t true that the
French settlers had taken all the good
land—they had taken just “‘ordinary”
jand and improved it, not more than 20
per cent of the arable land, anyway. The
hardest of all problems was to get the
small peasant to use modern methods of
cultivation; the peasants bred too many
“inferior animals, which ate up everything,
including young trees, but were not
|
strong enough to pull a metal plow; hence
the tendency to stick to the old wooden
plow which cut the harvest in half—it
was a Vicious circle. But gradually they
_ALEXANDER WERTH is The Na-
tion’s Paris correspondent. The first part
of this article appeared last week.
Jane 13,1953
>.
were learning, irrigation was making
rapid progress, and the French officials
were doing their utmost to increase
output. Unfortunately, the Moroccans
weren't used to administering anything
—‘a year or two ago we asked the
Sidi Mohammed
Sultan of Morocco
local Moroccan authorities to organize
the proper registration of births and
deaths; after several months of complete
muddle we had to take over, using the
Moroccans merely as a screen.”
Many Frenchmen went to a lot of
trouble to explain why they could not
agree to the Sultan’s proposed reforms
in municipal administration, legal pro-
cedure, and labor regulations. We really
haven’t the right, they said, to throw the
Moroccan workers into the arms of
Communists or trade-union extremists!
“For my part,” one important official
remarked, “I think we should have
company unions along Vichy lines.” I
noticed, indeed, on more than one
occasion that» Vichy was still considered
a respectable tradition. The fellow who
really started the the trouble—how often
I heard Frenchmen here say it!—was
President’ Roosevelt, who over the heads
of the French authorities arranged a
private meeting with the Sultan and put
all sorts of crazy ideas into his head
about the Atlantic Charter and Morocco’s
right to independence. The Moroccan
nationalists and the people around the
Sultan will tell you that, alas, the Amer-
icans aren’t what they were in Roose-
velt’s day. It seems, indeed, true that the
new American Administration is not
encouraging Arab nationalism; one
theory is that the Casablanca riots played
into the hands of the French, giving
them an excuse to scream about the
menace of communism, which they alone
were capable of checking.
The Sultan is in an awkward spot. He
feels a prisoner of the French in Mo-
rocco and has repeatedly asked that
French-Moroccan negotiations be trans-
ferred from Rabat to Paris, where he
‘can rely on a good deal of support from
public opinion, But the French govern-
ment will not hear of it. Now the Sul-
tan wants to go to France for a “rest
cure.” Whether his plan will be ap-
proved remains to be seen; the Residence
has no desire for him to meet, say, M.
Mauriac, or the more liberal type of
politician like Edgar Faure, or even the
repentant Robert Schuman.
The Sultan’s line, so far as I could
discover from conversations with his son,
Prince Moulay Hassan, and others who
know him well, was something like this:
It would be disastrous if the French
suddenly pulled out leaving the country
without technicians, police, or adminis-
trative cadres. But a time limit to their
rule should be fixed, say, twenty-five
years. Meanwhile steps should be taken
to train Moroccan cadres. French eco-
nomic interests could be fully guar-
anteed, The French have proposed noth-
ing except a.few fragmentary reforms.
Recognition of the principle of free elec-
tions and of freedom of assembly, asso-
ciation, and the press is regarded as a
mere beginning.
The Sultan’s greatest nightmare, I was
told, was co-sovereignty—the root of the
d01
trouble in Tunisia. He was against
Frenchmen, except as Moroccan citizens,
sitting in any future parliament; nor
did he favor a half-French, half-Moroc-
can government on the Tunisian model.
He wanted an all-Moroccan government
assisted by French technicians. He fa-
vored a reform of the judiciary with
full ‘separation of powers’’; this meant
that the caid would no longer exercise
the triple power of lawmaker, judge, and
executor of his own decision. If inde-
pendent judges were to be set up, the
Sultan would abandon some of his own
judicial prerogatives. (The French reply
to this is that the country, with its com-
plicated Arab and Berber machinery of
justice, is not prepared for the applica-
tion of a legal system largely based on
French practice and the French code. )
The Sultan was also in favor of complete
trade-union freedom; the French will
only consider trade unions with a half-
French, half-Moroccan governing body,
being particularly afraid of a replica of
the Tunisian labor federation. At present
the French are practically monopolizing
the key positions in- government, and,
‘more important, are also aiming to
perpetuate their presence in any “new”
Moroccan institutions. The Sultan is
ttying not only to “colonize” present in-
stitutions but to open the door to the
eventual ousting of the French from new
ones.
In order to exert pressure on the Sul-
tan the French have been encouraging
“certain conservative religious groups in
Morocco who disapprove of the Sul-
tan’s “modernism’—for example, his
daughters’ abandonment of the veil. And
they have incited el Glaoui, the aged
Pasha of Marrakesh, and other tribal
chiefs of the south, as well as a rather
phony demagogue named Moulay fdriss
who poses as a purer and more saintly
pretender to the Sultan’s throne, to make
a lot of noise about the Sultan’s “un-
orthodoxy.” When Lord Mountbatten
visited Morocco, the French made sure
that he would attend a feast organized
in his honor by el Glaoui and did not
let him see the Sultan. At Marrakesh the
sale of the Sultan’s portraits is pro-
hibited. The petition demanding the
Sultan’s deposition, signed by two-thirds
of all the pashas and caids, obviously on
instructions from the Moroccan French
and their friends, is pretty ominous, The
idea is that when enough such “sponta-
502
oF cae. * te ee ee
i
t
neous” demonstrations against the Sultan —
have been made, the French authorities
will step in officially and “arbitrate”
against him,
TOURISTS in Morocco love the
Djemmaa-el-Fna, the great square of the
native city of Marrakesh, which at night-
fall is crowded with story-tellers, beg-
gars, snake-charmers, acrobats, jugglers,
pimps, open-air barbers, and_ pastry-
cooks. Behind it the labyrinth of narrow,
lanes and miserable little shops, filled
with crowds of veiled women, with
donkeys and bicycles, is filthy and sordid
in the extreme, and the large Jewish part
of Marfakesh is even worse. ‘““How do
all the shopkeepers manage to live?” I
asked one of the few ‘‘progressive”’
Moroccans I could find at Marrakesh.
He told me a long story of almost un-
believable human degradation. The
French were doing their Itttle bit to help
but not nearly as much as in the north,
the “Sultan’s part of Morocco.” Here
the French did not have to bother. The
people were ignorant and passive. The
caids and sheiks levied whatever they
felt like levying on the peasantry (‘‘no
wonder a lot of them flock to the
bidonvilles of Casablanca”). As long as
there was no active opposition to the
feudal order here in the south and as
long as el Glaoui continued to rank as
“France’s best friend,’’ there would be
little hope of improved conditions.
This is the kind of thing against
which the Moroccan nationalists have
been rebelling. Lyautey’s policy was to
unify the country under the authority of
the Sultan; the present French adminis-
trators stress the differences between the
Arab part, which is loyal to the Sultan,
and the Berber part, where the Sultan
“is not really recognized.” It has, indeed,
been the French colonialists’ policy to
seek the support of the most reactionary
elements in the country. Naturally, con-
ditions are not the same everywhere.
Around the very modern zinc and lead
mines in the east, good houses have been
built for the workers, and, for Morocco,
good wages are paid.
The Istiqlal has more or less gone -
underground. As a nationalist movement
it has no great leader enjoying the pres-
tige of Bourguiba in Tunisia. The Sultan,
without seeing eye to eye with it on
everything—in theory at least the Istiqlal
wants immediate independence—is open-
ly sympathetic, but he has Hy
well “isolated.” Of the party’s six prin-
cipal leadets three are in prison, one has
been deported, and two are abroad—one
_in Egypt, the other*in the Uhited States.
The French extremists claim that by
hitting very hard in the Casablanca De-
cember riots they smashed the Istiqlal, _
the Communists, and the trade-union
movement. Estimates of the number of
Moroccans in prison vary from the
French 400 to the Istiqlal’s 4,000; but
I rather think that the French figure
applies to Casablanca alone, and as the —
Figaro’s special inquiry suggested, the —
arrests were not confined to Casablanca.
Trade unionism is really at the center
of the Moroccan conflict. The Moroccan
trade-union federation is a branch of the .
C. G. T., which is controlled in France
by thé Communists. In Morocco the
Istiqlal was gaining more and mote con-
trol of the trade-union movement, and,
according to Moroccans well on the in-
side, was planning to eliminate French
and Moroccan Communists from the
governing body of the federation and to
substitute its own people. (As a result
of the riots the February meeting at
which this shift was to be accomplished
never took place.) The Istiqlal also in-
tended to apply for membership in the
International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions, which is eminently “re-
spectable” from the Americah point of
view; the C. I. O. and the A. F. of L.
belong to it and so does the Tunisian
federation. This was obviously the last
thing the French authorities wanted. It
looks “as if they would even permit
French Communists on the board to pre-
vent the Moroccan trade unions from
becoming “‘respectable” in American and
Social Democratic eyes. ©
IF THE ISTIQLAL, as M. Boniface in-’
sisted, is ‘‘nothing,” is “zero,” why have -
so many people been put in prison? Why
has the nationalist press been totally
suppressed? Why are there no signs that
the Istiqlal leaders will soon be given a» —
fair trial? An important official told me .
the principal leaders would probably
never be tried at all—it would be much
“simpler” to keep them isolated “as long
as necessary.” Progressive opinion in
Paris may have a word to say about this.
Even in Morocco numerous Frenchmen
—teachers, lawyers, doctors, and some
business men—are becoming increasing- —
The Natio UO
eae
zi
s
£
t
B
t
SEP
i
be,
FF a |
E
e
etl ods used ‘by men like Boniface and,
- albeit reluctantly, indorsed by General
Guillaume, whose line seems to be that
~ with a gradual improvement in the
standard of living the people will cease
to be unduly troublesome. The campaign
conducted in France by Catholic intellec-
tuals has made many Moroccan French
revise their thinking.
Moroccan nationalists, no longer be-
lieving much in American support and
even beginning to agree with the Sultan
that it may have been a mistake to bring
the question of Morocco before the
U.N., are responding favorably to the
still timid overtures of the more liberal
gh’ ae fein, What ‘th
Pee a
“
want, of course, is
an amnesty for the Moroccans. now in
prison, an improvement in the standard
of living, aceelerated health and edu-
cation measures, abandonment by the
French authorities of their attempts to
undermine the Sultan’s authority through
the creation of artificial opposition
“movements,” and the resumption of
serious negotiations for fundamental re-
forms between the Sultan and the French
government—not, indeed, in the hot-
house atmosphere of Rabat but in Paris.
Nationalism may not have much influ-
ence yet in the feudal south, but among
the shopkeepers of Fez and the proletariat
of Casablanca it is very potent, and it is
“tos Washington but to Paris.
making rapid headway even in the bled. ©
The country is not yet anti-French on the
whole, not -even after the Casablanca
affair; where personal contacts between
the French and the Moroccans are fre-
quent, relations are usually not bad.
The French still have every chance of
making. life bearable for the natives,
and of keeping a fairly large part of the
cake. All the more intelligent officials
in Paris know it; their great problem is
how to overcome the excessive greed of
the colonialists. So the bulk of Moroc-
cans are looking for their salvation not
Oddly
enough, the man whose attitude has been
most disappointing is President Auriol.
REPUBLICAN MINK
A Spry, Climbing Animal
Washington
SOCIETY in the national capital has
returned to something resembling the
glittering, extravagant practices of half
a century ago. Society reporters give
ecstatic descriptions of the “new tone”
Republicans hosts and hostesses have
brought to Washington after twenty
years of the Democrats, and proclaim
the “new era” to be the most elegant,
formal, and expensive in at least a gen-
eration. To put the matter briefly, Alice
Roosevelt Longworth, the Princess Alice
of another Republican period, has quit
. wearing the slouch-brim hat she affected
|
ig
| white ties and calling cards have come
iF
\* dwellers,”
\
FS
|
during the Truman Administration.
Bare shoulders, mutation mink, and
champagne flowing from lighted-foun-
tains are commonplace. The ‘“‘cave-
resident socialites who looked
down their noses at Democratic party-
giving, have come out of virtual retire-
ment. Rank and protocol are taken more
seriously than they have been in decades,
back, and neophytes are busily thumbing
the pages of the “green book,” as Mrs.
oly Shaw’s social list is known.
UNA F. CARTER, a former member of
“reporter of the Washington scene.
]2 une 13, 1953
the White House staff, bas long been a
In former years Lent provided a
breathing spell for capital hostesses. But
many who used to observe the season
went to parties this year even if they
did not give them. Apparently they
could not afford not to be seen. Even
the Tafts, who have not entertained
elaborately for several years, gave a tea
by Una F. Carter
at their Georgetown home for Mrs. Eisen-
hower, The Taft party, however, was a
simple one by today’s standards; accord-
ing to Mrs. Taft it started small and
just grew. Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce said
the same of the dinner she gave for
Speaker Martin, which ended up as one
of the most dazzling events of the season.
Mrs. Luce’s dinner and her Eastet-
week tea took place at a hotel. This
illustrates a basic difference between the
elegance of former years and that of the
present. Though much distinguished and
purposeful entertaining is still done at
home, hotels and clubs form the setting
of the most lavish parties, not the rococo ~
mansions near Dupont and Sheridan
Circle. The Shoreham, the Mayflower,
and the Statler can provide the pomp,
including gold table service, that in
earlier days characterized functions at
the Walsh, Leiter, and Medill mansions.
The marble-fronted Medill house, once
the home of Eleanor Patterson, now -
houses the sedate Washington Club, of
which Mrs. Woodrow Wilson has been
a member since she was Edith Galt. The
Leiter and Walsh houses—the latter the
gitlhood home of the late Evelyn Walsh
McLean—are now offices.
A particularly splendid affair was the
“reception and buffet” at the Mayflower
503
Mary
a
ae:
> Seapets
sire Neca
Sat r=
oe a
Pcl
ssa
ET ET
=
Ei te ne eee
Hotel when Generalissimo Rafael Tru-
jillo, boss of the Dominican Republic,
swept into Washington—he was not
made so welcome during the Roosevelt
and Truman administrations. To call it a
“reception and buffet,” the Washirtgton
Post said, was an understatement: “‘Just
listen to the main dishes that were’served:
pheasant en plumage, lobsters, salmon in
aspic, roast Vermont turkeys, filet of
beef, black beans, and roast lamb.”
There were “‘soft lights and banked
ferns . . . champagne from lighted
fountains . . . bouquet after bouquet of
flowers . . . a buffet table fifty feet
long . . . a raw bar with appetizers.”
Not the least of the spectacles was the
presence of Trujillo’s ten-year-old son,
resplendent like his father in white tie
and tails.
Foreign policy, of course, affects the
popularity and social standing of the
embassies—the once gay Soviet embassy
resembles a mausoleum today—and for
some time the British and French diplo-
matic staffs have been at the top of the
heap. Embassies that were dark during
the war are once again in favor; guests
at the Japanese embassy, for instance,
are “enchanted” with the style that marks
small parties there. The visit of Chancel-
lor Adenauer brought the old German
embassy back into the social spotlight.
To honor him the chargé d'affaires in-
vited 2,000 to a reception. The engraved
invitations bore the German eagle in
gold.
The calendars of the White House
and the Cabinet wives are being scanned
with great expectations. The First Lady
has not yet selected a social secretary, but
there will be disappointment in Wash-
ington if next winter's White House
social season is not the most formal and
504
stately in a generation. The Cabinet
ladies have not cut a spectacular swathe
—some are criticized for not being more
chic and photogenic—but most of them
are already finding the pace in Washing-
ton pretty rigorous compared to the quiet
lives they lived back home. An interview
with Mrs. Wilson was headed “What's
Good for Erwin Is Good for Mrs.
Wilson,” which may presage the kind
of social life she will lead.
In anticipation of the big times ahead-
Washington society has engaged space
at leading hotels and clubs far in advance.
The Presidential room at the Statler,
which can seat around 600, has bookings
three years ahead.
THE AVERAGE Washingtonian is as
much interested in who will be thé town’s
number one hostess as in who will be the
next woman ambassador. Mrs. Morris
Cafritz, once Mrs. Perle Mesta’s chief
rival, achieved a coup in bagging most
of the Cabinet for a post-Inauigural party
and was among the first to entertain
Vice-President Nixon. Still, there are
those who think the social crown may
rest more becomingly on the staunch
Republican head of Mrs. Robert Low
Bacon or Mrs. Truxton Beale of Lafay-
ette Square, to whose house the diplo-
mats have been said to “go for a good
time after the dismal routine of shaking
hands with the President at a White
House reception.” Mrs. Robert Guggen-
heim is a younger contender, and her
husband has the necessary financial re-
quirements. The former ambassador to
the Soviet Union and Mrs. Joseph
Davies, whose parties were famous dur-
ing Democratic administrations, are likely
to hold their own.
Relative newcomers are among the
topflight party givers. Bazie McCormick
Tankersley, daughter of the late Ruth
Hanna ?4{cCormick and niece of Colonel
Robert R. McCormick, has taken to en-
tertaining on a lavish scale since she
gave up the editorship of the Washing-
ton Times-Herald, sister paper of the
Chicago Tribune. For Colonel McCor-
mick’s convenience .the Times-Herald
has bought an imposing house in the *
vicinity of the French embassy, installed
an elevator, dubbed the mansion a “‘guest
house,” and made it available to visiting
V. I. P.’s of the Colonel’s faith. He is
expected to use it more than ever now.
Two institutions’ of Washington so-
fee are the club sad the “finis ing
school.” The newest of the clube is
sponsored by a group of Republicans in-
corporated as Capitol Hill Associates.
Sometime before the election this group
bought up a block across the street from
the old House Office Building and re-
modeled one of the houses to provide
party space, a cocktail lounge, and guest
rooms. Republicans with $1,000 to spare
—that is, the first 5,000 who wish to do
so—may become life members. Regular
annual dues are only $50, a fraction of
the cost of belonging to the Sulgrave
Club, where Senator McCarthy and Drew .
Pearson once briefly engaged in fisticuffs.
“Finishing schools’? are enjoying a
flashy success. Mrs. Agnes McCall
Parker’s School of Personality Develop:
ment was recently featured on Edward
R. Murrow’s Sunday TV show. Mrs.
Gladstone Williams operates the South-
eastern University Finishing School. For
$100 either will take in tow the timid
wife of a bureau chief, a gauche Con-
gressman, or even a second secretary
from Embassy Row, and in three months’
time inbue the awkward tyro with the
rules of etiquette necessary to social
success. The widow of a Wilson Cabinet
officer, herself a grande dame. of Wash-
ington society, was invited to give a
talk at one of the schools on “how to
maintain a social position in Washing-
ton.”
Washington society, such a talk might
explain, is different from that of any
other American city, or even any other
capital in the world. Position is dictated
by government rank and political affilia-
tion rather than by birth or money.
Money helps, but today the surest key to
social acceptance is belief in the old-
fashioned virtues of the Taft vintage—
William Howard Taft, preferably.
Drawings by Arthur Collins
The NATION ©
Have We Misread the Constitution?
‘
i
POLITICS AND THE CONSTITU-
TION IN THE HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES. By William
Winslow Crosskey. University of Chi-
cago Press. Two Volumes. $20.
By Charles E. Clark
ROFESSOR CROSSKEY’S _ new
book on the Constitution is an
_ exciting work. It is exciting for a reason
as unique as it is admirable with respect
- to this type of book, namely, the intellec-
_ tual punch it delivers. We are accus-
_ tomed to stately works ringing the now
» accepted changes of reverence to the
Constitution in its modern guise as
fashioning a union of diverse, almost
warring, states. Occasionally we do find
specific criticism of the creaking govern-
mental structure which results and some
_ despairing hope for change in the direc-
tion of modern efficiency. But this opus
is something quite different and beyond
our experience. For it is a new history,
the fruit of nearly two decades of patient
research, which presents the direct chal-
oT Ss eyes
s
‘I
res
ree
:
i
i
;
=
of the Constitution was the creation of
| a simply conceived national government.
| A possibility» of simplicity in place of
a __ infinite complexity, of effective func-
|. tional action instead of near-paralysis
: amid competing sovereignties, is surely
| _ alluring. And with proof so detatled and
" withal so persuasive as here afforded, we
~ thust hail this as a major scholastic effort
of our times.
The feat of scholarship is perhaps
| the more remarkable when we come to
|, see that the author’s main thesis rests
upon an utterly simple approach: in-
t terpreting the letter of the great docu-
ie. ment primarily in accordance with
eye =
ww
b _ CHARLES E. CLARK, noted legal
| scholar and former dean of the Yale
|_ Law School, is now judge of the United
| States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
| A greatly expanded version of this re-
| <view will appear in the autumn, 1953,
t issue of the University of Chicago Law
i Review as part of a symposium on Pro-
ei essor et 5 book.
Re
pune 3 (2B, oe
lenge that the original plan and intent |
eighteenth-century views of language,
form, and substance. With propriety he
calls the resulting panorama A Unitary
View of the National Governing Powers.
Emerging fully as clear cut are his cor-
relative and supporting theses. Of these,
the two he singles out for the greatest
stress are The National Power over
Commerce and The National Judicial
Powers. These, too, a reviewer may pin-
point to illustrate the author’s method
and approach,
First, as background we must note the
infinite pains taken to recreate a vocabu-
lary which appropriately mirrors the
eighteenth-century mind operating in the
constitutional framework. Thus we have
an extensive catalogue of all manner of
usage in pre-convention days of the
term “commerce,” showing, indeed, i
broad inclusiveness. The same process
is employed as to the other terms of the
constitutional grant over commerce; and
the pre-constitution usage is supported
by the contemporary discussions center-
ing around the making of the Constitu-
tion and the notable debate which pre-
ceded its adoption in the states. This
leads directly to the constitutional inter-
pretation, in terms generally of strong
governmental powers, which prevailed
originally and which has suffered a grad-
ual decline to the weaker governmental
entity we now know.
IT IS AGAINST this tapestry, so fully
displayed before the reader’s eye, that
the famous clauses undergo a revitaliza-
tion of meaning and take on new
-dynamism. Consider the, first power
listed, that of the legislature, and the
first general statement of its authority
beyond the power to tax and to borrow
money, to wit, the power “To regulate’
Commerce with foreign Nations, and
among the several States, and with the
Indian Tribes.’’ The middle phrase has
suffered a debasement down to our
modern concept of power over only
“interstate commerce,” famous words of
modern times, but unknown to the man
of 1787 and dating apparently from the
middle of the last century. Others of
the constitutional words have also suf-
fered sea change by shrinkage:
becomes “between’’; the states are now
mere territorial subdivisions between
which some physical movement has be-
come visualized; and “‘commerce’’ itself
has been narrowed to mean only a
special kind of business enterprise.
Hence the phrase now is reduced to per-
mitting some limited control over this
amon
restricted form of enterprise only when”
it actually and visibly moves ‘‘from the
territory of one of our states to that of
another.”” But under our author's com-
pelling exegesis the phrase comes to life
as including all matters of trade or busi-
ness activity had among or within the
states all over the country and supports
and justifies the widest Congressional
supervision of the affairs of men con-
sidered as people of a single union.
Thus, for example, we should not need
to await the tedious and only partial ac-
complishment of the strongly urged unt-
form commercial acts—with a uniform
law of divorce not even dared—to secure
the benefits of free commerce subject to
like law throughout the states. Instead,
Congress is summoned, even in the dedi-
cation of the book, ‘‘to claim and exer-
cise for the common good of the country
the powers justly belonging to it under
the Constitution,” including that of
formulating just such commercial codes
and general social laws as are here con-
templated.
A similar demonstration leads to the
conclusion—further discussed below—
that the original constitutional intent was
to create a single national judicial system,
with the Supreme Court at the apex
of all courts, state and federal. Briefer
treatment sets forth the interrelationship
with the commerce clause of other pro-
visions of Article I, notably the imports-
and-exports, ex-post-facto, and contracts
clauses.
.To do even partial justice to the dem-
onstration, some brief reference must
be made to certain other features of the
supporting argument. Thus it is held
that accepted rules of eighteenth-century
approach to state documents require rec-
ognition of the custom to state an intent
as an inclusive generality, followed by
an enumeration of details of an informa-
tive but not exclusive character. Hence
the enumeration of the powers of Con-
gress—now made the bulwark for the
limiting interpretation of the Constitu-
tion—is held not to subtract just the
505
a
ii
x“ of
ng Oe
ape we
.
specified powers from the states. Rather
it is addressed primarily to a different
dichotomy, that between legislative and
executive powers in the one unitary gov-
ernmental system set up; the balance
here inclined toward the legislature, an
emphasis needed if the historic power of
the royal prerogative was to be lessened
and the dangerous weakness of the
earlier Congress to be corrected. Finally
to be dissected is the famous Tenth
Amendment, reserving to the states or
the people the ‘Powers not delegated
to the United States by the Constitution
nor prohibited by it to the States.” Here
the solution is that made, among others,
and again from an eighteenth-century
background, by no less a person than
James Kent in a decision in New York
in 1812, to the effett that the powers
not exclusively transferred to the United
States or prohibited to the states may
still be exercised by the latter, as well
as by the people.
EVEN THIS inadequate summary shows
how revolutionary this thesis is to an age
accustomed to see the states success-
fully fighting the national govern-
ment on all stages, from control of pre-
cious national resources to exercise of
taxing and regulatory powers in many
forms and guises. Does the author
adequately prove his case? Only a his-
torian of quite a degree of sophistication
can judge with finality and as to details.
But for the ordinary reader and patriotic
citizen, anxious for his government to
exercise effective leadership in the global
role now thrust upon it, Professor Cross-
key surely proves enough to require a
fresh approach in our constitutional
thinkihg. For at the very least he does
demonstrate beyond what seems to me
the possibility of doubt (1) that an ex-
ceedingly powerful argument can be
made for a widespread eighteenth-cen-
tury intent or desire for a stronger central
government than we have now evolved,
(2) that the constitutional language is
much more apt to sustain such an intent
than our juristic thought now concedes,
(3) that considerable early thought, in-
cluding Supreme Court decisions, so in-
terpreted the infant Constitution, and
(4) that exigencies of political strife
shaped and molded the great charter to
its present form,
Although I suspect the contrary will
be the case, the last of these points
506
4
I have stressed ought not to.come as a
shock or even as a surprise to a genera-
tion accustomed to a realistic approach
to law and legal actions. We know that
contracts and legal documents generally
may be variously interpreted against dif-
ferent backgrounds, particularly where
new circumstances bring new problems
not appreciated in the original bond. So
even the words of a written Constitution
may acquire quite a different significance
as the years pass. And the reasons why
the Jeffersonians, representing broadly
the masses as against the propertied
classes, should have feared the power of
a strong government, should have de-
manded a Bill of Rights and all the rest,
seem now but a natural commonplace of
the time. That the states, in the vacuum
of power which the struggle tended to
create, should be the obvious but rather
unintended beneficiaries is also but a
natural, even if chance, result. But here
the author has seemingly courted opposi-
tion by the truculence with which he
presents his views and the virulence of
his condemnation of the politicians.
Madison’s star has perhaps dimmed,
since his obvious changes of opinion
to correspond with his politics do not
evoke sympathy. But Jefferson is still a
mighty force; condemnation of his ac-
tions even to the point of rehabilitating
the Sedition Act was hardly necessary. It
is likely to stimulate reactions “such as
The Book and Its Author
This'is a book with an interesting history. William W. Crosskey and
Robert M. Hutchins were students together at the Yale Law School. Impressed
by Mr. Crosskey’s qualities, Hutchins kept him steadily in mind in later years
as a possible law-school instructor. After graduation, Mr. Crosskey served as
legal secretary to Chief Justice Taft. Then he became a Wall Street lawyer,
associated at different times with two of the great financial firms. Someone said
of him that at the time he was “the only man in Wall Street with any regard
for private property.” ’
In 1933 the New Dealers passed the Securities Act and in the following
year the Securities Exchange Act. Both statutes became Mr. Crosskcy’s particular
care in the firm with which he was associated. What he calls “their compli-
cated scheme of incidence’ quickened an earlier law-school interest in the
commerce clause and he read, for the first time, the entire report of Gibbons v. a
Ogden. Struck by Daniel Webster's primary argument, which was hard to: :
reconcile with existing interpretations of the commerce clause, he began to
reexamine the sources. In the meantime Mr. Hutchins had succeeded in luring ~
him from Wall Street to the law faculty of the University of Chicago. There, 4
in January, 1937, he began writing what he thought would be a Law Review
article on the commerce power; fifteen years later the article had grown into 7
the present massive work, which promises to be one of the most influential,
widely discussed studies of the Constitution since Charles Beard’s “Economic —
Interpretation of the Constitution” appeared in 1913.
betrayed an emotional investment in the
rae
those of one professorial reviewer who
constitutional status quo curious to be-
hold; he even suggested the unworthi-
ness of a university press which would
stoop to publish this original new
work!
In truth the author's combativeness
here may appear surprising; for except
in some matters of degree the difference
in party spirit and program of the era is
‘well accepted. But the author does carry °
it farther than is customary. He has both
Jefferson and Madison as early national-'
ists who departed from the faith for rea-
sons political, while Marshall is shown
fighting merely a rear-guard and con-
stantly losing struggle, full of compro-
mises, turns, and twists, to preserve a .
semblance of strength to the cerftral gov-
ernment. So personal does he make this
struggle and the motivations of the dis-
tinguished protagonists that many are
likely to be turned away from his im- ,
portant thesis. Having known the author
in all his forthrightness and obduracy
from his student days, I can, I think,
understand how his own conception of
truth would not permit him to yield
even the proverbial ell to the humanness
of politicians. If the great X was that
kind of petty heel, it must be so stated.
Moreover, such a sense of personal in-
volvement in long-ago battles was doubt-
less necessary to sustain research so ex-
-—
Se pA
: ‘_ The Nation
source “except one’s own inner strength
of character, Actually of course poli-
ticians and statesmen are neither so
admirable nor so despicable as contempo-
taties and posterity love to make them.
They can and often do operate from
_~ motives far from sublime, even those
which are petty and vengeful; in short,
they cannot avoid acting like human
beings. And yet they do represent move-
ments and trends which must come to
the fore, if not through one group of
protagonists then through another. There
is an inevitability about conflict and
change in affairs governmental which we
must accept and expect.
But nothing so pusillanimous as this
appeals to our author. Here is one per-
son at least who is not inhibited by idol
worship in an area where that-has be-
come an occupational disease and who,
E to use the apt Americanism, sticks his
neck out to the utmost limit on all
_ matters in which he profoundly believes.
_ Thus I can think of no other instance of
"an author not only making his own de-
tailed personal Index but carrying his
_ argument over into it. Further, the book
_ contains many an extensive deduction or
_ assumption advanced boldly to fill gaps
- in factual material and to supply motiva-
tions. This is the kind of book it is; and
even though I would have toned down
some of the truculence I find something
attractive in the forthrightness of the
' slashing attack..I can foresee that
lg scholars will fall on many of the assump-
tions with delight and will demolish at
least some. But except for surface reac-
tions, that cannot demolish the book
| itself or refute the author’s central ideas.
Crosskey may not ,have succeeded, in
_gétting himself liked; but he cannot be
ignored. After this no book on constitu-
tional history or meaning can afford to
verlook his researches.
ENCE this is glorious material for the
professional historian, be his sympathies
fer or against the thesis presented. But I
suggest it is much more than this; it is
| in fact a must for lawyers, political
cientists, and plain ordinary citizens.
For it brings up insistently the issue of
the kind of government needed not
merely for 1787 but also for 1953. I
tealize that the first reaction to the
author’s argument by the lay reader is
7 *
ee
a ere 7
os tikely t to bert ‘So what? “AFiee all, the *
court, responding to pressures over a
century and a half, has construed the
Constitution as it has; and the people
have surely accepted the result, nay,
are belligerent against any—outward—
change. So it will be said: Let’s leave to
the students these faraway battles, while
we go about our business of returning
just as much power to the states as the
pressure of world and local events will
permit. The trouble is, however, that the
militant advocates of the status quo have
been able to seize an advantage which
is not rightfully theirs. They have
claimed all the support of the sacred
document itself to use against those up-
starts who assert a national power as a
matter of right and necessity. Against
such a heavy burden the forces of cen-
tralized efficiency can make only difficult
headway without vicarious support from
those twin forces of evil, to wit, war
or depression. Except when those forces
make the need overwhelming, we must
be bound to a government the more in-
active, that is, the more unobtrusive, the
better. American genius can be expended
to perfecting the automobile, discovering
new labor devices for farm, factory, and
home, and uncovering the atom bomb.
Only in matters governmental must it
remain bound by chains of the past.
So the great function of a book such
as this is to show that these chains are
hardly real and, in any event, are com-
paratively recent and man-made, to be
unmade in like fashion if the will exists.
In short, the purpose of history is to free
fhan from the shackles of pseudo-history.
We should be masters of our fate gov-
ernmentally as much as physically, in-
stitution-wise as much as gadget-wise.
And the days of planned experimenta-
tion in new ways of living together
should definitely not be over. For if we ‘
do not take active measures with intelli-
gent effort, the change is going to take
place in any event imperceptibly and in
ways we not only may not expect but
certainty do not want. Such a book as
this teaches overwhelmingly that change
is coming in any event, no matter how
unchanging may seem our governmental
charter and its basic exposition.
Before such a bold spirit and so sub-
lime a confidence I can only bow in
admiration. Were the making of the
government to be done over, I can hardly
believe that it would not be along lines
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At your bookstore or from
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Crosskey advocates as still the true
ones. I cannot subscribe to the view
that the only way to freedom is via
an inefficient and thereby hopelessly
weak government. I do not believe man
is so little master of his fate that only
by putting stones in his way may he be
trusted to walk at all. I believe that an
effective government which can be made
responsive to the will of its constituents
is a necessity for survival. But even so,
I cannot see signs that we are mature
enough to accept the challenge. Yet new
threats of war, new depths of depression
may in time lead us to a new orientation
of purpose and objectives whereby “We,
the People of the United States,” may
act “‘to form a more perfect Union,” to
“establish Justice,” and to “promote the
general Welfare, and secure the Bless-
ings of Liberty to ourselves and our
posterity.” When that time comes I
cannot but believe that devoted attempts
such as this to ascertain what was orig-
inally purposed and how results fell
short of objectives will play a large part
in shaping our heavenly city of the
future.
cfs
Two volumes
Lat
Sa
good deal of American history.”
wa = ee SI eo Fe
vw *
New Books in Brief |
Minor Leonardo
CARDANO;: THE GAMBLING
SCHOLAR. By Oystein Ore. With a
Translation from the Latin of Cardano’s
“Book on Games of Chance” by Sydney
Henry Gould. Princeton. $4.
Despite the absence of any attempt at
popularization, this sketch of a minor
Leonardo of the early sixteenth century
makes curious and interesting reading.
A physician by profession, Cardano
followed the Renaissance pattern by
taking all knowledge as his province and
wrote voluminously on a great variety of
subjects. He also engaged in the public
disputations which were so important a
part of the intellectual life of the times,
quarreled bitterly with his contempo-
raries, was perhaps a bit of a charlatan
on occasion, and certainly blew his own
horn with typical Renaissance abandon.
His only son was executed as a wife
poisoner; he himself was once haled be-
fore the Inquisition; and he wrote about
Politics and the Constitution |
in the Fistory of the United States
By WILLIAM WINSLOW CROSSKEY
Professor of Law in the University of Chicago
‘
... the most fertile commentary on the Constitution since the Federalist papers.”
“A revolutionary book... . without question one of the most all-embracing broadsides ever =
made at orthodox history. ... Professor Crosskey has made out a good case for rewriting a
THE LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL
“A novel interpretation of the Constitution. The accepted view, we are told, is false.”
1410 pages $20.00
head THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS © 5750 ELLIS AVENUE ¢ CHICAGO 37
‘At your bookseller
“. =r?
of
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1
od "a".
a 374 Sen
a a
“a
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gambling both because he was a mathe- ~
matician and because he liked the games _
—especially Primero, an early version
of poker. Professor Ore, who is Sterling ©
professor of mathematics at Yale, thinks ~
that one of Cardano’s works has never ©
been properly recognized for what it is ©
—namely, the first important treatise on ©
probability.
Socialism in America
THE FORGING OF AMERICAN ~
SOCIALISM. By Howard H. Quint. 7
South Carolina. $6. 4
This careful, scholarly essay examines |
the numerous ideas and movements {
which merged in the American Socialist °
Party, formed in 1901—among them,
Christian Socialism, Marxism, de Leon-
ism, and the vision of Edward Bellamy. ,
It is of course no substitute for Prince-
ton University’s two-volume ‘‘Socialism |
in American Life.’ Mr. Quint has ©
limited himself to a sixteen-year period,
ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
-
impact of socialist movements upon
American intellectual and political life.
Perhaps his book is most valuable in
owing how varied socialist ideas have
‘been in America and how remarkably
indigenous in American life.
Process of Civilization
THE PRIMITIVE WORLD AND ITS
TRANSFORMATIONS. By Robert
_ Redfield. Cornell. $3.50.
In this book the author considers cer-
E changes in the life of man in society
which have been brought about by the
advent of civilization, and shows that
after the rise of cities men became
something they had not been before. In
_ tracing the passage from precivilized to
civilized life as a continuous process of
_ breaking down and rebuilding the moral
order, the author most stimulatingly
| manages to question some of the funda-
é "mental positions taken by anthropologists
cally the idea that progress can-
not be scientifically recognized and that
the weighing of cultural values has no
place in scientific anthropology. The
main theme of the book is the gradual
_ development in men of some measure
of control over their own moral evolu-
_tion. Dr. Redfield tells the story well.
“On. and Off Broadway
WITH A QUIET HEART. An Auto-
biography by Eva Le Gallienne. Viking.
$4.50.
A continuation of Miss Le Gallienne’s
autobiography published twenty years
after the first instalment. “At 33”
carried her into the Civic Repertory ad-
venture; the present volume begins with
the accident which nearly cost her life,
describes her comeback, and goes on to
her second career on and off Broadway.
Like many other actresses Miss Le
Gallienne has an almost monomaniacal
passion for the theater, but unlike most
she has always preferred to swim against
the current. Manager as well as per-
former, she generally picked plays,
whether standard or new, which most
producers would have called ‘“‘non-com-
mercial,” and she always had in mind a
kind of theater a bit outside of ‘show
business.’’ Though the Civic Repertory
finally succumbed, it was probably the
most successful repertory enterprise of
twentieth-century America, and it left
its mark. We hardly need to be told
that she is a person not easily dis-
couraged, but her concluding sentence
goes a good deal farther: “I have en-
joyed the past, I find the present good,
and I look to the future with a quiet
heart.””
Theater
: ; Harold Clurman |
he Tel Aviv
N MY way to Israel—where I have
come to direct Shaw’s “Caesar and
eas for the Habimah company—
I stopped off in Paris for six days. I
ent to the theater five times. There
ould be little justification on this basis
r
| to generalize on the present state of the
4 rench theater were it not for the fact
| that three years’ residence in the early
e enties and frequent return visits to
. e city which someone has called ‘‘the
‘capital of nostalgia” have made me
|
there
lI There is not much need to generalize
| anyhow. Most ‘of the facts speak for
themselves: there were forty-two “‘attrac-
| tions” on the boards in Paris the week
June 13, 1953
[specially aware of theatrical activities
of May 11 to 17—exclusive of the
productions of the four national theaters,
the two opera houses, and the two
branches of the Comédie Francaise with
its extensive repertoire of classic and
modern plays.
The French complain more bitterly
than we do of the high cost of mount-
ing plays, although they do not seem to
mind that the physical production of
their plays almost everywhere except at
the Comédie Francaise and with Bar-
rault’s now absent company is from our
standpoint shamefully flimsy. When
Irwin Shaw’s “The Gentle People’ was
done in New York in 1939 with some
of Boris Aronson’s finest settings—and
an excellent cast—its reception was
rather mild; in Paris the play is a
Luts Taruc’s
Dramatic Story
of the Philippine
Guerrillas
BORN OF THE PEOPLE
Foreword by Paul Robeson
@® Written in bivouac, forest and
swamp, this monumental and mov-
ing book tells for the first time the
full story of the Hukbalahajp—the
‘People’s Liberation Army of the
Philippines. Luis Taruc, author of
the book and commander of the
army, has been called “bandit,”
“murderer” and “traitor”—even as
George Washington was called by
these very names when he led the
ragged, embattled farmers in the
American War for Independence.
Taruc’s autobiography tears aside
the curtain of lies and gives us a
true glimpse of colonial people fight-
ing for their freedom. Luis Taruc,
guerrilla commander and _ political
leader, is also a writer who has pro-
duced a literary masterpiece with
a rare beauty of style and depth of
feeling.
“A Masterpiece of Our Time”
DR. W. E. B. DU BOIS—“‘A long-needed
addition to the history of American im-
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read Luis Taruc’s calm, factual and de-
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HARRY F. WARD—“This is life ex-
pressing itself. Nowhere else that I know
is the welding of a people and a leader
so clearly portrayed. All through this
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mon people.”
HOWARD FAST—‘A masterpiece of
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BORN OF THE PEOPLE is now avail-
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success in a production one could only
accept at one of our least ambitious off-
Broadway performances with a cast that
ranges from a lively adequacy to a
vehemently colorful crudity.
The direction of most productions in
Paris today is of a rather slapdash sort,
and the acting generally shows more
scenic ebullience than finesse or depth.
The virtue of the French theater lies in
rich tradition and the possibility of an
eventual renewal.
The best theater in Paris is the
Comédie Frangaise, where the produc-
tions nearly always are done with a cer-
tain polish, and where the casts reveal
careful training as well as the cosmetic
exuberance that almost
everything on the French stage. The
production of “Le Bourgeois Gentil-
characterizes
homme” which I saw at the Comédie
was extremely handsome, set in a suntp-
tuous courtly though
Moliére was a champion of the middle
class, his plays had to be fit for a king—
with a cast superbly at ease in Moliére’s
the wide range of its plays—however
catelessly handled—together with the
chematic maturity and the literary com-
petence of many of them. The French
manner—for
theater is unmistakably ailing—ma-
terially and artistically—but even in this
condition it gives many evidences of its comedy style.
| AT LAST AGAIN AVAILABLE! |
TWO DISTINGUISHED PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIAN PLAYS
(In one volume)
ILYA SURGUCHEV'S Dramatic Masterpiece
THE FIDDLES OF AUTUMN
~ and ~
ANTON CHEKHOV'S Inimitable Dramatic Sketch
ON THE HIGHWAY
BOTH NEWLY TRANSLATED
by DAVID A. MODELL |
$2.50 by mail, prepaid, direct from
D. A, Modell + 1092 Anderson Avenue + New York 52, N. Y.
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I saw a revival of ‘Girmtidoux’s ead ly
play ‘‘Siegfried,” which has many pas-
sages of ingratiating writing but which
today seems dramatically feeble, though —
the French still find it entertaining be-~
cause it celebrates how delightfully dif- -
ferent they are from the Germans. The ,
plot of “Siegfried” is hardly com-
mensurate with the play’s length, but the
French audience is peculiar in this—that
they are held by good talk, which in
the theater means good writing, in a
4
way that would astonish an American ~
audience. Since good writing as such is —
much more frequent in the French
theater than in ours, it is less difficult for
the French author to turn out what the
Parisians will consider a satisfactory play ;
than it is for an American author to do:
the same for his audience.
The smash hit of Paris at the moment.
is “L’Heure Eblouissante” (“The Daz-
ili:
4
|
:
|
zling Hour’) a French adaptation of an ©
Italian play. Since it is to be done in
New York next season, I shall not dwell
on it now, except to say that it is a kind
of bedroom variation on a Pirandello |
theme in which the town’s trollop, under ,
special circumstances, proves herself a ~
devoted housewife, while the town’s most
steadfast spouse reveals unexpectedly
wayward proclivities. The play is badly
directed—but no one seems to care—and |
Pierre Blanchar, the “name” actor of the |
show, who is a poor comedian, plays the
part of a fatuous husband fatuously. But
the two women—a very pretty new- ©
comer named Jeanne Moreau and the
better-known Suzy Flon, a piquantly in-
telligent actress for more serious plays—
in addition to a jovial character actor as
the town mayor are enough to make the
racy plot meat for the Parisians.
I left Paris with the conviction, by no
means new with me—that there is noth-
ing wrong with the American theater
except its economic disorganization,
which is disastrous. Considering how
new a thing the American theater is— J
actually less than.a hundred years old—it
has shown immense vitality, and its ©
potential is second to none in the world
today. The famous Barrault company,
for example, is far less gifted than was_
the Theater Guild acting company in the
company in the thirties. Our best play
wrights have no reason to blush in any
comparison with contemporary Fren
dramatists.
TRAVINSKY’S
“Oedipus Rex”
when I last heard it twenty years ago
_ seemed to me as ugly and arid as his
other neo-classical works did at that
time. Listening to the recorded per-
_ formance on Columbia ML-4644 now,
i I hear mastery and precision in the use
_ of means for ends that are tremendously
powerful and moving—not only in the
choruses but in the arias, whose styles
_ afe manipulated to achieve not the
f melodic beauty they achieved originally
i but a harshly austere and monumental
|
"utterance suited to this drama of man
pursued and destroyed by implacable
t destiny.
In .the powerful performance con-
_ ducted by Stravinsky the Oedipus is
Peter Pears, whose tenor voice has lost
_ its ease in its upper tange and its steadi-
ness throughout; the Jocasta is Martha
_ Médl, whose mezzo-soprano is occasion-
ally tremulous; and the Creon and Mes-
senger are Heinz Rehfuss, whose bari-
tone is a little rough; but the bass of
' Otto von Rohr (Tiresias) and tenor of
_ Helmut Krebs (Shepherd) are very fine;
_ and so are the chorus and orchestra of
the Cologne Radio.
This is a work for which one needs
| the words; and what Columbia provides
instead is autHoritative but tortuous com-
ment by Robert Craft on the history and
| nature of the work and details of the
. music.
; London LL-731 offers four German
sacred songs (1629-1700), of which the
‘figst and third are especially beautiful;
‘three such songs by C. P. E. Bach
| (1714-1788), of which the first and last
| are extraordinarily powerful in harmonic
progression and expressive effect; seven
| Italian monodies (1609-1634), most of
them good; and five charming songs by
, Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725) —all
ony piano accompaniments by Jacque-
| line Bonneau. Again historical informa-
® tion. instead of texts, and not even the
titles of the Italian songs.
On London LS-730 souray sings
MV ozart’s uninteresting aria ““Mentre ti
lascia, o figlia,” and some fine arias by
Scarlatti, Lully, Gluck, and Rameau. The
|
ung superbly by Souzay, with excessively
Paris Conservatory Concerts Orchestra
plays well under Cornman. Again his-
torical information instead of texts.
With pleasant Elizabethan love songs
and instrumental pieces Lyrichord LL-37
offers two especially fine songs by Dow-
land, “Weep You No More, Sad Foun-
taines’’ and ‘Sorrow, Sorrow, Stay,’ and
an extraordinary piece by Gibbons, ‘“The
Lord of Salisbury His Pavin.”” Superb
singing of his kind by Cuenod, and good
harpsichord performances by Chiasson.
EMS 219 offers some fine Spanish
vocal music from the court of Ferdinand
and Isabella, beautifully sung by Pro
Musica Antiqua under Cape. There are
also instrumental pieces which are made
unattractive for me by the sounds of
some of the old instruments that are
used.
The charming madrigals in Banchieri’s
“Festino’”” (1608) on Esoteric ES-516
are sung very well by the Primavera
Singers under Noah Greenberg, with
interludes of pleasant instrumental pieces
by Banchieri and other composers that
ate played well on the virginals by
Blanche Winogron.
Esoteric ES-517 offers a fine Sonata
by Rosenmiller (1619-1684), Cou-
perin’s pleasant “Le Parnasse,’’ and
Frescobaldi’s Five Canzoni per Sonar,
which I don’t care for—all played well
by the Harpsichord Quartet.
The moving “Erbarme dich’ from
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, the lovely
Zeffiretti . Lusinghieri from Mozart's
“Idomeneo,” and his uninteresting
“Ch’io mi scordi di te’ K.505 are sung
beautifully by Tourel with superb
orchestral accompaniments by the Perpi-
gnan Festival Orchestra under Casals.
Beethoven's early Variations on a Theme
from Handel's ‘Judas Maccabaeus,”’ on
the same record (Columbia ML-4640),
are quite mechanical at first, but more
interesting later on; the performance
offers the usual magnificence of Casals’s
playing, and playing by Serkin that is
unusual in its emergy and life.
Columbia's. cheaper Entré series offers
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed
by von Karajan with the Vienna Phil-
harmonic, the chorus of the Vienna
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Oe
9
10
11
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13
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21
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23
Crossword Puzzle No. 519
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
ACROSS
Invent plot, perhaps. (8)
Deliberately annoyed it with a form
of run around? (6)
Racine’s method of dispatch? (7)
Ornamented belt, worn diagonally
from shoulder to hip. (7)
Ventilates the joint. (Flies about,
no doubt!) (7)
With a first of the last, this emperor
wouldn’t be the first of 10 across.
(7)
Bill seems to be killed by it, but not
as an inside job. (6, 4, 3)
Polish problem solved by application
on their part. (9, 4)
Get madder than anybody? It’s
against all rules! (7)
Ravel? He composed “Seaport on the
Seine.” (2, 5)
Strike with a radical following (im-
plying strong underground connec-
tions). (7)
The one of these called Death is 10
down. (7)
The dealer has this hand left to him.
(6)
Macbeth suggested that the stuff’d
bosom be. (8)
DOWN
This gets around the same kind of
thing as 14. (6)
Ours is usually recommended by the
maker. (7)
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
3
4
6
10
14
16
17
18
19
20
ACROSS :—1,
DERS NEVER CEASE; 9
FRIGATE;
ENSEMBLE; 17 ONE-HORSE;
22 CONCAVE;
Hurried to one’s beloved out west,
perhaps. (7)
Not the head of a anid or dope
ring, though he might succeed in the
top position. (4-9)
Like the “y” of “yield, ” I would
make it like a great mansion. (7)
Ripped bustle, creating quite a
storm. (7)
Truth will the verse, according to
Byron. (8)
Under the main top? (5, 8, 5)
No winner of course in Berkshire?
(It looks more like a dog!) (5, 3)
The argonaut, for example, should
suggest the standing members of a
male quartet. (7)
Little Mermen, about which Haydn
wrote? (7)
She said pansies were for thoughts.
(7)
When the stove is shaken, red bodies
result. (7)
Experienced, with the right foot in
line? (6)
~en~
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 518
13 and 23 down WILL WON-
ATTESTED; 11
14 BY-PASS; 15
20 FETISH;
26 RETAIN;
12 CENSERS;
24 CLUBMAN;
27 RECALLED; 28 REMEMBRANCE.
DOWN :—2_ IDEOGRAPH;
ODDS; 5 DOCKERS; 6
STORMY
NOOSKHS ;
RITES; 7 and 8
PETREL; 16 METABOLIC; 18
19 and 10 REVENUE. CUTTER;
20 FELUCCA; 25 and 21 GRUBSTAKES.
Readers are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
The Nation, 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, New York.
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. . a n
H. H. WILSON is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics of
Princeton University who has never sought refuge in an ivory tower—or
anywhere else—from a fight. He writes with vigor, warmth, and a pro-
found understanding of the realities of the world in which we live.
About his book, ‘‘Congress: Corruption and Compromise,” the Christian
Science Monitor wrote: ‘It is unusual and rather stirring for such a hard-
hitting book to come from a university.” And of “Roots of Political Behav-
ior,’ which he wrote with Richard C. Snyder, Paul E. Drost of the Hamp-
ton Institute said: “This is a great, an epoch-making text in the teaching
of political science .. . I like it for its warm, humanistic approach.”
A native of Springfield, Mass., Wilson took his M.A. at Clark University,
his Ph.D. at Wisconsin, and an unofficial degree in practical politics serv-
ing with the War Production Board and the Office of Price Administration
during war years.
Wilson’s past contributions to The Nation—articles and book reviews—
have been outstanding examples of the ‘humanistic approach” to problems
of government and political theory. He is now preparing for The Nation
a series on that new American phenomenon: Government by Hucksters.
It will be a study of the politicians’ publicity men who have become the
tail that wags the dog....
To get to know Wilson, you must read The Nation regularly. He is one of
the many reasons why an overwhelming majority of our readers subscribe
to The Nation—and are thus assured of getting it every week.
You, too, should subscribe—or buy a subscription for a friend.
Fill out the handy order form below. |
*This is the first of a series which will introduce Contributing Editors of
The Nation to our readers.
THE NATION e 333 SIXTH AVENUE ¢ NEW YORK 14, N. Y.
6/13/53
Pe 2
ay
TEXAS BOOK BURNINGS: MAURY MAVERICK, JR. a
--
JE 22°53
THE ;
(ousuic LIBRARY | 7
\ Burlingame, 2 q
“June 20, 1953 |
—-20¢
7
Coming |
End ofthe —
fold War @
, | |
| | Perl: Guilty of What? Eugene Daniel
| .
|
|
- Theat to;the.r. VA?S Bruce Catton
EVERY |
eee He Stuck to His Street = Willard Thorp
| OS A Review & Sherwood Anderson’s “Letters” 4
SE a gin ea ee
Letters
Catholics and the
Fifth Amendment
Dear Sirs: 1f McCarthy, Jenner, Velde,
Jackson, and their kind have the idea that
the Fifth Amendment benefits only al-
leged Communists, they are mistaken.
When James Madison wrote the Fifth
Amendment more than 160 years ago,
there were plenty of Catholics. It was the
priests, ministers, and citizens of differ-
ing politics who demanded the protec-
tion of English common law: “No per-
son shall be compelled to bear witness
against himself.”
~ Today, if I as a Catholic were sum-
moned to a hearing in an anti-Catholic
area and asked whether I was a Cath-
olic, I would refuse to answer, since ine
question pries into my right to belief
and conscience, and primarily since it
could subject me to persecution and
prosecution.
Lest we forget, whenever any group
of dissidents has been persecuted, we
Catholics have never been overlooked.
Let’s face it, the Fifth Amendment is
for thé Protestant as well as the Cath-
olic, for the anti-Communist as well as
the Communist, for theeRepublican as
well as the Prohibitionist. In my book,
it is basic horse sense that I must recog-
nize the right of anyone and everyone to
use the Fifth Amendment, without pen-
alty or stigma, for if I do not, I open the
door to the destruction of my own rights
‘and that is against the law of God
and man.
Hollywood, Cal. JOHN HEALY
Hangman’s Noose
Dear Sirs: The world of the idiot boy is
taking shape under the whip lash of the
phony Paul Revere McCarthy. Some day
when he is smiling in his coffin I hope
that a bright lantern is hung in the
belfry so that the dumb-driven cattle
can see the biggest and foulest blotch on
American history. While McCarthy is
leading the chase of Communists he is
letting the fascist wolves and America
Firsters get away.
I hate tyranny in any form, whether
it be communism, capitalism, fascism,
or McCarthyism. All of them are swing-
ing the hangman’s noose over the heads
of free men. Unless free men wake up
and fight back they will die and be
buried in the shallow graves of suspicion
and doubt. “Those who won our inde-
pendence believed that the final end of
the state was to make men free to de-
velop their faculties. They believed
that freedom to think as you will and
to speak as you think are means indis-
pensable to the discovery and spread of
political truth,’’ said Justice Louis D.
Brandeis.
Here in Texas the state legislature is
busy drafting a law that would stamp
the words “written by Communists’’ on
every book that did not agree with the
Texas ideas of freedom and free speech.
It seems strange indeed that the law-
makers should be so concerned over what
people read, while they ignore the vital
necessity of passing other laws.
Houston, Tex. BILL STALNAKER
Disheartening Essays
Dear Sirs: This is a rather delayed reac-
tion to the articles headed Six Young
Authors in Search in your issue of
May 2. They formed one of the most
disheartening series of essays on litera-
ture that I have ever read. The most
unfortunate one, of course, was the one
by James Jones, who shows little knowl-
edge of the Elizabethan Age. But he
knows so little of so many things. He
just thinks, guesses, supposes, and hopes.
His knowledge of “‘neurosis’’ seems
extremely slight. In his own words, he
has yet to grow up.
Jefferson Young says we must always
be aware that God is love and the birdies
sing. That’s nice, but it’s a real world
that we live in. The convictions of
Maude Hutchins, if widely adopted,
would be terrifying if not sterilizing.
She is content to stay on the sidelines
and look at life passing by. At least I
get that impression from her essay. She
seems to advocate total non-commitment.
“Unimportant as subject matter is,” she
reluctantly admits, ‘‘there has to be one.”
I find little substance in the remaining
essays and too much rhetoric, particularly
in Leonard Bishop's. Styron’s was a
terrific letdown ftom what one might,
expect of a man with his abilities. John
Griffin points out that writers have been
withdrawing from the life scene but
rationalizes this movement.
As for my opinion on the state of
writing today, may I refer to an essay by
Albert J. Guérard in Volume III of
“New World Writing” ? The essay is en-
titled The iar Picea Dust
ae
Bowl. Mr, Guérard says: “. , . it seems
clear enough that some of the best —
American novelists, young and old, de-
cline to write realistic novels about the»
public crises of our time.”” And he adds
later in the article: “The malaise is seldom *
expressed frankly, however. It is more —
common to say that the novelist is failing —
in his responsibility to the modern world.
Withdrawn to some private world of
guilt or fantasy, he fails to document %
contemporary society.”
New York BERNARD LANDIS * ~
Books for Israel
Dear Sirs: Israel's schools and libraries —
are drastically short of books in English
that are needed for the technical and ;
intellectual advancement of its youth. In
an attempt to remedy this deficiency —
“Books for Israel’’ has undertaken to
collect as a gift to Israel from the Amer-
ican people volumes published since —
1940 on technical and scientific subjects,
as well as on American history and
civilization, art, economics, education,
law, philosophy, political science, psy-—
chology, and sociology. American literary
classics will also be welcome. Books —
should be in good condition.
Readers of The Nation are asked to §
help in this important “good neighbor’’
enterprise. Parcels should be marked —
“book rate’’—mailing charges are 8
cents for the first pound and 4 cents for ©
each additional pound mailed from any-
where in the United States—and ad--
dressed to Books for Israel, 115 King —
Street, New York 1, N. Y. Inquiries
should be addressed to us at Suite 1814,
250 West 57th Street, New York 19.
VITA KAUFMAN, Secretary
New York
X-Rays vs. Smoking
Dear Sirs: A college professor once told —
us that members of all the college de-
partments used the swimming pool ex-
cept the bacteriologists. They were
specialists and knew the dangers. Simi-
larly, Alton Ochsner shows in his article
on Smoking and Lung Cancer { May 23}
that he is a specialist. In his conclusion
he suggests that heavy smokers should
have chest X-rays at least every six
months and preferably every three
months. The use of X-rays has so in-
creased that an X-ray specialist might be
more afraid of the damage from thei
continued use than Dr. Ochsner is of thes
damage from smoking. %
HERBERT POMERANCE
Oak Ridge, Tenn.
‘ 1 leer 7 i.
. we ute he
Volume 176, Number 25
i;
New York, Saturday, June 20, 1953
ca!
Phe Shape of Things
Embarrassment of Deeds
We asked for deeds and now we are getting them.
Not necessarily the ones we wanted, but deeds just the
| same; and they are creating a problem in Washington.
For those the Russians have performed in the past few
| wéeks have been either desirable in themselves or at least
| reasonable, and well calculated to confuse further a
| foreign policy already heading in several directions at
| once; also to beguile our allies and reduce the pressures
for coid-war and pro-American policies (vide Italy).
A quick report of the variegated deeds so far chalked
up may heip make the point: Most immediately impor-
| tant, the concessions on prisoners of war which made
possible the truce settlement in Korea. The freeing of
William Oatis. The soft-pedaling of the Hate-America
| campaign in the Soviet Union and among the satellites.
Moscow's agreement to grant exit visas to the Russian
wives of two American citizens and the daughters of an
American woman divorced from a Russian. The easing
_ of news and travel restrictions in Russia and between
Russia and the rest of the world. The wide amnesty for
prisoners if the Sc¥iet Union. Moscow’s improved rela-
tions and the agreement to exchange ambassadors with
Yugoslavia. Communist overtures to Socialist and labor
organizations in the West, suggesting a revival of ‘‘popu-
| ~ lar frontism.’’ Successful Russian attempts to step up
€ross-curtain trade with the West; trade agreements nego-
tiated with Argentina, Iran, France, Japan, and others.
Moscow:s offer to recognize Turkish control over-Kars
_ and Ardahan, in exchange for support of the Russian
+ request for an international meeting to revise the
Montreux Convention of 1936 governing the Darda-
| elles. Soviet rejection of renewed meetings of the Four
| - Power Deputy Foreign Ministers on the Austrian treaty,
quickly followed by many conciliatory moves toward
Austria itself.
Do We Want to Bargain? ~
Without question, the most consequential of all Mos-
cow’s latest “deeds” has been the drastic revamping of
its policy in East Germany. Following the removal of
_ General Chuikov and his succession by a civilian High
Commissioner, Vladimir Semyenov, a whole series of
‘measures has been put through reducing, in some cases
oy ;
a A
roe ~ ~~
"Notion
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
almost abandoning, the collective controls over farming
and industry and many of the restrictions on religious
and educational freedom and on movements both ways
across the West German frontier. Most significant and
startling of all is the reduction of the East Germany
security police force (7. é., army).
Were it not for the self-defeating cross purposes in
the State Department and White House, Washington
could with magnificent propaganda effect take credit for
the sweeping shift in Russian policy. They could claim
that we forced Moscow to make one concession after an-
other, even winning an official acknowledgement of
mistakes made in Germany. Instead scarcely a note of
satisfaction has seeped out of Washington. The official
statements—echoed in the press—treat the whole busi-
ness as a nefarious scheme to lure the West into lowering
its defenses and weakening its alliance.
Certainly it looks as if Moscow wants to produce both
those effects. But is that so alarming? To call off your
own tough and provocative behavior in order to get the
enemy-to call off his preparations to fight would seem a
legitimate way at arriving at a point where you could
deal with him; if you want a deal, that is. Signs multiply
that Moscow does want a deal and that Washington
does not.
Who Sentenced the Rosenbergs?
The Nation, which several times has raised its voice in’
behalf of clemency for the Rosenbergs, again urged it in
a telegram to the President early-this week. As these lines
are written, their final hour is drawing near. What useful
purpose do their deaths serve? If they have been spies,
do we fear—if we let them live—that they will continue
to spy from their prison cells? Does anyone think that
their deaths will deter espionage agents anywhere who
habitually live with death? If the British permitted
Fuchs to live—the scientist who had infinitely greater
capacity for espionage than ever the Rosenbergs dis-
played—what is it that impels us to the utmost savage
reprisal?
We wonder whether future historians will say that it
was not the courts but McCarthyism which sentenced the
Rosenbergs to death. Judges and juries both are inevita-
bly products of their times. ‘"No human justice is exempt
from error,’ Le Monde of Paris wrote recently of the
9
case. “The Americans know it, but their natural opti-
ede
Sk
See
ee
ene
et
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 513
After the Truce 515
ARTICLES
Not So Neo-Fascist
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 517
Cold War's End: Time for Diplomacy
by Frederick L. Schuman 518
Threat to All T. V. A.’S:
Givaway Program No. 2
by Bruce Catton 521
Guilty of What?
The Charge Was Perjury
by Eugene Daniel 523
The Texas Brand in the Library
by Maury Maverick, Jr. 525
BOOKS
He Stuck to His Own Street
by Willard Thorp 526
New Books in Brief 528
THEATER by Freda Kirchwey 530
RECORDS by B. H. Haggin 531
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 520
by Frank W. Lewis 532
LETTERS opposite 513
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey Editor and Publisher
Carey McWilliams Editorial Director
Lillie Shultz Director, Nation Assoctates
Victor H. Bernstein
J. Alvarez del Vayo
Managing Editor
Foreign Editor
Marty Solow Assistant to the Publisher
Harold Clurman . Theater
B. H. Haggin Music
Gladys Whiteside Copy Editor
Caroline Whiting Assistant Literary Editor
Mary Simon Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
The Nation, published weekly and copyright, 1953, in the oF ie 42)
The Naticn Associates, Inc., 333 Sixt Avenue, New York nN
Entered as second-class matter, December 13, 1879, at fue Post Ofivs
of New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3,_1879. Advertising
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Public Affairs Information Service, Dramatic Index
514
tees 5
mism supports their iishaleahler Eire et * dicks te itu-
tions. It is perhaps this confidence which nae heir
press from reacting to the Rosenberg case. But this dis-
concerting silence may have another explanation in the—
political climate of the trial. The fear of being accused —
of pro- Communist sympathy by some McCarthy nas, be- |
come stronger than the fear of communism itself. . . .
We can only hope that through some last-minute re- ~
prieve, the Rosenbergs will still be alive when these
lines are read.
Prizes for Courage
Like most things courage is more valuable when it is —
relatively scarce. At a time like the present it is particu-
larly worth searching out and honoring it. That is what
the Sidney Hillman Foundaticn did in making its
annual awards for 1952, Three prizes went to North
Carolina newspapermen for their effective work in un-
covering Ku Klux Klan activities in the state. The win-
ners were Jay Jenkins of the Raleigh News and Observer,
Willard Cole of the Whiteville News Reporter, and
W. Horace Carter of the Tabor City Trzbune. Each spoke,
modestly and well, at the luncheon last week at the Bilt-
more Hotel in New York where the awards were given,
but it was left to the chief speaker, Jonathan Daniels,
editor of the News and Observer, to point out how much
easier it is to fight the Klan from a comfortable distance
than right at home where your next door neighbor and _
the storekeeper down the street may be Klansmen. He
added, however, that the Klan spirit is close to us all
‘‘whether it operates in the Klavern or in the Senate.”
Winners of other prizes were Irving Fagan of the
Labor Press Associated who received the Charles W.
Ervin Award in labor journalism for his writing, particu-
larly in the field of civil liberties, and Herbert Block .
(Herblock) whose magnificent cartoons in the Washing-
ton Post have become famous—and been freely repro-
duced—throughout-the country.
The Christmas Tie Club .
Henry W. Grunewald, the not-so-mysterious. “Dutch-
man” of the Washington tax scandals, was indicted some
time back on thirty-one contempt of Congress counts —
after he had refused to give a committee so much as his
full name, not to mention details of his notably profitable
bipartisan lobbying activities. Coming up for sentence on _
March 17, he was ordered by Judge Alexander Holtzoff to
reappear before the committee, and the matter of ee
sentence was deferred. The headlines, of course, created —
the impression that Grunewald had éxperienced a change
of heart and intended to purge the contempt. But while —
he did give some additional informatton, the committee —
reported back to the judge that the witness was still
evasive. Once again sentence was deferred, this time on —
7 ‘the plea
me ee ee
= * _— [ }
o
that Grunewald was suffering from a heart
ailment. The headlines now read: “Jailing of Grunewald
Depends on Health.” But the medical report suggested
~ that a jail sentence might have “a salutary effect on his
heart and vascular disease.” Undaunted, Judge Holtzoff
then came up with the ingenious theory that Grunewald
was entitled to leniency because he had relied upon
“advice of counsel” in exhibiting an attitude of “sheer
defiance” —the phrase is the judge’s—to the committee.
Accordingly Grunewald was fined $1,000, given a
ninety-day jail sentence (suspended), and placed on one
year’s probation,
We are neither shocked nor surprised at the news
which has just come to light that Judge Holtzoff belonged
to the “Christmas Tie Club” of judges and other Wash-
ington officials who received handpainted neckties from
the “Dutchman” every yuletide; in our book men who
wear handpainted ties are likely to accept gratuities or
worse. We merely note that political offenders have
drawn sentences ranging from six months to one year
(the maximum) in jail for their refusal to answer ques-
tions before Congressional committees. But then, of
course, they never gave away handpainted ties.
Books Are for Burning
While Maury Maverick, Jr., is trying to put out a book
fire in Texas's capital (see page 525), his distinguished
father, the former Congressman, is busy at the samé job
in San Antonio. The San Antonio affair has what a few
years ago might have been termed comic overtones. Mrs.
Myrtle G. Hance, organizer of the San Antonio Minute
Women, began things by scanning the city’s library
shelves and listing all books by authors who had been
named in Gongressional-committee hearings as Commu-
nists or as members of alleged subversive organizations.
Her list included some 600 titles, among them Einstein’s
_“Theory.of Relativity,” Thomas Mann’s “Joseph in
: Egypt,” Louis Untermeyer’s Treasury of American and
British Poetry,” and Dorothy Canfield Fisher's ‘Fables
for Parents.”’ Also included was “The Canterbury Tales”
because it was illustrated by Rockwell Kent..
Armed with this invaluable list Mayor Jack White,
whose wife—according to the New York Times—is a
member of the Minute Women, suggested that the City
Council “consider branding al] Communist-written vol-
. umes in the library as such.” But the then Acting City
Manager, Wylie Johnson, thought branding wasn’t good
enough and demanded that the books be burned, pre-
sumably with their authors.
» The city’s fifteen-man Library Board vigorously pro-
tested this cultural blood-thirstiness, and is being sup-
ported by an organization called the American Activities
Committee headed by ex-Congressman Maverick and
Mrs. Marie Sien Halfpenny, a writer. To date the books
are still on the library shelves, unbranded and unburned.
ee
June 20, 1953
After the Truce
OF GROWING importance is the United States attitude
toward the agenda of the political conference to begin
within ninety days after the Korean armistice is signed.
Will the Eisenhower Administration insist on confining
that conference to Korean questions? Or will it agree
that it shall cover major Far Eastern problemsvlike seating
Communist China in the United Nations, the future of -
Formosa, and Indo-China’s fate? The choice arose in
February, 1952, during the armistice talks. The United
Nations and the Communists then agreed that the politi-
cal discussions should deal with withdrawal of foreign
troops from Korea, a settlement of the Korean question,
“et cetera.” To the Communists that little “et cetera”
was a big word. It might turn the post-armistice meeting
into historic negotiations far a Far Eastern accommoda-
tion. But the United States lodged a reservation declaring
that “et cetera” should not be construed as applying to
questions outside Korea.
So the Truman Administration decided to limit the
political conference entirely to Korean issues,
After the new management moved into the White
House, there were signs suggesting that the Eisenhower-
Dulles team was willing to enlarge the future confer-
ence’s scope to encompass more sweeping Asian
problems. A fortnight after his inauguration, in his State
of the Union message, President Eisenhower said of the
Korean war:
It is clearly a part of the same calculated assault that
the aggressor is simultaneously pressing in Indo-China
and in Malaya and of the strategic situation that em-
braces the island of Formosa and the Chinese Nationalist
forces there. The working out of any military solution to
the Korean war will inevitably affect all those areas.
These words implied a belief that a Korean settlement
was feasible only within the larger framework of a
conference dealing with Indo-China, Malaya, and For-
mosa.
The same topic arose at Dulles’ famed April 6 dinner
with eighteen journalists in a private room at a Washing-
ton hotel. There the Secretary of State also hinted that
the United States would not insist on limiting the coming
political conference to Korean affairs. But in the past few
days apparently frightened of its own courage, the State
Department has retreated to the Truman-Acheson posi-
tion. Dulles intends to demand that the political con-
ference, which the Panmunjom truce makes mandatory,
shall confine itself to Korean questions. The reason
given has an air of plausibility until it is more closely
inspected.
The State Department argues that a conference on
Korea and a conference on broader East Asian affairs
would call for two different groups of participants. The
315
ae
ips
BAL stock y a
i ne ee ar
ae
tl
former would discuss removal of foreign troops from—
Korea and free elections, presumably under U. N.
supervision, with a view to choosing a parliament and~
government for a unified Korea. The conferees would
probably consist of a selected panel of Korean war bellig-
erents. But if there were also to be a conference on
general Far Eastern problems, the Administration now
says, a number of other nations with a legitimate interest
in those problems would be entitled to sit at the table.
Supposing the seating of Red China at the United Na-
tions, the disposition of Formosa, an Indo-China settle-
ment, and Malaya wete to be on the agenda. Then Dulles
would expect the roster of participants to be extended to
Japan, Nationalist China, the three associated states of
Indo-China, India, Pakistan, Burma, the Philippines,
Indonesia, and perhaps Ceylon, none of which would
attend negotiations restricted to Korea.
In the context of that argument, what is the Eisen-
hower formula? Though not yet finally decided, it
promises to be this: that there shall first be a conference
exclusively on Korean problems. Provided this proves
fruitful, the United States would consent to a second,
larger conference on major outstanding Asian questions.
And herein lies the joker.
Under the Eisenhower formula, the most significant
subject to be discussed at the political conference will be
Korea’s unification. Fulfilment of that aim has eluded
the world since 1946, Is it any more likely to be achieved
today? While the United Nations and the Communists
both want a unified Korea, their respective recipes are
obviously incompatible. The United Nations will never
acquiesce in a Korea unified under Communist rule; on
the other hand the Chinese and Russians will never
accept a single Korea under American tutelage.
SO THIS political conference, with Korea’s unification
at the end of the rainbow, could continue into infinity.
To make a fruitful result of such a negotiation the condi-
tion for holding another conference on broader Asian
problems would be to adjourn sine die the opening of
that second conference. Peking and Moscow would be
justified in flinging back at the United Nations the de-
mand its negotiators have made so often in connection
with repatriation of war prisoners.
cut-off date at the political conference on Korea,” the
Reds could insist. “After that, the meeting on broader
Asian problems would start.”
The truth is that the Eisenhower Administration wants
at almost any price to avoid a general Far Eastern con-
ference, just as it is trying to avert a Big Four meeting
with the Russians after Bermuda. In either case some of
our allies would be pulling Uncle Sam’s beard in one
direction while Congress would be tugging his coattails
in the other. India, Indonesia, and Burma, with consider-
able support from Britain and elsewhere, would favor
516
“There must be a
drawing Gommienaiee China into the United | as. et s
the thought of moving that way gives Eisenhower, Dulles, —
& Co, nightmarish fears of Congressional retribution. Is
‘
it necessary for the Administration to be quite that
allergic to Congress?
President Eisenhower's horse-trade with nine reaction-
ary G. O. P. Senators and,Congressmen the other day was
a memorable illustration of how not to conduct foreign
policy. Senator Styles Bridges, the New Hampshire
Republican, led the group that tacked a rider to an
appropriations bill. The rider would have cut off United
States financial support for the United Nations if Com-
munist China were admitted,
INSTEAD OF denouncing the action as an outrageous |
blackmail stunt, Mr. Eisenhower made a deal with its
authors. They abandoned the rider. In return, the Pres-
ident gave three pledges to these G. O. P. diehards:
1. He promised his Administration would resist Com-
munist China’s entry into the U.N.
2. He assured them the United Statés would lead the
Opposition to the Peking government's admission.
3. He gave his word that he would explore the possi-
bility of using the veto in the Security Council to keep
Red China out.
He thereby committed himself to a course the wisdom
of which Britain, India, and perhaps a majority of the
United Nations are ready to challenge. He deprived the
United States of a valuable asset in future negotiations
with Communist China and the Soviet Union. He accen-
tuated what is probably the most damaging difference
between America and its allies. ete
Is President Eisenhower's position so weak that he 3
had to bend his knee to the old stuffies of his party? On
a more recent occasion, he showed more strength—and
won. Almost overnight Senator Knowland, old-time pal
of Chiang Kai-shek, changed from a staunch opponent
of the Korean truce to one of its outspoken supporters.
There are reports from California that Knowland’s price
for this switch included a promise of the Senate leader-_
ship to succeed Taft and complete control of Cali-
fornia’s patronage, edging out Vice-President Nixon and
Lieutenant-Governor Knight. If these reports are true, ”
Eisenhower paid in small domestic coin to win support _
for major international policy. -
There is no need for Mr. Eisenhower to continue to’
cringe before the old guard. He could still countermand
the move to limit the agenda of the coming political -
conference. After all, as late as April 23, the President
declared at a press conference that there can be no real.
peace in Korea that ignores the broader problems in”
Asia,
[The concluding editorial of our series on The Present
Danger will appear next week.—EDITORS THE NAT-ON. }
The Nation —
a
———— re
SSS OE
——
,
SS
Rome
AMERICAN foreign policy—at least
what is known of it in Italy—has re-
ceived a smashing defeat at the polls
here. Despite Washington’s overt sup-
port, the $1,500,000,000 in American
aid which has poured into this country
since 1948, the “good advice’’ received
by Italian voters from letter-writing
friends and relatives in America, and the
intervention of Madam Ambassador
Luce, Premier de Gasperi’s center coali-
tion dropped in popular vote from 63
per cent in 1948 to 49.8 per cent. So
slim is De Gasperi’s majority in the new
Parliament that a handful of defections
or absences could endanger Italian sup-
port for such American-favored projects
as the European army, European integra-
tion, and the Atlantic Pact.
What the center lost, the wings—both
right and left—gained. De Gasperi’s
coalition lost a total of 67 seats in the
- Chamber of Deputies. The Communists
and Nenni Socialists gained 25 seats, be-
tween them, the Monarchists increased
their seats by 26, and the neo-Fascist
Italian Social Movement (M. S. I.),
by 23. While the Communists and left-
wing Socialists remain the government's
chief opposition with 37 per cent of the
seats, the extreme right emerges as the
fastest growing segment of the Italian
voting population.
, The election campaign was of ex-
traordinary interest. Some may have
thought that the new electoral law would
rob the vote in advance of any excite-
ment; in the end, because of De Gas-
-peri’s failure to garner a majority of the
_ popular vote, it availed its authors noth-
| inig. Possibly the Prime Minister fore-
| "saw this danger. In spite of the fact that
he is ten years older than President
| Eisenhower he conducted a most strenu-
June 20, 1953
‘ous campaign; in three weeks he ap-
peared at all the important meetings
from the Trentino to Sicily and deliv-
ered more than fifty speeches.
_ He knew that this time his battle was
different and more complicated one
~ Not So Neo-Fascist
than in previous elections. I am not now
referring to various American blunders,
such as Ambassador Luce’s speech at
Milan serving notice that there would be
no more American aid if Italy swung
right or left or the more serious effect of
the statement attributed to Frederick
Crawford, Mr. Stassen’s assistant, before
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
that Italy required no further economic
aid except offshore procurement orders
and that its “‘troubles . may be
summed up as coming from government
ownership, monopoly, corruption, and a
bad tax system.” Of course right and
left made good use of both incidents
against De Gasperi.
BUT THE CAUSE of the government’s
major difficulties in the campaign was
more profound. The elections were a
mirror of the problems that face the
Atlantic, coalition today all over Europe.
‘In previous elections De Gasperi and his
allies had a strong argument with which
to rally support: the specter of a Russian
general assault against Europe, helped
by the Communist Party in each country.
In 1948 the headlines alone made propa-
ganda for the Christian Democrats: the
press was filled with the Berlin blockade,
troop movements
against Yugoslavia, the Prague coup, all
rumors of Russian
the other supposed symptoms of coming
Soviet aggression. By contrast the head-
lines on the eve of last Sunday’s elec-
tions were “Commonwealth Prime Min-
isters Support Churchill’s Plan for a Big
Four Conference’; “Truce in Korea
Seems Imminent’; ‘“‘“New Trade Agree-
ments Between East and West.” Even
less than in France, if that is possible,
does one find here any apprehension of
Russian attack—either tomorrow or in a
more remote future. Thus one of De
Gasperi’s most effective electoral weapons
had lost its edge. Togliatti ended the
campaign of the Communists by playing
up in his last speech in Rome, on June 5,
the “guerra alla miseria,’” but in the
main the leftist-—as did De Gasperi—
J. Alvarez del Yayo
made foreign policy the principal issue.
But if the centrists had been deprived
of their old weapons against the left, it
was also harder this time for them to
fight the right. Since the last general
elections fascism has been made almost
respectable by certain actions and words
of Western leadership. Former Fascists
have been embraced. The Italian neo-
Fascists capitalized, for instance, on the
friendliness shown to Franco by Wash-
ington. The fight against fascism has
been ridiculed by those, some of them
liberals, who are convinced that there is
only one problem—to smash the Com-
munists and Russia. So it is no wonder
that in the land of fascism’s birth the
right as a whole is reviving. The fact is
the Italian right offers many nuances;
there are evident differences of approach,
for instance, between the Monatchists,
who have no enthusiasm for the excessive
state interference of the days of Il Duce,
and the neo-Fascists, some of whose
groups in the north, the seat of the
“Republic of Salo’’ which Mussolini set
up in the last months of the war, are
pretty wild.
The'National Monarchist Party, gen-
erously financed by M. Lauro, a prosper-
ous shipowner from Naples, carried on
an energetic campaign in the central and
southern provinces of Italy, where
among certain classes a sentimental nos-
talgia for the monarchy still exists. The
neo-Fascists had the advantage of an
aggressive leader in De Marsanich, sur-
rounded by men of considerable Fascist
audacity, such’ as Almirante, Roberti,
Mieville, Michelini, and Formichetta.
They played whatever tune the audience
wanted to hear: where it was popular,
they discreetly evoked the memory of
Mussolini; where it was better to appear
quite ‘“‘neo”’ they presented themselves as
free and clear of any damaging political
heritage. But behind them are the old
stalwarts of the party, the most famous
being Marshal Graziani and Prince Va-
leno Borghese, who exploit their war-
time records.
DL]
COLD WAR'S END
ie
a poe Soe eerie s
Se oT ae ee ea
; eres, Me =
Re ier
Time for Diplomacy . . by Frederick L. Schuman
HALF a dozen years ago an American
diplomat, who shall here remain name-
less, opened a round-table discussion at
the National War College with the com-
ment: “The problem we face is old:
Russian troops have beén in Central
Europe before. They have always had to
be driven out. They are there again.
They have to be driven out.” A historian
interrupted:.‘‘Mr, Chairman, when have
Russian troops ever been driven out of
Central Europe? They have been there
many times—ever since the Russians first
took Berlin in 1760. But they have never
- been driven out. They have always with-
drawn by agreement among the powers.”
The Chairman could think of no in-
stance. “Well . . . but the problem is
still the same.’ Obviously, it is not. Di-
plomacy and war are quite different pro-
cedures for accomplishing political ob-
jectives. Americans in 1953 must relearn
the uses of diplomacy—or fail utterly to
meet their responsibilities.
Sir Henry Wotton’s definition of an
ambassador as ‘‘an honest man sent to _
lie abroad for the good of his country”
mirrors the current evaluation of the
diplomatic art more accurately than the
wiser words of Edmund Burke: “‘All
government, indeed every human benefit
and enjoyment, every virtue and every
prudent act, is founded on compromise
and barter.”” Horse-trading isa Yankee
tradition. Yet America’s emergence as
leader of the free world has coincided,
incongruously, with a debasement of the
diplomatic function to the lowest point
it has ever occupied in public esteem.
Problems of power among sovereign-
ties can be dealt with only by fighting
or by bargaining. The problems we face
will not be fought over, for reasons to
be suggested presently. They must there-
FREDERICK L. SCHUMAN, professor
of political science at Williams College,
is among the most distinguished of
American political analysts. His latest
book is “The Commonwealth of Man’
(1952).
r5i8
fore be bargained over. Bargaining is of
the essence of the ancient and once hon-
orable science of negotiation, which
many Americans now view with con-
tempt and suspicion.
On the eve of the tripartite confer-
ence in Bermuda, and for months and
years beyond, Americans are challenged
to reassess their distrust of diplomacy
and to revive their skills at barter, The
paradox of the Great Republic, sum-
moned to negotiate and paralyzed by
fear of all negotiation, must be re-
solved. For in this case at least Speng-
ler’s dictum is valid: “We have not the
freedom to reach to this or to that but
the freedom to do the necessary or to do
nothing. And a task that historic neces-
sity has set will be accomplished—with
the individual or against him.”
WHAT CAN safely be bargained about ?
Churchill recently. asserted that he did
not believe that ‘‘the most serious prob-
lem of combining the security of Russia
with the freedom and security of West-
ern Europe is insoluble.” If not, how?
Said Sir Winston, June 5, 1946: “It is
better to have a world united than a
world divided; but it is also better to
have a world divided than a world de-
stroyed.’”” And on January 23, 1948:
“The best chance of preventing war is to
bring matters to a head and come to a
settlement with the Soviet government
before it is too late... . The best chance
is, by formal diplomatic processes with
all their privacy and gravity, to arrive
at a lasting settlement.’ The time is
now. Bermuda will be followed by other
parleys and by a settlement. On what
terms? These crucial questions admit of |
no simple answers. But something rele-
vant may be said as to a method of find-
ing answers.
Our skepticism at the uses of negotia-
tion—in no way mitigated by the pleas
of George F. Kennan, Hans J. Morgen-
thau, James P. Warburg, D. F. Fleming,
and other lonely voices—has been paral-
leled, until recently, by the Byzantine
obstructionism of Stalinist diplomacy.
Washington and Moscow alike have
long regarded diplomacy as a trap. The
source of doubt is the agony produced
by the “diplomacy” of the 1930's and
the analogue which holds that world
politics in the 1950's is comparable to
the 1930's. Democrats and Communists
alike successively “‘appeased”’ fascists on
the assumption that, at best, the prob-
lems of power posed by fascism could be
resolved by compromise or that, at worst,
the fascist Caesars would attack the
“other’’ side and leave “our” side in
peace,
The assumption was. tragic. Fascism,
once in power in Rome, Berlin, and
Tokyo, confronted both Freeland and
Marxland with an irreconcilable conflict,
leaving no choice but to crush fascism
by force or to be crushed by fascist
force. The mad “diplomacy” of 1931-41
destroyed the world balance of power _—
and gave the Caesars an apparent pre-
ponderance which they used to essay the
conquest of the globe. In the frustra-
tion of the enterprise twenty million
haavan beings died by violence. The
survivors concluded, understandably but.
wrongly, that all diplomacy is “appease-
ment,” that all appeasement is fatal, and
that the new problems of power between
democracy and communism again con-
front us with an irreconcilable conflict.
This logic, if persisted in, would have
led to World War Hi, waged ‘as an
atomic “holy war’ of mass externaina~
tion, with no victors and no end save a
peace of exhaustion among demented
refugees.
Happily, the analogy is false. No such
prospect is even remotely probable.
Democratic and Communist power hold- ’
a ers in great states have achieved a modus
vivendi in the same world for thirty-six _
years, however reluctantly, and: have co- -
operated for common purposes more
often than they have indulged in efforts
at mutual annihilation. What is far more
decisive is the circumstance that Marx-
land and Freeland, thanks to Western
,
The Nati
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4
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i teers ne
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a ar eer
a ld
TaN
Ss
i
Sere ESO SS. PPT eT
ee
on
rearmament, Russian industrialization,
and the Chinese revolution, have
achieved a global equilibrium and stale-
mate, which is the macrocosm of the
military deadlock in Korea.
Neither antagonist enjoys clear mili-
tary superiority over the other. Neither
can devise any plausible strategy of vic-
tory in World War III. Policy-makers of
great powers, even if mad or criminal,
never risk total war if they are unable
to persuade themselves that victory is
possible. Now and in all the years ahead
policy-makers in Washington and in
Moscow, whether sober with responsi-
bility or drunk with power, cannot en-
tertain any such illusion. Since no vic-
tory can be won by fighting. bargaining
for a ‘“‘settlement’’ is inevitable.
THE SOURCE of “peace” in the cold”
war supplies the tést of diplomacy in the
negotiations to come. We have an ab-
‘sence of global and total hostilities for
one reason only—an equipoise of fight-
ing capacity between the two coalitions
so contrived, with no one wishing it
so, that no power holders in either bloc
can afford to gamble on victory in the
~ event of ordeal by violence. Therefore,
over and again, each side has recoiled
from making demands on the other, sup-
_ ported by threats of force, for compo-
nents of power which the other would
be obliged to resist by force. Korea is
no exception, since the Truman Admin-
istration in January, 1950, led the world
to believe that America would not de-
fend Korea. By all present prospects this
gicbal stalemate will persist indefinitely,
with acither side capable of attaining a
credibie margin of superiority.
If the balance is the source of peace,
then the maintenance of the balance
must be the basis of a settlement which
will make “peace” a human reality and
aot merely a propaganda slogan. All
viable bargains among diplomats must
" rest upon the facts of power. The current
acts are such that we cannot “‘liberate”
- Eastern Europeans or Russians or Chi-
nese from the slavery of communism,
and Communists cannot emancipate
Western Europeans or Africans or Amer-
icans from the thraldom of “‘capitalism,”
save at a cost equivalent to the suicide of
civilization. We and they are thus
obliged to accept the present distribution
of world power between East and West.
These considerations imply distasteful
eam
une 20, 1953
a
consequences, One is the obvious truism
that governments do not negotiate about
their own survival. Another is that it is
necessary to recognize governments in
order to negotiate with them. London
and Washington will be divided at
Bermuda over recognition of Red China
and its admission to the United Nations.
Sooner or later the United States will be
compelled to deal with the Peking re-
gime as the government of China. We
may wait sixteen years, as we did
with the U. S. S. R., or we may extend
recognition promptly as a means toward
discussion. Non-recognition, which mis-
takenly equates recognition with appro-
bation, pays no dividends. Recognition,
albeit abominable to fanatics, would
repudiate anew the unworkable Wilson-
ian conception of recognition as-a wea-
pon of policy and return to Jefferson’s
de facto theory of the value of official
relations, even with detestable regimes,
reaffirmed by Byrnes in 1946. In order
to bargain one must talk. “Recognition”
has no other purpose.
Other unpleasant conclusions flow
from the premise here postulated, Amer-
ica will have to acquiesce in—without
in any way approving or indorsing—the
Communist regimes in Eastern Europe,
the established frontiers, and the existing
Communist system of alliances. Govern-
ments not confronted with force majeur
never negotiate boundary changes save
on a basis of quid pro quo. Governments
do not abandon alliances at the request
of potential enemies. These elementary
lessons of diplomacy we shall have to
relearn. So will the men in the Kremlin,
since they cannot hope to negotiate with-
out accepting the Western anti-Com-
munist regimes, the existing frontiers,
and the alliance system of the free world.
What is possible within these limits?
I venture to believe that several local
settlements are possible. Beginnings
must be made where tensions are great-
est and where potential antagonists can,
if they wish, disengage themselves from
one another—that is, in Korea, Austria,
Germany.
Costly experimentation has demon-
strated that we cannot conquer North
Korea and the enemy cannot conquer
South Korea. Continued partition is
Bi pahoak
Courtesy St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Rendezvous at Bermuda
319
therefore inevitable. If Syngman Rhee
prefers death to partition, there is no
good reason why he should not have his
choice so long as all others understand
that life is preferable to death. A united
Korea would be a Communist Korea or
an anti-Communist Korea. We cannot
permit the former. The foe cannot per-
mit the latter. But foreign troops could
eventually be withdrawn—ours to Japan
and the enemy’s to Manchuria—on the
basis of a pact among Japan, the United
States, China, and the U. @ S. R. to
disarm, and guarantee the
two Koreas against invasion or subver-
sion. To link such negotiations with the
questions of Formosa, Indo-China, and
China’s seat in the U. N. would, I be-
lieve, be futile. Let a divided Korea be-
come a_ buffer
bastions of Communist power and Amer-
ican power. Ultimate unification in a
world atmosphere of concord is by no
means inconceivable,
neutralize,
between the nearby
IN AUSTRIA our purpose is to get Rus-
sian troops out of the east and Moscow’s
purpose is to get our troops out of the
west. A treaty with an independent
Austria is possible provided there are
assurances against the Ostmark becoming
either a Red -satellite or an American
ally. Either development would jeopard-
ize the balance. The price of a treaty is
thus the neutralization of Austria- by
agreement among the powers. The result
would be another buffer, reducing fric-
tions among the giants and capable of
later becoming a bridge rather than a
road block between two worlds.
Whether a similar formula can be
applied to Germany remains to be seen.
Insistence in Washington and Bonn
that German neutrality is “impossible”
does not make it so. Diplomacy is the art
of the possible. It is impossible for the
Western powers to permit a united Reich
to become a Soviet satellite. It is equally
impossible for the Eastern powers to per-
mit it to become a NATO ally. The test
of the possible is the balance of power.
The Acheson-Dulles policy of sponsor-
ing a unified Germany, to be enlarged by
revision of the Oder-Neisse frontier and
to be allied with the West against the
East, is wholly impossible of realization.
' Continued adherence to this position
means the Reich’s indefinite partition.
A far more hopeful solution for all
concerned would be the unification of a
520
neutralized Reich within existing fron-
tiers and the withdrawal of all foreign
troops. To obtain Russian evacuation and
the orderly demise of the East German
regime, the United States could well
afford to pay*the price of German
neutrality. It is no answer to say that
Western Europe cannot be defended
against Russia without a rearmed Ger-
many as an ally. Western Europe, with
or without Germany, can never match or
balance the local military superiority of
the Soviet bloc. Its security depends, and
will always depend, not upon European
arms and alliances but upon the global
equipoise between the Eastern and West-
ern super-powers.
Will the Kremlin ever consent to quit
eastern Germany? The answer, I believe,
is yes—if we are willing to abandon our
campaign for frontier revision and agree
that a united Reich is to be neutralized
and guaranteed by a new “Locarno,” to
which all of Germany's neighbors, plus
Britain, America, and the U. S. S. R.,
would be parties. Soviet willingness to
entertain such an idea would be en-
hanced by the prospect of an orderly
demise of the Adenauer regime as well
as of the Grotewobl-Pieck regime. A
united Germany would be predominantly
Protestant and Social Democratic, com-
mitted to neutralism by its internal
political structure as well as by inter-
national engagements. Such an outcome
would deprive neither the Russians nor
us of any actual or reliable components
of power. It would offer both coalitions,
and all Germans, immense advantages.
What is possible beyond such local
settlements is a premature question, since
nothing will be possible if such settle-
ments are not negotiated. Should they
be achieved, exciting prospects loom
ahead: a resumption of East-West trade,
a hope of economic solvency for Western
Europe and Japan, accords for limiting
armaments, relaxation of Soviet control
of the satellites, opportunities for the
West to reconsider the future of colo-
nialism without regard to “cold war’—
in the end, perhaps, a reformation of a
.
rection of limited Wee government. :
Such visions will seem fatuous to those ~
who assume that America is incapable
of negotiation. We can, if we choose,
adhere to the Acheson conception of
“total diplomacy,” meaning no diplo-
macy whatever, and to the Dulles con-
ception of trying to impose our legalistic-
moralistic abstractions on the outer
world. We can refuse to compromise
with sin. We can cling to our illusions
of total victory, unconditional surrender,
and American omnipotence. We can, at
the behest of the Senator from Formosa
and the Senator from Bedlam, rededicate
ourselves to an inflexible anti-commu-
begetting more inquisitions at
home and more crusades abroad.
nism,
IN THIS EVENT by no means improb-
able, is all hope lost 2 1 think not. The
aging Stalin, by saying myet over and
again to all proposals for bargaining,
earned the fear and hatred of millions
and frustrated his own purposes. An
America which says no to all proposals
for bargaining will also earn the fear and
hatred of millions and frustrate its own
purposes. Our allies will then conclude
that America has no qualifications for
“world leadership,” is incapable of di-
plomacy, and is incompetent to be trusted
with the lives and fortunes of much of
mankind, They will then, because they
must, make their own peace with Marx-
land and end the cold war, whatever
the risks, and leave us to tag along later
or retire into a sullen isolationism,
This should not be permitted to hap-
pen, for it would upset the balance and
expose the Muscovites to temptations
which, in Christian charity, we should
protect them against. It is therefore to
be hoped that the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration, with the support of most Demo-
crats and of all Republicans save “the
madmen, will prove equal to the respon-
sibilities and opportunities which loom
ahead. ‘“To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the —
heavens . . . a time to keep silent, and a.
time to speak; a time to love, and a time —
to hate; a time of war, and a time of *
peace. .. . I know there is no good but —
for a man to rejoice and to do good in |
his life. And also that every man should |
eat and drink and enjoy the good of all —
his labor, it is the gift of God.” This is —
a time for diplomacy—and for peace.
The Natio 1
THREAT TO ALL TV. A’S
-_ Givaway Program No. 2 . . by Bruce Catton
Washington
THE drive to dismantle the whole
public-power system is going along faster
than anyone would have predicted four
- months ago. This second big givaway
program of the Eisenhower Administra-
tion is just as barefaced and as poten-
tially costly as the offshore-oil deal, and
there seems little chance of stopping it.
The basic idea is to keep the government
out of the power business wherever pos-
sible and by any means; if that can’t be
done, fix it so the private utilities can
get the power at the bus bar and sell it
on their own terms. Cripple the Rural
Electrification Administration and the
co-ops, put the hobbles on the T. V. A.,
knock out the government transmission
systems, and in general give the power
lobby everything it wants.
Since the attack has been launched on
every imaginable front, it is hard to pick
out any one place and say here is the
key struggle. Perhaps it is well to look
first at the attack on the T. V. A. pro-
gram, if only because it reveals the Presi-
dent of the United States in the act of
swallowing a campaign pledge whole.
On the surface all that is happening to
the T. V. A. is a moderate—as such
things go nowadays—shaving of its re-
quest for funds for the next fiscal year.
Actually, the T. V. A.’s whole future is
' threatened. If there is a vigorously ex-
_ panding economy anywhere in the
_ United States, it is in the Tennessee Val-
ley. The budget cut ordered by the Ad-
ministration would prevent the T. V. A.
from expanding its services to keep up
| with the economy it serves. Thus a few
years hence it would be possible to argue
_-that this particular segment of the pub-
lic-power system simply cannot provide
_ the power that the territory needs, Then,
of course, the way would be open to in-
vite the private-power boys to take over.
The T. V. A. has about reached the
BRUCE CATTON, a contributing editor
of The Nation, reports frequently on
what is going on in Washington.
| } June 20, 1953
:
es Avis
limit in its development of water power.
If it is to grow with the needs of its
area, it must build new steam plants.
What President Eisenhower’s Budget
Bureau did, after spending four months
studying T. V. A. requests, was knock
out $30,000,000 for two new steam-
plant units at Fulton, Tennessee, and
$31,000,000 for continuing construction
on other hydro and steam units. This
will create a tight situation. The T. V. A.
already foresees a power shortage for the
Memphis region. Its 15C preference cus-
tomers—municipalities and cooperatives
which by law can buy only from the
T. V. A.—will suffer first if a shortage
develops.
GOVERNOR CLEMENT of Tennessee
recently told a House appropriations
subcommittee that these preference agen-
cies have some $400,000,000 invested in
distribution facilities. In addition, since
the end of World War II the people of
the valley have put a billion dollars into
home and farm power-using appliances.
All these investments, he pointed out,
were made in the belief that there would
be a normal, business-like expansion of
the T. V. A.’s facilities to meet expand-
ing needs. By the fall of 1956, the Gov-
ernor warned, the people of the valley
“will either have the power available
that these steam units T. V. A. is recom-
mending will provide or they will be
facing a serious power shortage.”
Shortly before the Presidential elec-
tion last fall the editors of the Scripps-
Howard newspapers in Memphis and
Knoxville wired General Eisenhower
asking him to make clear his attitude to-
ward the T. V. A., a very live issue in
Tennessee. Eisenhower promptly wired
back: “If I am elected Presfdent,
T. V. A. will be operated and main-
tained at maximum efficiency.”” Rumors
that he would decrease T. V. A.’s oper-
ating efficiency, or even abandon the
project entirely, he declared, were “‘gross-
ly untrue and utterly false.” Ike then
carried Tennessee by 4,000 votes.
Now let us consider the noose being
slipped about the neck of the South-
western Power the
agency that sells power produced by fed-
eral dams in the Oklahoma-Arkansas-
Texas area. In marketing this hydroelec-
tric power the S. P. A. integrates it
with steam power in order to firm up
the supply for its preference customers.
It has contracts with a number of co-ops
which have pooled their resources to
build generating and transmission facili-
ties, and buys their entire output. In
turn the S. P. A.-sells to distribution
co-ops, which serve their own custom-
ers. For this purpose the S. P. A. has
what is-known as a continuing fund;
that is, it uses money received from its
sale of power to pay for the steam power
it buys. This takes nothing out of the
federal treasury, since income equals or
exceeds outgo over a year’s time. All the
%. P. A. needs is an annual authorization
from Congress permitting this use of the
money. For the coming fiscal year the
Truman budget authorized a continuing
fund of $5,650,000. In the Eisenhower
budget this was cut to $3,736,000. Now
the House of Representatives has cut it
to $150,000. The effect will be to kill
the S. P. A.’s ability to serve thé co-ops,
which will therefore be forced to sell out
to the power companies.
Significantly enough, Frank Wilkes,
president of the Southwestern Gas and
Electric Company, has argued that the
continuing fund is unnecessary, since the
utilities are ready to sign wheeling agree-
ments. After the House action, however,
he said that the utilities were no longer
prepared to do this; they would simply
buy the power at the bus bar and resell
it at what they considered a reasonable
figure. Of all the government agencies
which sell electric power the S, P. A.
does by far the largest business, propor-
tionately, with cooperatives—25 per cent
of its sales as compared with 5.9 per
cent for government power sales as a
whole. (Bonneville sells 2.5 per cent to
co-ops, the T. V. A. 9 per cent, the
Administration,
52k
’
OE iti SS
Bureau of Reclamation 1.4 per cent.) It
looks like rough sledding for the co-ops.
Appearances are not deceiving. The
Rural Electrification Administration is
the federal agency which makes the rural
electric co-ops possible by lending them
money at low interest rates and provid-
ing essential The
Eisenhower Administration is crippling
the R. E. A. in two ways. As of this writ-
ing, the House Committee on Appro-
technical services.
priations has cut the agency's loanable
funds to $165,000,000, which is about
$129,000,000 less than the amount con-
sidered essential by the National Rural
Electric Cooperatives Association. In
consequence the co-ops will be unable to
build any new generating or transmis-
sion facilities, which of course will place
them squarely at the mercy of the pri-
vate utilities, On that, the
R. E. A.’s administrative funds are being
limited to $7,750,000. This will mean
the firing of 150 employees, principally
technicians, and the crippling of the
technical aid furnished the co-ops.
To make the deal complete, Assistant
Secretary of the Interior Fred Aandahl
recently told a group of co-op leaders
top of
Zia
Courtesy St. Louls Post-Dispatch
522
from Colorado that the government is
‘adopting a new policy in respect to
preference customers on Bureau of Recla-
mation projects. (Preference customers,
it should be remembered, are municipali-
ties, CO-ops, and other public agencies
designated by law as entitled to the first
crack at federally produced power.)
Mr. Aandahl,
power becomes available on a new Recla-
Hereafter, said when
mation project, preference customers
who are ready to buy will be served.
Sales will then be frozen; that is, the
proportion of power sold to co-ops will
not be increased no matter how much
the co-ops expand, Thus the perform-
ance of the Southwestern Power Admin-
istration in building up its sales to
co-ops from nothing to 25 per cent of its
total business could never be duplicated.
As a final note, Representative Kit
Clardy of Michigan has just introduced
a bill which would raise the interest rate
on R. E. A. loans from 2 to 4 per cent.
This would make it all but impossible
for co-ops to break even.
Other companies are now taking the
contract offered by the Georgia Power
Company as their model. Georgia Power
SAT
eS:
>
er =a
#
<
‘ay
“a
. ; ‘ ~ J Los
;, as
refused to sign wheeling agreements; in- —
stead, it simply offered to buy govern-
ment power and then resell it, separate-
ly, to preference customers. Such a deal,
of course, would make the power com-
pany an independent middleman in the
distribution of government power and
deprive the government of all effective
control. Former Secretary of the Interior
Oscar Chapman steadfastly refused to
approve any such agreement, but he is
gone now, and so is the philosophy he
represented.
IF PUBLIC POWER can’t be licked in
one way it can in another. Look at Table
Rock Dam, in southern Missouri. A
short time ago, after preference cus-
tomers in the area had contracted to
buy power from Bull Shoals Dam, then,
nearing completion, the Defense De-
partment announced that Bull Shoals
power would be needed for aluminum
production. As a result the contracts
were canceled and it was announced that
the preference customers would get
power from Table Rock Dam, whose
construction, just getting under way,
would be expedited. This winter, how-
ever, Defense Secretary Wilson stopped
work on Table Rock Dam, and the
Bureau of the Budget refuses to send
down a request for construction funds.
As if to make certain that nobody
misunderstands what is going on, the
House Appropriations Committee ex-
pressed itself unmistakably on public
power in a couple of paragraphs inserted
in the Department of the Interior's ap-
propriation bill. This policy statement,
which presumably expresses the senti-
ment of the House majority, stipulates
that the government should build dams
and then let the private companies buy
the power at the bus bar and distribute it
over their own lines, It also says that—“in
all future projects or new starts which in-
clude transmission lines private enterprise
shall be urged to take the initiative in
constructing, owning, and operating such
works before money is made available
for federal construction.” Here we have —
nothing less than a reversal of the whole
public-power concept quietly wrapped
up in an appropriation bill.
The givaway operates on all levels.
The Roanoke Rapids power site, which
acquires its real value from heavy fed-
eral expenditures farther upstream, is
handed over to the Virginia Electric
The Nation -
|
a
ie
lpg
a”
he
ie
=
I
ieeuak: a7
ae a
at
to be handed over to the Idaho Power
‘Company. The power potential at Niag-
ara and on the St. Lawrence is to be
developed without federal intervention.
What all this adds up to is a victory
Jell’s Canyon is aoa
wy re pe a v's =
of the first magnitude for the power
lobby. With the wreckage of two dec-
ades of gains lying all about us, we
might as well be back in the mid-
twenties. One observer, moved to sar-
donic humor by the brazenness of the
deal, remarked the other day: “When
they build those three private dams in
the Snake River, they should name them
Albert B. Fall Dam No. 1, Albert B.
Fall Dam No. 2, and Albert B. Fall
Dam No. 3.”
GUILTY OF WHAT?
The Charge Was Perjury
__ THE perjury conviction of William Perl,
LO I See Te
SILT OAT EE TUN PRE
ore pears rey 2s
PENELOPE REN
_ defendant with the Rosenbergs,
thirty-four-year-old physicist, is merely
an episode in the larger drama of Julius
_and Ethel Rosenberg. But Perl’s strange
trial in federal court last month raises
some disturbing questions about the
government’s methods in spy cases.
Qstensibly, Perl was tried on the
charge of lying four times to the federal
grand jury that subsequently indicted
the Rosenbergs. Actually, Perl was ar-
rested for espionage. This was the real
issue, as reporters were told by a helpful
assistant United States attorney.
The four counts in the indictment
were based on Perl’s denial to the grand
jury in the summer of 1950 that he knew
Julius Rosenberg; Morton Sobell, co-
now
serving a thirty-year sentence; Helene
- Elitcher, wife of a government witness
against the Rosenbergs; and Ann and
Michael Sidorovich. Mrs. Sidorovich, ac-
cording to David Greenglass at the
Rosenberg trial, was to have been a
courier for the ring. After a week-long
trial Perl was found guilty, with a
recommendation of clemency, on the
Rosenberg and Sobell counts and* not
guilty on the other two. Judge Sylvester,
j. Ryan ignored the jury’s urging and
gave Perl the maximum sentence, five
years on each count, to run concurrently.
+ ..The F. B. I. began to question Perl
about his City College classmates, Sobell
and Julius Rosenberg, early in the sum-
~ mer of 1950. One F. B. I. agent, he testi-
fied, warned him then, ‘Rosenberg and
Sobell are going to fry.” Perl was first
brought before the grand jury on August
EUGENE DANIEL is a free- -lance writer
in New York.
: June 20, 1953
dee
18, 1950, and again on September 11
and October 4. He was told plainly that
he was being asked to appear as a wit-
ness, not as a defendant. But he insisted
he did not have the information the
government sought. In the winter of
1951 he was summoned to a conference
of F. B. I. agents and government pros-
ecutors. Roy Cohn, then an assistant
United States attorney and now Senator
McCarthy’s assistant, said to him, Con-
fess or you will be indicted. Perl replied,
“I have nothing to confess. I would like
to hear any charges against me in open
court.”
A few weeks later, midway in the trial
of the Rosenbergs and Sobell, Perl was
arrested at night on a sealed indictment.
He was charged not with spying but with
answering falsely to the grand jury six
and seven months earlier. Out on bail
but jobless, Perl moved in June, 1952,
to bring his case to trial. Judge John
F. X. McGohey denied his motion on the
government's plea: that it would be un-
wise, in the interest of security, to reveal
its proof until the Rosenberg appeals
were settled. This peculiar arguiment
lends strength to the contention of the
Rosenbergs’ lawyer that Perl was in-
dicted to inflame sentiment against them.
Finally, twenty-six months after he
was indicted, Perl’s trial began on May
18, 1953. On the first day the govern-
ment clearly tipped off the court to the
underlying case. Assistant United States
Attorney Robert Martin read the account
Perl had given to the grand jury of a
mysterious visit from a Vivian Glassman.
A sister of a girl he had known, Vivian
Glassman slipped into Perl's Cleveland
apartment in July, 1950, a few weeks
after the F, B. I. first questioned him.
by Eugene Daniel
Perl told the grand jury Miss Glass-
man said nothing to him, grabbed a
sheet of paper, scribbled Julius Rosen-
berg’s name on it, and wrote that she
had money for Perl to flee to Mexico.
He asked her to leave and reported the
incident to the F. B. I.
His telling the F. B. I. and grand jury
about this seemingly incriminating visit
hardly appears to be the conduct of a
spy. Perl said he thought the visit was
a “trap” of some kind.
THE GOVERNMENT then. hurried on
to make its perjury charges stand up. Rec-
ords were brought in to show that Perl,
Roseriberg, and Sobell were all electrical-
‘engineering students at C. C. N. Y.,
attending classes together from 1934 to
1938. Two of their former classmates
testified they saw Perl, Sobell, and Rosen-
berg talking together in hallways and
the lunchroom, at Young Communist
League meetings in the Bronx, at Union
Square rallies, and at ten-or-twelve
gatherings of the Steinmetz Club, a
Young Communist League affiliate for
electrical engineers. The government also
produced two letters Perl had written his
family in 1940 and 1941 referring to
“my friend . . . Sobell.”
The most* articulate witnesses were
Max Elitcher and his wife, Helene. In
great detail they described a party in
1944 at which they were present with
Perl and Rosenberg. They told of an-
other in 1946 at the Rosenberg apart-
ment that included Morton Sobell. But
Perl’s lawyer drew from Max Elitcher
an admission that although’ he was‘a
member of the Communist Party from
1939 to 1948 he had sworn on navy
loyalty forms that he was not, The jury
523
Se a
eae Ta Te aS stern Sih 5 Evra. li veaaewae
apparently believed neither of the Elitch-
ers. It found Perl not guilty of lying
when he satd he did not know Helene.
The government’s clincher on the
charge that he knew Rosenberg and
Sobell was Perl’s own confusing testi-
mony in his grand-jury appearances. On
August 18 he had said he did not know
them. On September 11 he said he now
recalled Sobell from City College. On
October 4 he said he now had an “‘aware-
ness” of Rosenberg from school and may
have kept in touch with Sobell for
awhile after graduation.
TAKING THE STAND in his own be-
half, Perl made no effort to rebut any of
the testimony. Indeed, all through the
trial he had forbidden his lawyer to ob-
ject to any of the evidence, holding that
anything that was true could not hurt
him. He based his defense almost en-
tirely on the meaning of the word
“know.” As Judge Ryan said in his
charge to the jury, testimony is perjured
only ‘when it is given contrary to belief.
The issue was: did Perl give answers to
the grand jury truthfully—albeit mis-
takenly—or did he deliberately lie?
Perl said that when the grand jury
asked him if he knew Rosenberg and
Sobell he thought the questions meant:
are you presently and intimately associ-
ated with them? This was logical, he
said, because the F. B. I. had been
questioning him weeks before about both
men and told him they knew the three
were at school together. Therefore, his
lawyer argued, it would have been ab-
surd to conceal the old relationship. Perl
said he had truthfully answered all the
questions of the F. B. I. and the United
States attorneys and told his family to
cooperate with the inquiry. The very
letters used by the government to show
Perl knew Sobell after City College sup-
port his cooperation claim.
The contradictions in his grand-jury
testimony, Perl said, stemmed from
honest thought processes. He was deep
in his research work for the govern-
ment’s National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics when the probe burst on
him in 1950. He was “shocked and
horrified,” he said, by the F. B. I.’s in-
trusion into his life. On his first appear-
ance before the grand jury he couldn’t
recall Sobell and Rosenberg. On_ his
second and third appearances he began
to get “an awareness I didn’t have
524
before . . . visualization, a recollection.”
Perhaps the most telling factor in the
jury’s decision was Perl’s candid admis-
sion at his second grand-jury session that
he feared any link between himself and
Communists “‘would prevent me from
doing physics.” At his perjury trial Perl
again said openly, “I had one single
idea in mind. To make clear to the grand
jury that I was not associated with those
perjured souls {Sobell and Rosenberg }.”
The government seized on this as a
motive for Peérl’s untruthfulness. Perl’s
lawyer might have argued that in the
present climate of opinion his client's
fear was warranted and that his frank
admissions were not in character*if he
was a perjurer,
It is likely that the jury during its
four-hour deliberations spent most of its
time arguing over the word “know.”
Although his charge was eminently fair,
Judge Ryan may have played a large role
in determining the jury’s mind on this
key word. During Perl’s cross-examina-
tion he asked what the defendant now
understood by “know.” Perl said, “I'd
have to consult a dictionary.” The Judge
snorted, ‘Did you look it up in a diction-
ary when the grand jury questioned
you?” Later,-in sentencing Perl, Judge
Ryan termed his explanation “stupid and
clumsy.”
WHILE THE JURY was out, the case
developed its last unusual turn. Prosecu-
tor Robert Martin told the newspapermen
that he was unhappy because the papers
had given the case and himself very
little publicity. What do you expect?
was the reply. Since espionage had barely
crept into the trial, editors had buried it.
Martin pondered this, and after the
jury brought in its verdict and Perl’s
lawyer asked for continuation of bail
pending sentence, he jumped to his feet
and said that the government opposed
bail because it had ‘‘information tying
this defendant in with the Rosenberg
espionage ring—directly.”” What was the
information? Martin was “‘sorry, but we
can’t make it public at this time.”
That did it. The next morning the
New York Times and Herald Tribune
lifted Perl from inside pages to page
one. The News Jed with the story. In all
accounts the emphasis was nicely divided
between the verdict and Martin’s claims.
Despite its assertions that Perl was in
constant touch with spy-ring members,
A a ee
- ee ues Sa tia F
the government proved much less. At
best it proved that Perl lied about
knowing two Communists twelve years
ago. Except the. Elitchers’ questionable
testimony, no evidence was offered to
show that Perl knew Rosenberg and
Sobell from 1944 to 1950—the years
when their espionage conspiracy was.
operating, according to the indictment
under which they were convicted.
In a saner atmosphere it is inconceiv-
able that Perl would have stood trial for
such trivial evasion. As Mr. Martin ex-
plained in another aside, “If we tried ©
every case that was technically perjury,
we'd be swamped.” From this observa-
tion and Roy Cohn’s warning it is clear
that Perl was tried for perjury be-
cause he did not confess to espionage.
Even Judge Ryan looked beyond the
courtroom to arrive at his stiff penalty. -
After the verdict was announced he
directed the United States attorney to
bring him F, B. I. reports on Perl to
help him determine the sentence.
One big question looms over the
whole affair: why bother with Perl at all?
The Rosenbergs say he was arrested dur-
ing their trial to whip up feeling. An-
other theory finds the reason in his em-
inence as a physicist, In the fifteen years
after he graduated from C. C. N. Y.
cum laude, Per] had established himself
as an outstanding aerodynamics theorist.
Of all the persons linked to the Rosen-
bergs, he alone was capable of under-
standing atomic secrets. Did the govern-
ment reason that since the ring lacked
such a trained person one had to be
found? At the time of Perl’s indictment
‘United States Attorney Irving Saypol
said Perl was supposed to have been a
government witness against the Rosen-
bergs. Did the government convict Perl
of perjury because he would not or could
not confess to being the missing man at
the center of the ring? /
The NATION
~ tw
25
= ad
Nat
Me Toten oe ie
Texas
MAT oe Sain
The
Brand
in the Library
By Maury Maverick, Jr.
¢ {This is The Nation’s own “Voice of America,” an occa-
_ sional feature bringing to our readers condensations of
_ important speeches which have received little or no notice in
|. the press. Maury Maverick, Jr., son of the former Congress-
| man, is a member of the Texas legislature. The following
Speech was delivered before that body in the course of a
| recent debate ona bill to “brand” certain books in-all the
iY public libraries in Texas. An attempt to do the same thing on
_ a municipal level in San Antonio, Texas, is commented on in
i the editorial pages of this issue-—EDITORS THE NATION. |
: , Austin, Texas
OUSE bill 566, which has been criticized by the Dallas
Morning News and Times-Herald and the Austin
t American, will cause all books not used for comparative study
| to be removed from public libraries if they purportedly
(1) discredit the family; (2) ridicule the American Consti-
tution and privileges enjoyed thereunder; (3) hold up to
scorn freedom of religious worship and religious instruction;
(4) hold up to contempt American or Texas history; (5)
advocate the overthrow of the government by violence.
The first four items mentioned obviously make for an un-
constitutional law, since they destroy free speech and freedom
of the press. The last item is worthy of a separate analysis,
| which I shall subsequently make. -
GET SAE, BENE PL
q AS FOR WRITING which purportedly discredits the family,
i there may be those fanatics who will demand that the Holy
_ Bible be removed from public librariés, for it is stated accord-
ie ing to the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 11, verse 35: “For
| I,am come to set a man at variance against his father, and
| the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
E against her mother-in-law.”
. As for publications which ridicule the rights and privileges
enjoyed under the federal Constitution, the very first publica-
: tion to be removed from public libraries will be the statute
~ books which will contain H. B. 566, should said bill become
} the law of the land.
As for publications which purportedly hold up to con-
if tempt freedom of religion, there may be those who will de-
F mand that the Declaration of Independence of the Republic
| of Texas be removed from all public libraries, for it is there
_ stated: “[The} government has been forcibly changed with-
| out the people’s consent from a-restricted Federative Repub-
| lic composed of sovereign states to a consolidated central
military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but
that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies
| June 20, 1953
Se Sy eee,
of civil liberty, the ever-ready minions of power, and the
usual instruments of tyrants.” .
In addition there is the risk that the Constitution of the
United States of America will have to be removed because of
the language in Article I of the Bill of Rights, which reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of
religion.”’ This, of course, is the doctrine of the separation of
church and state and to many people is considered as being
contemptuous of religion.
As for books which unjustifiably hold up to public con-
tempt American and Texas history, there might well be those
who will insist that all books be removed which criticize the
murder of Alexander Hamilton by Aaron Burr, the Dred
Scott. decision, the burning of the South by General Sherman,
the “Ku Klux Klan, and all books which refer to President
Cleveland’s illegitimate child. The poetry and writing of
Walt Whitman, who grew up in an era which saw lobbying
approach its corrupt zenith, and who cried out against
‘. . . bawling office holders, kept editors, bribers, compro-
misers, lobbyists, spongers, the lousy combines and born free-
dom sellers of the earth,” may be taken out of the libraries.
NOW PERMIT ME to turn to that part of H. B. 566
which requires that all books in public libraries be stamped
with quarter-inch-high words in red print if the author
is in fact or is alleged to be subversive or once a member of
some organization on the Attorney General’s list. The only
other large countries in modern times to institute book-
branding have been Japan, Germany, Italy, and Soviet Russia.
An article entitled What You can Read in Russia in
Harper's Magazine, for April, 1952, states:“Censorship is
rigorously applied in Russia. The Lenin Library in Moscow,
which is proud to be counted among the five richest libraries
in the world, sometimes prints on its catalogue cards, ‘This
work cannot be consulted.’”’
In the Lenin Library at Moscow, books are branded—and
we will do the same thing if we vote for H. B. 566.
As for Nazi Germany, I quote to you from the book
“Germany Enters the Third Reich,” by Calvin B. Hoover:
“A sort of index expurgatoris was set up . . . books by
thousands from the public libraries and the loan libraries were
burned in gigantic public bonfires by the students.’’ The same
thing was done in Italy, as described by Shepard Clough in
his book “Making Fascists.”
Judge Learned Hand, now an old man and truly one of
the great jurists in the history of our nation, stated it much
better than I can when he said:
“I believe that that community is already in process of dis-
solution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a
possible enemy; where non-conformity with the accepted
creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection;
where denunciation without specification or backing takes the
place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dis-
sent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has
become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the
open lists, to win or lose. Such fears as these are a solvent that
can eat out the cement that binds the stones of our govern-
ment together. They may in the end subject us to despotism
as evil as any that we dread.”
325
5
an el al
a ora es
BOOKS
He Stuck to His Own Street
LETTERS OF SHERWOOD ANDER-
SON. Selected and Edited with an
Introduction and Notes by Howard
Mumford Jones in Association with
Walter B. Rideout. Little, Brown and
Company. $6.
By Willard Thorp
HY is it, one wonders, that there
are still hidden passages in the
lives of many American writers, unex-
plained episodes and changes of direc-
tion and purpose? When will the bi-
ographers of Poe, Melville, Whitman,
Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Stephen
Crane, Thomas Wolfe, and Edith Whar-
ton complete the record and tell all that
we need to know? The still unresolved
enigmas imtheir lives make the tasks of
a biographer of Keats or Thackeray or
Shelley seem routine. In part it is, of
course, that most English writers can be
measured against their tradition, whereas
the bolder and more imaginative of our
American writers were making a tradi-
tion which we as yet imperfectly under-
stand.
There is still much to know and sa
about Sherwood Anderson, although the
biographers have already been busy. The
present volume of 401 letters, selected
from the rich horde of 5,000 in the
Newberry Library, answers many ques-
tions about him, and they are a valuable
addition to the truth about Anderson,
but they raise, “it must be admitted,
almost as many questions as they answer.
The editors had to use some principle of
selection, and their choice was certainly
a sensible ofie—to present mainly those
letters which speak of Anderson’s
methods and purpose as a writer, his
special sense of the place of the writer
in America, his relationships with other
writers and artists, and his understanding
of the psychology of the writer. By in-
WILLARD THORP is professor of
English and chairman of the American
Civilization Program at Princeton Uni-
versity. He 1s coeditor of “Literary
History of the United States.”
526
tent there are no letters here which
Anderson wrote before he turned his
back on the business world. The excuse
offered is that “there is no good ex-
huming letters written by Anderson the
business man, a quite different fellow.”
The next biographer may well say that
the excuse is lame. That “‘quite different
fellow’ we need to know about, for
Anderson several times wrote into his
work his still mysterious defection from
“Roof Fix.’’ The experience was trauma-
tic as well as crucial. Anderson subse-
quently made a legend of it, until he
had clothed naked fact—whatever it was
—in at least seven veils.
Another difficulty was beyond editorial
control. Anderson retold the story of his
life many times. He used his father and
mother, his brothers, his boyhood days
in Clyde, as a writer of fiction needs to,
but he disconcertingly called his fictions
“A Story Teller’s Story” or “Tar, a
Midwest Childhood.’ Knowing Ander-
son’s particular propensity for passing
off fiction as fact and fact as fiction, a
habit which makes life difficult for his
biographers, one cannot help wondering
how true to essential fact his letters are.
They seem to be utterly frank, especially
when he is writing to friends of long
standing who loved him—Clara and
Ferdinand Schevill, for instance, or
Roger Sergel. But an insistent question
crosses the reader’s mind: are Anderson’s
letters, even to those nearest him, partly
fiction? Are things left unsaid or said
fancifully? Will future biographers have
to work over these letters as they have
the memoirs and the autobiographical
stories, winnowing them to find the hard
kernels of fact?
To ask this is probably to beg the
question. What was fact about his life
was what Anderson thought it was, even
though the fact frequently put on a new -
but not necessarily a false face. And
there is no doubt that the letters present
Anderson at full length and are the
self-portrait of the artist as Midwesterner
in awe of the praise of the cultured East,
as a man with a real vocation, as a father
delighting to discover belatedly the stur
- Anderson, he never lost a friend, and ©
—_—
oh Nee De
i =
diness of his sons, as a constant inventor
of “projects,” a generous -and lovable
encourager of others who wished to po
his way, a reluctant but earnest political”
man, a specialist in the particular submar-
ginal America which he knew better than
any other of our writers. There is, certain-
ly, no fiction mingled with two insistent —
facts which the letters reveal: since there
was no trace of meanness in Sherwood
believing as he did in the necessary
supremacy of art in a civilized society, he
never lost his sense of vocation, though
the persistent failures of his later years ~
might well have made him bitter and —
abusive.
Occasionally, too, the essential Ander- —
son comes through so strongly and |
sharply to the reader that he is hauled up
short. In 1939, for example, Dwight ©
Macdonald of the Partisan Review was
questioning writers about their aims— ©
standard practice for such magazines.
Anderson let Macdonald have it, straight ©
from the bow, ignoring the postcard
form and using a long letter for his
arrow.
And now as to the questions. In answer
to the first, I would have to say that it is
no part of my nature to analyze very —
closely what influences me and what
doesn’t. I am interested in storytelling. My —
mind is likely to stay on the street in
which I happen to be walking, rather than |
on America as a whole. I just don’t think
that way, and in thinking that way it is —
impossible for me to say whether either —
Henry James’s or Walt Whitman’s work 4
is more relevant to the present and future —
of American writing, etc., etc.
Anderson goes on to say that he has
no particular audience in mind when he ~
writes. “I have a notion that at the
present time many people who otherwise
might be more interested in the human —
side of people have gone off into their
effort to solve life through economics.” —
He is pitched outside his own world by
talk about the influence of criticism on |
the writer. “I like praise and dislike
blame.” A pompous query about “the:
great tradition’”’ elicits three short sen- —
tences: “I think it goes on and on in —
spite of all the things you mention. The
difficulty is to keep it straight. All the
morality of the-artist is involved in it.”
The last question gets the best answer
and presents Anderson in the truest like-
ness a biographer could ask for.
The Nation |
ba
" S * the
EE yen ene eee fn
me Se eNT
“ Sherwood Anderson
This again gets me outside the house in
; which I sit, the street in which I walk. It
plunges me off into a world of thinking
_ that in some queer way does not belong to
me. I believe that my own responsibility is
to those immediately about me. I frankly
-do not understand world movements.
They seem to me queerly accidental. Out-
_ side any possibility of any clear thinking
on my part, I want my own job, and while
these things may have a tremendous in-
fluence on my job, I try to keep my own
_ mind on the job itself. I am not and do
_ not pretend to be a world thinker, a na-
_ tional thinker, or a political thinker. You
S see, Macdonald, this is about all I can say
on the subject. To me all such words as
“the people,” ‘‘the masses,” “nations,” etc.,
rr ee
_etc., are rather empty words. I don’t like
attempts at big thinking. I suppose there
are men who can do it, and I am satisfied
to leave the job to them. To me the world
is simply filled with individuals some few
_ of whom I would like to come to under-
stand a little., . :
In the troubled thirties Anderson tried
to be a political man and ventured on
“big thinking.” Drawn to the left as
*most American writers of any stature
were, he united with other artists in
"attempting to arouse the conscience of
Herbert Hoover after the still unfor-
gotten and unforgivable assault on the
Bonus Army (‘‘What happened here in
~ Washington looked to me like Tsar-
dom’). He joined graups, permitted his
name to be used on letterheads. Even
*before he died such indiscretions were
beginning to catch up with him. In these
days when Congressional investigators
ate chiefly vigilant in hunting down new
quarry, it may be well to have it on the
record that Anderson, as his letters
‘show, hated communism as much as he
did fascism. (The dead may be the
next group to be summoned to the Klieg
~~ «
lights.) Let Anderson repeat, in his de-
fense, if he is permitted to speak, what
he wrote in 1939 to Herbert Feis, an
economist who was then an adviser to
the State Department.
Some years ago I had a letter from
Henri Barbusse or Romain Rolland, I do
not know which, asking me if my name
could be used in some sort of an organiza-
tion [Executive Committee of the World
Committee Against War and Fascism], as
I understood it, against Fascism, and I
presume I said O.K. I am sending you a
copy of a letterhead they use in their
literature. As a matter of fact, Herbert, I
have never been to a meeting of the organ-
ization and know nothing about it except
what appears on this letterhead. The
letterhead seems to say that I am counselor
to the president, who seems to be Romain
Rolland; but if I am, he never in any way
consulted me, nor did I ever give him any
advice.
I presume, however, that I will have to
find out whether or not my name appear-
ing thus on the letterhead of this organ-
ization makes me any kind of an officer.
At any rate, I know I am not an organizer
of anything. I really suppose, Herbert, I
am just an ordinary old-fashioned liberal
Democrat and certainly with the same im-
pulse against Fascism, Communism, or
any other sort of dictatorship that most of
us feel. I wonder if you could enlighten
me about this.
WHAT, MOTIVATED Anderson's at-
tempts at “big thinking” in those years
will be clear enough to other liberal
Democrats—or dermocrats—who survive.
The depression had shaken his immense
faith in America, under which was sub-
sumed belief in the ultimate taming of the
machine and the possibility of civilizing
business. He did not think in terms of
historical forces or the revolt of the
masses. Rather, he-was remembering men
and women he had known in Winesburg,
the textile mills of the South, and in all
the Hello Towns of America through
which he had wandered in those rest-
less journeys which were both escape
and discovery for him. One. suspects,
too, that being a political man was
for Anderson a substitute for what he
knew well enough was the real work
which he could no longer do. His waste
basket had always overflowed with
botched pages, but most of the pages
written in the thirties were discarded or
should have been. The much-revised
“Beyond Desire” (1932) is perhaps his
poorest work, and ‘Kit Brandon” (1930)
is not much better. Though Maxwell
Perkins was now his editor, there was
‘little that even he could do for this
“sixty-year-old smiling public man.”
The other hours Anderson filled with
projects for getting his stories on the
stage and in pouring out letters to aspir-
ant novelists and to thesis-writers who
requested the story of his career. There
are too many letters of this kind in the
collection. entertained few
ideas, one reason, perhaps, why he re-
presented them in so many guises, as he
did the chief episodes in his life. Oddly
enough, his ideas about himself are not
Anderson
The true inside story
of totalitarian domination
... of the human mind —
and heart.”
THE CAPTIVE
MIND
by CZESLAW MILOSZ
“The Captive Mind is in a class
‘by itself... without in the least
belonging to the still increasing
confession literature of former
Communists.,.. Brilliantly, mov-
ingly and with a wealth of psy-
chological detail, it lays before
us the whole arsenal of reasons
and motives with which men can
argue themselves into submission
and conformity. The inner dra-
ma of a whole generation un-
folds itself in the reports this
Polish poet gives of the battle
which he gave himself in order
to win freedom with security,
Because he is a poet, he still had
to explain it all to himself, re-.
living his experience, and thus
explaining to us what is rg oC
ing in the darkest part of a dark
world—the human mind.”
—HANNAH ARENDT
£3.50 at all bookstores
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Publisher
Say
Ee salts
ee
very abundant, although he speculated
constantly in his last years about Sher-
wood Anderson.
Surprisingly, since Anderson had so
little use for criticism, some of the best
passages in the letters are about other
writers. To many of his writing contem-
poraries—Dreiser, Gertrude Stein, Wal-
do Frank, Hart Crane, Paul Rosenfeld
—he wrote intimate and sympathetic
letters. But he could judge their work
objectively and speak of it with extraor-
dinary flashes of insight. This is true
also of Faulkner, whom he helped on his
upward way (‘this man is a comer,”’ he
wrote Liveright), though he did not like
Faulkner as a person, and of Thomas
Wolfe, with whom there was some sort
of minor quarrel. This sympathetic un-
derstanding seems to have been withheld
only from Hemingway, though he too
was given the right hand of fellowship
in the beginning. What brought about
the change is difficult to make out. One
notices it first in a letter to Paul Rosen-
feld in 1927: “It made me pretty sick
seeing Hemingway this winter.’’ Ander-
son comes back to ‘“Hemmy”’ again and
again, trying to figure out what has gone
sour. Finally, in 1936, he finds his an-
swer (in a letter to Ralph Church).
I began reading Hemmy’s “Green Hills
of Africa” and thinking of him and a lot
of things you said. It’s really a lousy book,
and the god awful thing is that he doesn’t
know it and never will.
I rather wonder, Ralph, if it isn’t like
this. You see, he’s got this notion in his
head, that you get there by chucking the
imaginative world. He got it, of course, be-
cause it isn’t his world. He can’t feel his
Way around in it, can’t get it; so he gets
out of it by saying, ‘The hell with it.”
And then you see what he does. He
romanticizes what he calls the real world,
gets ecstatic about shooting and killing,
guts and dung.
There’s the whole world of men he
can’t get at all; so he proclaims his own
superiority to it and them.
And then, too, he’s too concerned with
writing, thinks of it too much like the
eternal amateur he is and always will be,
the small bad boy... .
I think it’s rather like this, Ralph. Of
course every man has a hell of a time.
First he has to work to get someone else,
usually some woman, out from between
him and his canvas. That’s a fight. Then
he has to try to get himself out. That’s the
thing Hemmy can’t do.
I wonder if I’m right.
By subtraction do we not find Ander-
son’s world in what is left out of
Hemingway’s—the pathos, the senti-
ment, all that is unheroic and unro-
mantic?
New Books in. Brief
Viennese Tragi-Comedy
THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES.
By Robert Musil. Translated from the
German by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst
Kaiser. Coward-McCann. $4.
This is a distinguished novel of ideas
by an eccentric and talented European
author whose work has been neglected
perhaps just because he is a writer of
many qualities none of which quite fit
into convenient critical categories. The
story is primarily a study of upper-class
life in imperial Vienna before the First
World War. It is incisive and entertain-
ing social satire, but it deals also with
the tragi-comedy of human relationships,
and particularly, in Musil’s own tradi-
tion, the tragi-comedy of love. This is
the first section of a large work; the
author has been compared, exuberantly
and erroneously, with Proust, Joyce, and
Henry James. But he is at least a sort of
528 ®
daylight Kafka whose world is just as
ominous and frustrating, if softer in
texture, more affectionate and communal,
as it summons up all its gaiety to face
the void. The publishers have performed
a useful service in introducing Musil
here; one hopes they will continue to
publish him.
What Makes Us Human?
YOU SHALL ‘KNOW THEM. By
Vercors. Translated by Rita Barisse.
Little, Brown. $3.50.
Jean Bruller, known before the war
as one of France’s foremost cartoonists,
suddenly achieved international promi- .
nence when under the pseudonym Ver-
cors he published “The Silence of the
Sea” during the German occupation.
This short masterpiece dealt with the
first passive then active resistance of the
Breton fishing folk.
Tos Ps, .
Os) tne OEE eee
“You Shall Know Them” is Bruller's
first full-length novel since “Silence,”
though a collection of long short stories
on war themes was published here in 7
1946. It lacks the lyric, compelling:
quality of the first book, but it is worth
reading because the author, returning to
his original gift for social satire, has
posed the question why man has defined
everything possible under the sun save
himself. Man, says Bruller, has con-
sciously avoided any generally acceptable *
definition of those characteristics or that
distinguishing feature which makes him
“human,” that is, sets him apart from —
the ape. Specifically he asks what point
must be reached before a creature can
be considered a member of the-human
family.
The novel, written in a teasing, |
scratch-the-surface style (the translation
is just right throughout) and moving —
along at a swift clip, purports to |
chronicle an expedition of anthropolo- |
gists to the Australian bush. In the course —
of the yarn Vercors pokes much fun at |
both the British and the French, but
more at the “unwritten law of custom”
which hag-rides the bourgeois dinner-
table and other similar rites, such as —
courtship, the club, the course of justice —
in the courtroom.
He concludes: “Humanity is not a
state we suffer. It’s a dignity we must —
strive to win. A dignity full of pain and
sorrow, won at the price of tears...
four] very duality is part of the human
condition .. . the dignity of men resides —
even in their failures, even in their
falls.”
How Unions Work
THE LOCAL UNION. By Leonard R.
Sayles and George - Strauss. Harper.
$3.50.
The authors of thissbook spent months |
making field studies of twenty local
unions, a job of unique research in
which they received the generous coop-
eration of union- officers and members.
They have produced the first full-length .
report of its kind but one whose limita-
tions they fully recognize. In fact, they
recommend further research to test their
own conclusions.
The time covered by the study was”
1948 to 1952. The unions selected—ten
C. I. O., one independent, and ning
A. F. of L.—were in basic and fabri- —
The NATION ©
Pee me
cated st e€ ipahanotire sembly, tood .
processing, men’s and women’s clothing,
' chemicals, and printing. Their member-
ship ranged from 500 to 2,000 and they
_ operated in four Northeastern communi-
_ ties of from 20,000 to 2,000,000 popu-
ation. The authors’ conclusions will not
satisfy those with stereotyped ideas
about labor organizations or with great
faith in legislative panaceas. They found
that ‘as the collective-bargaining rela-
| tionship matured, .a certain degree of
| “working harmony’ between labor and
_ Management was created, though this
_ was always subject to disruption when
Wi bargaining began on grievances or terms
| of employment.
! The book is chiefly concerned with
i the inner workings of local unions, the
| factors that unite or divide individuals
| and groups within the union, and the
external influences that help to deter-
| mine union policies and actions. It is a
| careful, detailed, and realistic inquiry,
| _ well worth the attention of union offi-
cets and economists, labor-relations ex-
ecutives, and, perhaps above all, mem-
| bers of Congressional committees now
pepriiing federal labor law.
¥
f Business vs. Ethics
THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF
| THE BUSINESSMAN. By Howard A.
| Bowen. Harper. $3.50.
Is simultaneous pursuit of profit and
| sanctity possible?) What compromises
! with his ethical principles must the busi-
“hess man make? Questions of this kind
| are presented in this, the third volume
| of the Federal Council of Churches
eries on ethics and economic life.
Though Professor Bowen believes that
| business ethics have substantially im-
| proved in the last half-century, the most
sympathetic reader can derive from him
ij no clear statement of what these ethics
rare,
| Professor Bowen’s most original sug-
gestion, a social audit of business per-
i ormance, is an interesting one, but the
tap remains. How can you balance the
nancial books of a corporation without
| standard accounting procedures? How, a
| fortiori, can you conduct an audit of
social performance without clear stand-
he ds of what is socially desirable and
what is not? It is this central uncertainty
| which makes an otherwise solid book
| flounder. Perhaps its author’s most useful
re
service is in letting us see how confused
the whole subject is. It might be well if
the series stopped here without rubbing
this condition in, in three additional
volumes.
More and More Science
Needed
PREVIEW FOR TOMORROW. The
Unfinished Business of Science. By
Bruce Bliven. Knopf. $5.
The promises and threats of technol-
ogy as they appear to a well-known
journalist. The information was gath-
ered by interviewing some two hundred
experts in various fields; the subjects,
grouped under eight heads, range
from birth control to calculating-ma-
chines and from erosion to malaria. On
almost every page there is a reason for
viewing with alarm, but there are also
almost as many occasions for optimism.
If it frightens you to learn that “two-
thirds of the United States is already
short of water’’ you may take comfort in
the fact that if the army needs, for
‘instance, an expert on airplane mainte-
nance who speaks Arabic and is reason-
ably immune to malaria, the electronic
scanner can determine in a few minutes
whether there is anyone with this happy
combination of characteristics avail-
able.
In general Mr. Bliven’s slant is that
of a liberal optimist who believes in the
efficacy of the hair of the dog that bit
you—that is, that the cure for the evils
of technology is more of the same. His
conclusion is that “nearly all mankind’s
troubles today are self-created” and that
we now know enough to remedy them
if we will only consent to do so. There
is lots of information in this book even
though some of the author's cheerfulness
seems to spring from sheer faith—as,
for example: “We should not get im-
patient . . . because comic books outsell
all other periodicals combined, or be-
cause a television comedy of young
married life bearing no relation to
reality has sixty-eight times as many
viewers as one of the best educational
programs. These are the growing pains
of our culture.” It’s an unfortunate
metaphor because Mr. Bliven’s medical
experts would tell him that these “‘grow-
ing pains” are not recognized by medical
science, They are the symptoms of a
disease.
Great Painters Series
THE LIBRARY OF GREAT PAINT.
ERS. Portfolio Edition. Rembrandt, Text
by Wilhelm Koehler; Botticelli, Text by
Frederick Hartt; Flower Painting, Text
by Margaret Fairbanks Marcus. Abrams.
$1.50 each.
Seventeen titles are now available in
this series, these three being the most re-
cent additions. Each brochure contains ten
color plates, a short introduction, and
detailed comment on the plates, and
there is a generous supplement of black-
and-white reproductions of comparative
material or details of the works given
in color. The current numbers are more
freely arranged than the others, with
monochrome cuts introduced at strategic
points in the comments on the color
plates. The quality of the plates rivals
the best available on a mass-production
basis.
The quality of the texts has generally
been very high, and Hartt’s considera-
tion of Botticelli is one of the best in
the series. It combines brilliant scholar-
ship with beautiful writing that catches
the haunting exquisiteness of Botticelli’s
art. Koehler, one of the greatest living
art historians, is curiously sentimental in
his treatment of Rembrandt and too
often takes refuge in abstract clichés like
“the very essence of the individual has
been caught by the artist.” He is elo-
quent, however, when he compares the
Read
DEATH
HOUSE
LETTERS
of Ethel and Julius
ROSENBERG
“Legally, judicially, morally, and in
simple truth, we are completely in-
nocent. Justice demands that we live
to have our day in court to win com-
plete vindication.’
—From a letter by Julius Rosenberg
$1.00
Published by:
Jero Publishing Co., New York City
Order from:
National Committee to Secure Justice
in the Rosenberg Case
1050 Sixth Ave., New York 18
ALL PROFITS TO THE
ROSENBERG CHILDREN
329
wall and niche of the Supper at Emmaus
to a mighty sounding board for the
delicate music of inner voices. The
Flower Painting cuts across time and
nations, and the text is as informative
and stimulating as the selection of the
plates.
The volume of sales of the Portfolio
series indicates its wide popular accepta-
bility. While the books are no doubt
bought for the color plates, sooner or
later the texts will get read. The pub-
lishers and editors have ably met a very
considerable challenge to enlighten, and
not merely to entertain.
_Civilizing the Indian
THE SAVAGES OF AMERICA. By
Roy Harvey Pearce. The Johns Hopkins
Press. $4.
In this study the author has made a
valuable contribution to the history of
the idea of civilization as it developed
in relation to the American Indian.
The civilized Americans saw in the
American Indian all that they had grown
away from, and much that they had still
to develop away from if they were to
realize their destiny in creating a new
society. From the first they took the view
that the Indian must adapt himself .to
them, and become, like them, civilized.
The Indian’s, resistance to this idea was
on the whole not understood for what it
was, except by a few independent spirits
and the Quakers. It is strange that men,
especially invaders, have taken so long
to recognize the right of every people
to their own culture.
With much labor and resourcefulness
Dr. Pearce has uncovered a whole realm
of materials which show how quickly
the idea developed that the best kind of
Indian was a dead one. The story he has
to tell relies entirely upon the historical
record, and that record is a very unpretty
one. We have repeated it in our own
time with the Eskimos of the Far North
and we are doing the very same thing in
the Aleutians now. Yet some progress
amid all this disaster is being made, and
our government is today endeavoring to
let the Indian learn all he cam from the
white man and still retain his own
culture.
Freda Kirchwey
HERE are two plots in “Me and
Juliet” (Majestic Theater), and to
this observer they seemed two too many.
It did not improve matters that they
moved—though rather slowly—together,
one inside the other. On the contrary
the play and the play within the play,
though parallel in theme, were just dif- _
ferent enough to create an air of mild |
confusion and dislocation. Something is
wrong when a musical-comedy audience
goes up the aisle after the finale discuss-
ing the plot rather than the songs and
dances. I had thought that ‘South Pa-
cific’ and a couple of others by the
same authors had converted me to this
form of theater art, but “Me and Juliet’
effected a reconversion. I came away
with an old bias in favor of revues as
opposed to musical comedies restored to
its former vigor.
Another complaint. The feature songs
were sung too often, a fault common to
most musical shows including the best
530
of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Several
are surely destined to be hits. Of these
I particularly liked Keep It Gay, No
Other Love, and Marriage Type Love.
But the last, possibly the most appealing,
was plugged until by the final curtain it
sounded as if it had been out a year.
And The Big Black Giant, celebrating
the real boss of the theater, the people
out front, was reprised far beyond its
worth,for it is a tiresome number even
the first time yow hear it. (Its resem-
blance to Old Man River is just close
enough to make it the sadder by com-
parison.) Some of the lesser songs,
which enjoyed no repeats, pleased me
more than the would-be hits. A very
amusing one, words and music both, was
It’s Me, delightfully sung by Joan Mc-
Cracken and Isabel Bigley. Another like-
able ballad, That’s the Way It Happens,
described the persuasive power over a
young lady’s heart of French-fried po-
tatoes and a T-bone steak. The tunes
; ‘
ae ee Oy, en ee eae
‘ 7% ee
goer"
TS y
‘ ‘ 7 a
all through—barring the Giant=arl
good, but they are not rare, magical,
wonderful, any of them. Similarly the —
lyrics, while smooth, deftly phrased, and
amusing or romantic as the situation —
demands, are not thrilling or very funny °
or very witty. And the frightening thing
about being Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Ham- —
merstein is that the audience sits there —
expecting all those qualities!
Enough of complaints; even, perhaps, —
too much. For after the qualifications
are all in and counted, the show is still ~
one that makes a cheerful evening. If
not a prize show, like the other two by —
the same authors on the same block, it |
will almost surely attract happy, large |
crowds all summer. There is incidental
amusement, and just the barest edge of *
excitement, even in the wrap-around |
plot and a lot of amusing backstage
“business” about rehearsals and props
and the goings-on of stage managers
and their assistants, in and out of love.
The action moves along at a brisk clip”
under the direction of George Abbott,
and the dancing by a number of gifted
and very handsome young performers is
effective, both ensemble and individual. |
A few of the large company stand out
for one virtue or another, Isabel Bigley
as Jeanie, the sweet, pretty understudy
who inspires the nice assistant stage
manager with marriage-type love and
the tough electrician with ‘murder-type
passion, acts and sings her part well
enough to give it genuine sparkle, some-
thing of a feat. Joan McCracken as Betty ©
is fresh—both kinds—cute, hoydenish,
and a first-rate dancer. A graduate of |
“Oklahoma,”” she adds a high gift of
comedy to these useful qualities. An-
other comedian of talent is Ray Walston,
the dictatorial stage manager and help-
less victim of Miss McCracken’s ardent,
uninhibited pursuit. 5
Finally, if magic evaded the writers
of book and score it attended the design-"
ing of the sets. Jo Mielziner staged “Me
and Juliet’” with lavish elegance, $300,-
000 worth, but he put in more than that.
He added imagination and grace, humor,
fantasy, and fragile, mysterious beauty,
providing @ background that lends radi-
ance to the doings on stage—a most
welcome contribution.
{Harold Clurman, The Nation’s regular
theater critic, who is now in Tel Avi,
will give his impression of the Israeli
theater in next week’s issue. }
The NATI N
i ‘ =?
Mee eee
i
|
f
i
|
!
i
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.
|
and throughout Op. 81a,
OLUMBIA offers a group of addi-
tional performances by Dinu Lipatti
~—of Mozart's Sonata K.310, Bach’s
Partita No. 1, and transcriptions of Bach
- pieces by Busoni, Hess, and Kempf.
The first movement of the Mozart sonata
can be played with more power; but it
is convincing played with the lyricism,
sensitiveness, and grace that one hears
in these performances, the unfailing taste
_ and feeling for continuity in phrase and
_ structure, the unfailing precision of ex-
ecution and beauty of tone (the tone of
_ a superb Hamburg Steinway). *
The Solomon performances of Bee-
thoven’s Sonatas Opp. 106 (‘“Hammer-
_ klavier”) and 81a (“Les Adieux”)
P
issued by RCA Victor are an occasion to
repeat what I said a few months ago:
| that if one can’t endure Schnabel’s oc-
_casional tempo too fast for clarity, his
occasional fortissimo beyond the limit
of agreeable sound, his occasional inac-
“curacy and confusion in difficult passage-
work, then one can have smoothly
rounded perfection from Solomon; but
that if one can endure those flaws in
Schnabel’s playing one gets in addition
the sustained continuity and intensity and
the dramatic power that Solomon doesn’t
offer. This time it must be said that the
_slovenliness aind confusion in Schnabel’s
frenzied performances of the first and
last movements of Op. 106 are almost
too much to endure, and one listens with
relief to what Solomon's saner tempo
and his accuracy and clarity enable
‘one to hear. But elsewhere in this work,
Schnabel’s
playing i is unflawed, and he operates with
powers in the shaping and articulating
of music that Solomon doesn’t possess,
and with expressive effect that Solomon
doesn’t achieve. This is demonstrated not
only by the two performances of the
gigantic slow movement of Op. 106, but
very strikingly by the two treatments of
ne Poco Andante passage just before the
end of Op. 81a. Solomon’s performances,
it remains to add, are reproduced with
unusually low volume.
I have managed to hear some noisy
old Victor records which confirmed my
sc
ee ae: slain’? ee eee sik r toe
"Records |
B. H. Haggin
recollection of Backhaus’s performances |
of Chopin's Etudes twenty years ago as
being fabulous in their speed, delicacy,
and smoothness, and something for
Victor to reissue in its Treasury of Im-
mortal Performances. For I haven't
heard their equal; and Backhaus himself
doesn’t equal them on the new London
record of twelve of the pieces: it is
saddening to hear in the Etude in thirds
and some others how much his fingers
have lost in speed, flexibility, sensitive-
ness, and evenness. A few of the pieces
on the second side, including the ex-
quisite Op. 25 No. 2 in F minor, come
off better.
Hilde Somer’s playing in Schubert's
Piano Sonata Op. 143 is unfinished and
inadequate; and as a result the superb
work doesn’t produce its effect. Mozart's
Fantasia K.397 and some Strauss and
Lanner waltzes are also on the Reming-
ton record.
The five Bach chorale preludes that
are played well by Finn Videro on the
organ at Soro, Denmark (Haydn So-
ciety) comprise “Vater unser im Him-
melreich,”’ “Nun Komm’, der Heiden
Heiland,” and “‘Liebster Jesu, wir sind
hier,’ which are very beautiful, the en-
gaging ‘“Von Gott will ich nicht lassen,”
and ‘‘Schmiicke dich, 0 liebe Seele,’’ one
of the most beautiful of all. The Varia-
tions on “Sei gegriisset, Jesu giutig’” I
find less interesting.
HAVING, a while ago, given the British
an incorreet idea of American broadcast-
ing, John Crosby has now given Amer-
icans an incorrect idea of British broad-
casting. Or rather he has confirmed the
incorrect idea that Americans have from
what they have been told all these years.
In a recent column from London Crosby
wrote that ‘a small group of—let’s
face it—highbrows determine what
the British shall and shall not see and
hear. It is a tyranny of good taste which
in many ways is as inherently dangerous
as Our own tyranny of the rating systems
or popular demand.” And this confirmed
the idea Americans have that the high-
brows who run the British Broadcasting
Corporation allow the British public
nothing but programs in Sanskrit.
Twenty-five or thirty years ago one
might talk about inherent dangers; by
now one must talk not about the in-
herent but about the actual. And actually
—as Crosby was in a position to observe
in London, and as anyone can discovet
here by looking at the weekly programs
in the files of the B. B. C.’s Radio Times
in its New York office—there is no
tyranny of the highbrow in England
analogous to the tyranny of the lowbrow
here. Only one of the B.B.C.’s three
wavelengths carries the highbrow Third
Program; the other two carry the Home
Service and Light Program which satisfy
the interests and tastes of the general
public.
This is in accordance with the B.B.C.’s
guiding principle, that it has an obliga-
tion, in the words of its former director
general, Sir William Haley, to “‘provide
for all classes of its listeners,” and “in
the course of the limited peak listening
hours every evening to give some service
to every possible taste.’’ And the B.B.C.
adhered to this principle even before the
Third Program: when it had only two
wavelengths it gave the highbrow an
hour or two every evening, the rest of
the time to the general public; and with
a program of serious music on One wave-
length for the highbrow there was always
something for the general public on the
other wavelength.
A lowbrow tyranny on the American
networks that considered itself obligated
“in the course of the limited peak listen-
ing hours every evening to give some
service to every possible taste’ including
our own would be something we high-
brows would be glad to settle for.
PROF. FREDERICK SCHUMAN writes:
“‘a source of warmth and inspiration."'
For a LIFT and to Fight McCARTHYISM
Own and Play
MANDEL vs. McCARTHY
actual recording of the sensational
televised hearing
NOW 37-minute LP
FREEDOM DISCS
Box 182, Audubon Station, New York $2
_ RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN’S
New Musical Comedy
aaln o
Julidt
with ISABEL BILL JOAN
ore HAYES McCRACKEN
RAY MARK = JACKIE
WALSTON DAWSON KELK
Air-Cond. MAJESTIC THEATRE, W. 44 st.
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THE READERS' SERVICE DIVISION
333 Sixth Ave., New York 14, N. Y.
Crossword Puzzle No. 520
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
m
me
ia fee
i i
eg a
YL et Ly Le eae
»
ACROSS
1 Bound to be direct, but not direct,
to what is left, which you have to
take first! (10)
6 See 3 down. (4)
10 Rides in part of an exclusive circle.
(7)
11 Its construction is like down—wide-
ly separated. (7)
12 Civil manners are a most important
part of course! (8)
13 If this goes up you might try it on
the dog. (5)
Sounds like a wild animal in chains,
but it’s got a lot of 12. (5)
17 You can always find the door this
way, if in disrepute. (2, 3, 4)
19 Puts together enclosures. (9)
21 Pomp put back with the head of
1 down. (5)
23 One pronunciation seems barely in
the lists, perhaps. (5)
24 Her chair seems to be official. (8)
27 Military roller? (7)
28 What particular accountants do. (7)
29 Plug up the forward part. (4) «
30 Should this win the semi-finals of
the aquatic events? (4, 6)
DOWN
1 and 4. This should be a check on
red renaissance, in a way. (13)
2 Units, as a form of hold up. (7)
8 Schumann’s was 6. (5)
4 See 1 down.
—
ol
Reudars are invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
The Nation, 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, New York.
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
5"See 20 down.
a
8
9
14
16
18
20
an
24
25
26
*
ACROSS :—1 CONTRIVE; 5
Written as spelled, sounding as
charged. (7)
Nightmares to the politicians, no
doubt! (4, 6)
ao handle their own dispatches.
Clubs represented by one club and
one spade. (10) j
This cost is absorbed by the people, —
perhaps. (8)
Bachelors respite, barely out of the
background ? (3-6)
and 5 down. American
the stage. (7, 5)
A place in New York mixed up on a
sort of bridge. (7)
Chicken up an orange tree? (5)
Battle scene of the square, —
naturally (5)
Ibsen’s character might be de-
scribed as noble. (4)
“vues” on
~en~
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No, 519
SPILTED; 9
ARSENIC; 10 BALDRIC; 11 AIRSHIP; 12
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SHOESHINE BOYS;
HAVRE; 23
ELDEST;
DOWN :—1
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LOW SEA
OCTOPOD;
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MURDER WILL OUT; 15
21 OUTRAGE; 22 LH |
TAPROOT; 24 VALLEYS; 25
26 CLEANSED. “
CRAVAT: ‘2 NOSTRUM; 3
6 PALA-
10 BE-
14 ASCOT TIE; 16
18 ‘OPHELIA; 19°
LEVEL;
17 SEASONS;
VERSED.
v4
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Low June Rates
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CHESTERTOWN, NEW YORK
Phone: 3830 N. Y. Phone: TU 2-0477
LLL
PACELLI
Informal adult resort that is ‘different?’
Pottersville, N. Y.
on SCKROON LAKE
Home of the Adirondack
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HANCOCK, N. Y.
POPULAR SUMMER RESORT FOR
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Delicious food. Progressive day camp.
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Write Diana & Abe Berman. Brandon, Vt.
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The Adirondacks Schroon Lake, N. Y.
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ser
The Nation Scores Again!
m&® Throughout the country people are talking
about The Nation’s timely, provocative article
Does Silence Mean Guilt?; here’s what some of
them have to say about it:
™/Valion
June 6, 1953
20¢
EVERY
WEEK
SINCE
1865
oh ay Sy
Does
Silence
Mean
Guilt?
THE FIFTH AMENDMENT CONTROVERSY
by Norman Redlich and
Laurent B. Frantz
“Heartiest congratulations on your publication of the article Does Silence
Mean Guilt?...I think you are performing an outstanding national and
world service through the fine material which you are publishing from
week to week in The Nation.” JOY ELMER MORGAN, Editor,
The Journal, National Education Association
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being taken and, that should be taken, that I have read anywhere, and it is
really of great value.” STANLEY M. ISAACS,
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Nation has been reaching new heights in information and inspiration.”
REV. A. A. HEIST,’
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Huntington Park, California ,
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June 27, 1953
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by a Washington “Observer”
Ike’s Labor
W alk-Out
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Binesco's Travail Alexander Werth
EVERY © ! Eyewitness: South Africa Basil Davidson
_ WEEK | .
ce Papal Setback in Italy / Abarez del Vayo
1865
Letters
— ae ce Gee SE Ge Se
Readers’ Response to
Redlich-Frantz Article
{Few articles published by The Na-
tion in recent years have aroused such
widespread interest. as Does Silence
Mean Guilt? published invour June 6
issue. Reprints are still available at
prices ranging from ten cents per copy
for small orders to $45 per thousand
copies.)
Dear Sirs: Congratulations on the most
forthright, comprehensive, and compre-
hensible exposition on-the Fifth Amend-
ment I have yet had occasion to read.
LAWRENCE D, SHUBOW
Boston, Mass.
Dear Sirs: The article reaches far beyond
the sterile legislative interpretation so
common today and presents a viewpoint
which is encouraging and warming for
its humanity... . It impresses one with
the fact that this beneficent possession of
the American people must be struggled
for today. ...
DANIEL FINE
Boston, Mass. .
Dear Sirs: As a member of the Board of
Directors and of the Editorial Commit-
tee of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, I
am anxious that our members all read
the article Does Silence Mean Guilt ?, of
which our ating secretary, Laurent B.
Frantz, is co-author, We have noted your
welcome announcement that pee are
available... .
EDWARD S, ALLEN
Ames, Iowa
Dear Sirs: You may be interested to
know that at a meeting yesterday of
Foru.n Board of Directors, it was unani-+
mously voted to circulate this excellent
and thoughtful statement to our entire
board and to our chapter officers in vari-
ous cities,
KATHERINE EARNSHAW,
Executive Director,
The Physicians Forum, Inc,
- New York
Dear Sirs: Many of my friends have
been bemoaning. the damage done to the
purpose of the Fifth Amendment by the
supporters of McCarthy's methods. At
the same time, there’s been little material
available with which to refute the slan-
ders. Does Silence Mean Guilt? is par-
ticularly impressive in its analysis of the
“honest’’ people who are opposed’ to
endless Congressional inv estigations, but
who still condemn witnesses who invoke
the Fifth Amendment.
GERTRUDE ROBBINS
New York
Dear Sirs: As one who has been wres-
tling with this problem many months
now, not in the abstract but concretely in
relation to many teachers. . . . I can say
that this article is the best analysis .for
the layman that has appeared anywhere.
ROSE RUSSELL,
Legislative Representative,
Teachers’ Union
New York
Dear Sirs: Congratulations on the article
Does Silence Mean Guilt? by Laurent B.
Frantz and Norman Redlich published
in your June 6 issue.
HOWARD EHRLICH
Bloomington, Ind.
Dear Sirs: I have read [the article} with
much interest. I think it is most impor-
tant that this should be widely read.
H. T, RAWLEY
Hanover, N. H,
Dear Sirs: May I add my congratulations
on the article. It is brilliant and timely
and, as always, The Nation is far ahead
of any other liberal journal in the coun-
try.
CONNIE KOPELOV
Assistant Director, Speaker’s Bureau,
The Chicago Council
on Foreign Relations
Chicago, Ill,
Dear Sirs: The very excellent article
Does Silence Mean Guilt? comes at the
time when it is most needed. It is by far
the best piece of writing I have seen on
the subject. It should have the widest
possible circulation and should convince
individuals, groups, and institutions vor
to ‘cooperate’ with the investigators.
Congratulations for printing it.
ALBERT LEVY
Chicago, Ill;
Dear Sirs: The excellence of your choice
of subject matter is exceeded only by the
highly infocmatiye and provocative
quality of writing under the title Does
* Silence Mean Guilt? May yeuislacve: bude '
resolution, addressed to Speaker Joseph
- March 27,
Peace Settlement,” ‘United States For-
-of New Jersey and other distifguiieeas
‘includes tuition, board and room at
] mh 4
Cah ee eS, mS z
& m re “od ae oe)
support, the strength, and the will al-
ways to give the facts on issues where —
one-sided reporting distorts them. -
HILDA KAPLAN
Brooklyn, N.Y. ;
No Money for Jenner et al.
Dear Sirs: I think readers of The Na
tion will be interested in the following
Martin and the members of the House
of Representatives, which was adopted
unanimously at a meeting of 1,800
citizens of Los Angeles:
In view of the fact that the House Un- -
American Activities Committee, in fifteen
years of its existence, has not found even
one alleged subversive engaged in attempt-
ing to overthrow the government;
Also in view of the fact that this Un-
American Committee has failed to meet
the constitutional requirements to make
investigation the basis for legislation;
Therefore be it resolved that this meet-
ing of 1,800 citizens of Los Angeles, on
-1953, sets as a goal for all —
patriotic Americans the discontinuance of
all appropriations for any and all Un-
American committees—federal, state, and
localnc ones
Los Angeles VICTOR SHAPIRO
Invitation to Bard a
Dear Sirs: The Summer Institute for
Social Progress is holding its 1953 Con- —
ference June 27 through July 11 at Bard |
College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N. Y. =
There will be reports and discussion
groups on such topics as “The Role of
the U. S. in the World Situation,” ‘The
U.N. in the Struggle vs. Poverty and
Ignorance,” ‘‘Possibilities of a Genuine
eign Policy,” “Assessing the New Re- —
gime in Russia’ and many others of
similar interest. Among the participants
will be Benjamin A, Cohen of Chile, —
Assistant Secretary General of the U. N.;
Isador Lubin, member of the U. S. dele-
gation to the U. N.; Robert Oliver,
assistant to .C. I. O. Ptesident Walter —
Reuther; William Gomberg, A. F. L.
Consultant to the Mutual Security
Agency; Frank M. Surface, assistant to
the president of Standard Oil Company
experts,
~The fees are $8.50-per day and at
Bard College. A eee should be —
sent to Dorothy P. Hill, Director, 14 -
West Elm Avenue, Wollaston, Mass.
DOROTHY P. HILL
Wollaston, Mass.. ae ed
d
:
i me
. omic 176, Number 26
; New York, Saturday, June 27, 1953
The Shape of Things
Setback to a Reverse
The internal easing of Soviet rule, like Moscow's
conciliatory gestures toward the rest of the world, has
| - seemed to indicate an intention to reduce antagonism by
recognizing the existence of justified grievances and
| doing something about them. The satellites have been
prominently included in the new program, and among
the satellites, East Germany was particularly favored.
Not only was it provided with a civilian high commis-
sioner, but the whole process of Sovietization appeared
to be set in reverse: an amnesty was promised, land was
to be returned to expropriated farmers, schools and col-
leges wete to be relieved of various Communist restric-
tions, all ration cards were to be restored to those who
had forfeited them.
But the taste, or promise, of a little freedom, came
too late for a people who all along have been among the
weakest links in the Soviet armor. The latitude offered
was seized upon as a chance for real protest; the protest
swelled into revolt; the revolt found leadership and or-
ganization which must have been waiting for its occa-
| sion. By the second day, the Berlin riots were city-wide
| and flamboyantly political; they were ended only when
| the Russians declared martial law and moved in troops
and tanks to help the East German Security Police dis-
F petse the rioting crowds and round up the supposed
‘leaders. Most serious for Moscow from the political
point of view was the fact that the revolt was begun and
Jed by the workers; in effect it was a strike that almost
became a revolution.
The Russians have blamed the whole thing on United
States agents, but this is far too flattering an estimate of
‘American capacities. If any aid for the rebels came from
American-sponsored organizations, it was certainly in-
significant compared with the force of the explosion.
_ What Russia knows, but can hardly acknowledge openly,
_ is that the discontent it had taken steps to allay is far
too big—and perhaps too well organized—to be dis-
pelled by either tanks or minor concessions.
Not All Jam for Us
The uprising was of course thoroughly exploited by
American propagapda agencies and Western occupation
ee
—— te
ee Vatlon-
EVERY WEEK SINCE 1865
EDITORIALS
authorities called upon the Russians to refrain from
using gunfire in putting it down. Had it not been for
the release of war prisoners in Korea only a day later
(see p. 537), American satisfaction over the anti-Rus-
sian explosion in Eastern Germany would have been
undiluted. But the consequences of the Berlin revolt are
yet to be counted. In the end they may add up to some-
thing almost as uncomfortable and challenging to the
United States as to Russia.
The revolt began, as did the riots in Czechoslovakia
two weeks earlier, as a protest against unbearable eco-
nomic exactions and oppressive political controls. But
whether the Soviet government can afford to relax
this economic stranglehold, nobody khows. The Berlia
outburst may only bring heavier demands and tighter
controls. But if the Kremlin has firmly set its mind on
a showdown with the West in Germany, it cannot afford
a series of bloody working-class revolts growing out of -
last week’s uprising. The marching workers in Berlin
shouted for “unity” and “free elections.” Already the
Russians have announced an acceleration of the program
of economic and political concessions. Should Moscow
back this with a serious, reasonable unity offer, attractive
to East Germans and West Germans alike, the United
States might find itself facing the issue it has hoped
most desperately to avoid—at least until West German
integration in the Western Alliance is signed and in
effect.
An American Failure
The execution of the Rosenbergs ‘was a sickening and
disheartening failure—of the American conscience, of
the American sense of fair play; of American moral
leadership, of American justice. With world opinion
aroused by the judicial horror implicit in sending the
mother of two minor children to the electric chair for
an act of peace-time espionage, about all we have had to
say in reply is that “Communist propagandists” are to
blame. But Communist propagandists did not prompt
the London News Chronicle to observe:
It is indeed an astonishing thing that the most impor-
tant issue of this whole astonishing case appears only to
have been raised in the last minute of the eleventh
hour. . . . Only on Wednesday of this week, President
Eisenhower was saying how the Coronation had thrown
a vivid light on the glorious heritage of law that was
lt SD Sig
ae eo
t
In This Issue
EDITORIALS
The Shape of Things 533
The Present Danger
III. On Principles and Policy 535
ARTICLES
Blunder in Korea by Observer 537
Ike's Labor Walkout:
The Taft-Hartley Squeeze
by Roy W. Wier 538
Eyewitness: South African Racism
by Basil Davidson 540
Catholic Europe?
Setback in Italy
by J. Alvarez del Vayo 542
Unesco’s Travail:
McCarthyism in Paris
by Alexander Werth 543
BOOKS i
Lessons of Asia by Mark Gayn 545
New Books in Brief 547
THEATER by Harold Clurman 548
MUSIC by B. H. Haggin 549
CROSSWORD PUZZLE No. 521
by Frank W. Lewis 550
LETTERS Opposite 533
~
Editorial Board
Freda Kirchwey
Carey McWilliams
Lillie Shultz
Victor H. Bernstein
J. Alvarez del Vayo
Editor and Publisher
Editorial Director
Director, Nation Associates
Managing Editor
Foreign Editor
Marty Solow Assistant to the Publisher
Harold Clurman Theater
B. H. Haggin ; Music
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Caroline Whiting
Mary Simon
Assistant Literary Editor
Advertising Manager
Contributing Editors: Andrew Roth, Alexander
Werth, Howard K. Smith, Carolus, Keith
Hutchison, H. H. Wilson, W. Macmahon Ball,
Maxwell Geismar, Bruce Catton
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~ Public Afatrs Informatio, Service, Dramatic Index.
534
common to the ‘United States and Brit ¥
that a heritage of clemency is not apparently « common
to them. ‘
As immoral as the use of the cry “Communist propa-
ganda” to blind Americans to the trué state of world
opinion was the editorial ballyhoo about the “due
process” accorded the defendants. The plain fact is that
the Supreme Court consistently refused to review the
case and the substantial point on which Justice Douglas
relied in granting a stay was only considered in the most
oblique manner and with such indecent haste that two
members of the court felt compelled to enter vigorous
protests over the speed-up ordered by the Attorney
General. How much better it would have been if, as
Justice Black pointed out, the court had granted a full
review on all the issues. As it is, the world will not be
permitted to forget that very grave doubt exists that the
death sentence was properly imposed, Nor do Commu-
nist propagandists need to remind those who read the
American press that influential newspapers screamed for
the blood of the Rosenbergs or that word of the execu-
tion was greeted with applause in Congress where Rep-
resentative Frank L. Chelf interrupted a debate on
foreign aid to say: ‘‘Praise God from Whom all blessings
flow and thanks to the Supreme Court.”
Years ‘ago, John Jay Chapman said of a lynching in
Coatesville, Pennsylvania: “I said to myself: ‘I shall
forget this, we shall all forget it; but it will be there.
What I have seen is not’an illusion. It is the truth. I
have seen death in the heart of this people.’ For to look
at the agony of a fellow-being and remain aloof means
death in the heart of the onlooker.” s
This failure of the American conscience was, how-
ever, in part redeemed by the courage, insight, and
moral integrity of Justice Douglas and Justice Black.
Every American who values our tradition of individual
as distinguished from “political” or collective justice
will be forever grateful to them. The failure was also
redeemed in part by the Rosenbergs who, guilty or not,
went to their deaths with a composure and dignity that
won praise even from hostile newspapers.
“Intruders and Interlopers”
But this publication feels a special gratitude to Lewin
Edelman, an indefatigable pamphleteer and soapbox’
orator who has been attempting to enlighten the crowds — |
in Los Angeles’ Pershing Square these many years, Ex-
peHed from the Communist Party in 1947, Edelman did
not turn informer or renegade; instead he turned on the
fools and opportunists who had expelled him and has —
been making life miserable for them ever since. Adver-
tisements for his first pamphlet on the Rosenberg case— _
a thoroughly justified criticism of the manner in fy
the defense had been conducted—were refuse
The NATION
oe
by, a
=a)
ae fa” ; a /
-among other publications, the National Guardian. The
ads appeared in The Nation as did a lengthy communi-
cation from Edelman.
In the last tragic chapter it was Edelman who came
forward as the “friend” of the Rosenbergs to raise the
point, over the objection of the Rosenbergs’ accredited
counsel, that won a stay and might, if it had been raised
earlier, have won a review. Yet one of the justices re-
ferred to him as a “vagrant,” citing a court decision from
which it cleafly appears that Edelman had raised and
carried to the Supreme Court of California an important
free-speech issue. A word of appreciation, too, should
go to Daniel G. Marshall and Fyke Farmer, the lawyers
who volunteered to help Edelman and who, with him,
were denounced as “intruders and interlopers.” A prom-
inent Catholic layman whose trip to Washington was
financed by Los Angeles Unitarians, Mr. Marshall has
a fine record of distinguished service on behalf of civil
rights and liberties.
On the night the Rosenbergs were executed, the in-
trepid Edelman was chased from Pershing Square by an
angry crowd. As the spry little Russian-born pamphleteer
sought refuge in a nearby coffee shop, he shouted at his
pursuers: “If you are happy about the execution of the
Rosenbergs, you are rotten to the core.” In that act of
defiance and clarity, this little man with a passion for
justice demonstrated, as Chapman demonstrated in 1911,
that there are always some Americans who can not re-
main aloof when they look on the agony of a fellow
human being.
The Present Danger
IIL, On Principles and Policy
EARLIER instalments of this three-part editorial (June
6 and 13) dealt with the nature of McCarthyism and
with McCarthy’s tactics; this concluding note suggests
-the principles and policy by which the large and growing
‘opposition to McCarthyism should be guided.
McCarthy has possession of an issue and an instrument
—and both should be wrested from him. The issue, of
course, is “the menace of communism” (as conceived by
McCarthy). As long as we continue to identify American
communism—puny in strength and irrelevant in doc-
trine, with the power and potential threat of Soviet
Russia—our gullibility will be exploited by McCarthy or
his successor. It is this myth of the omnipotence of
communism which blinds us to the real meaning of the
- revolutionary tides now sweeping through Asia, the
Middle East, Africa, Latin America and, in other forms,
through Europe. As long as we continue to treat these
movements as primarily by-products of the activities of
Kremlin-directed conspiratorial parties, we will never
; understand them.
| June 27, 1953
/ B aie ae.
The same myth also blinds us to a realization of why
it is that communism has a powerful appeal to people
in so-called “backward” and colonial areas, namely, that
it does have a technique for dealing with certain prob-
lems facing these peoples: a dictatorjally imposed and
ruthlessly policed plan for liquidating feudal land ten-
ures, abolishing entrenched corruption, ending usury,
forcing capital accumulations by expropriations, and so
forth. By the same token it blinds us to the fact that
communism cannot subvert the institutions of a country
with deeply rooted democratic traditions and an expand-
ing economy. The large vote polled by the Communist
Party in France and the left in Italy is a measure not of
party membership but of general discontent, Czecho-
slovakia was a special case in which external military
‘pressure was perhaps the decisive factor and there the
Communists seem to have bought a little more than they
bargained for; East Germany is another case in point.
But instead of exposing his version of the Communist
danger as a hoax, McCarthy’s opponents have generally
vied with him in stimulating the fear which he exploits.
“We know how to fight the Communi menace better
than he does,” is their usual line.
Apart from this, McCarthy's opposition obligingly co-
operates with him by accepting his premise that com*
munism is an inadmissible heresy and as such must be
extirpated. Grant this premise and the nature of the task
determines the nature of the weapons to be used. Test
oaths, loyalty hearings, peephole probes, inquisitions,
bookburnings, and other medieval horrors become not
“unfortunate” but unavoidable. This is the premise which
McCarthy's opposition must reject. One cannot proscribe
any particular idea without endangering the freedom in-
dispensable for the germination and discussion of ideas
generally. When the opposition to communism is based
on expediency rather than principle, people become hope-
lessly confused, Issues are blurred. Real questions are
ignored. Not to recognize that the phoney question
“Should Communists be permitted to teach?” masks the
real question “Who is to control American education?”
—duly constituted school authorities or pressure groups
and their Congressional allies—is to present McCarthy
with the keys to power. Similarly it doesn’t really matter
whether library books are burned or stored in basements
or sold to second-hand stores; what matters is whether or
not books are to be judged on their merits rather than on
the basis of what a Congressional committee thinks about
the men and women who wrote them.
THE demoralization of McCarthy’s opposition is strik-
ingly apparent in the outpouring of editorials in anti-
McCarthy newspapers rebuking Dr. Einstein for his
forthright opposition to Congressional inquisitions. Sim-
ilarly, it is easy to say that those who hold unpopular
view should disclose them and take the consequences,
but to condemn the witness who invokes a constitutional
535
tight without condemning the committee that invades
his rights is to collaborate with McCarthy. -
The opposition, therefore, must take the issue of com-
munism away from McCarthy by insisting that the danger
has been grossly exaggerated and mistakenly analyzed;
by rejecting without qualification the suggestion that.
communism should be suppressed as a heresy; and by
giving a new edge and meaning and consistency to
democratic values and ideals.
Nor should the opposition lose any time in disarming
Joe McCarthy. His major weapon—he has others—is the
inquisitorial committee. No one questions the value of
committees of inquiry; legislative bodies could not func-
tion without them. But legislative committees should
not be permitted to function as star-chamber inquiries.
They have no right to define political crimes and then try
‘individuals for these without due process of
law, imposing sentences which are among the most
severe that society can impose. Changing the rules or
personnel will never get at the root of the evil; the in-
quisitions must be stopped—by pressure of an organized
public opinion, by choking off their appropriations, by
“crimes”
court action.
BUT McCarthy also has a strategy. His present aim,
writes William S. White (Look, June 16), is “to con-
tinue to alter the views, the actions, and the tone of the
Republican Party. With its consent, preferably; but
without its consent if necessary.”” He intends to bring the
extreme right wing to undisputed control of the party. To
this end, he has launched a flanking movement by which
he expects to envelop the moderates. He is now attempt-
- ing to externalize the witch hunt; hence the emphasis on
smuggling arms to Latin America, the “betrayal” of
American troops in Korea by Pentagon “traitors” who
refused to supply adequate ammunition, the twisting of
the British lion’s tail, and the whole new business of
posing as ex-officio Secretary of State. As the Economist
notes, “he has still some months in which to make hay
at home among government employees appointed by
Democratic administrations but, by the time the Congres-
sional elections of 1954 come along, no Republican will
appreciate him if he is still finding Communists in
Washington. But Communists in the governments of
allies will always be useful discoveries . . .” Exploiting
differences between this country and its allies, McCarthy
will be able to aggravate domestic tensions. His appeal to
prejudice and hatred can be broadened. And he will be
able to lend great aid to the “go-it-aloners” within the
party. More than one McCarthyite commentator has
warned that the Korean truce may boomerang on the
President. Temporarily, Senator Knowland and the other
go-it-aloners are cooperating; but a rebellion of great
potential explosive force is brewing beneath the surface,
By 1954 or sooner the go-it-atoners may be the dominant
536
power in the Republican Patty and the ;
then be sharply pointed at some external “enemy,” in-
_ gram and is probably incapable of developing either. But
cluding possibly one or more of our allies.
“GO-IT-ALONE” ceiely the external manifestation a
of Know-Nothingism at home. It is not a policy; it is the
negation of policy. The Know-Nothingism which finds
expression in bookburnings is not a program; it is a way
of concealing the ignorance of the bookburners. Mc-
Carthy has a strategy; he does not have a*policy or pro-
this is not a handicap so long as no one calls attention
to the fact that the emperor is naked.
To oppose McCarthyism, therefore, the opposition must
develop a foreign policy and domestic program which
will not only be relevant to world needs, aspirations, and
realities but will expose the blind negation which is
“anti-communism,” McCarthy-style. For if we are going
» “fight communism” as a heresy in Paris, Rome, and
the rice fields of Southeast Asia, it will continue ’to seem
altogether logical to a majority of Americans that we
should fight it as a heresy at home. If we are going to
burn library books in India and Australia, we might just
~ as well brand them in San Antonio, In short McCarthyism _
feeds on all the negative aspects of our foreign policy.
But the immediate task is not the formulation of a
new policy. As long as McCarthyism flourishes we shall
be unable to formulate any policy which is not approved
by McCarthy. The immediate task, therefore, is to bring
into being a broad coalition of all the elements that,
whatever their differences on foreign or domestic policy,
share a common detestation of of McCarthyism. Counter-
pressures must be brought to bear upon public officials to
offset the one-sided pressure which has apparently forced
the President, on several recent occasions, to appease
McCarthy. How many letters did the President receive
commending his original bookburning speech at Dart-
mouth? How many college presidents other than Pres-
ident Dodds of Princeton publicly endorsed it?
In a recent statement denouncing the “sickness of fear”
that grips the nation, Mrs. Dwight F. Davis of Wash-
ington and Southhampton—one of our classic conserva-
tives—gave the formula for stopping McCarthyism. “It. 7
is for those who care about the American tradition to os
join together in order to protect that tradition... an
energetic organization is needed to take the part of other
victims of the same brand of snide attack [as that leveled _
against Mrs. Mildred McAfee Horton], and especially
of the humbler people who have nowhere to turn when
agencies of their own government unjustly decide to a
destroy them. I stand-teady to join with other right-think-
ing citizens if such an organization is formed [emphasis
added}.” What Mrs. Davis says goes to the heart of the
present danger: those who oppose the witch hunt Anse
join together to stop it, Otherwise, it won't be stopped.
The Nie 3
5
ee
'
es
Washington
IT HAS BECOME a quibble whether
there was connivance between American
authorities and Syngman Rhee, to en-
gineer the mass escape of North Korean
war prisoners. In charging such collu-
sion, the Communists seem to be sug-
gesting that General Mark Clark sat
huddled in a dark Seoul cellar with
Rhee while they brewed the plot.
Pyongyang’s radio tried to lend sub-
stance to the charge by accusing the
Americans of signing “‘a secret pact”
with South Korea to sabotage an armis-
tice—a pact of which one of the pro-
visions was for the prisoners’ release.
In any such literal sense it is silly to
accuse the United States government of
conspiring with Rhee to torpedo the
truce. Why should American representa-
tives have fumed and sweated for more
than a year to negotiate the prisoner ex-
change if it had been intended to scrap
the agreement after its attainment?
Since the non-returning captives were
soon to be freed under the truce, it
made no sense from an official Ameri-
can viewpoint to speed their release by
skullduggery that is gravely embarrass-
ing to Washington.
IT IS of course’ possible that individual
Americans, who disagree with the truce
terms actively connived with Rhee. On
this point we must await more evidence.
But in any case nobody who is honest
and in full possession of his faculties
a _will claim that the Eisenhower Admin-
» : istration and American commanders in
Korea are innocent of at least passive
complicity. The distinction is between
_ - United States authorities’ criminal neg-
_ligence and active plotting by Rhee and
his accomplices. A report from General
Mark Clark, U. N. supreme commander
‘for Korea, reached Washington some
‘twelve days before Rhee sprung the
prison camps and let more than 25,000
North Koreans escape. Clark’s message,
* copies of which were given to British
Commonwealth governments, served
notice that more trouble was to be ex-
pected from Rhee. Among the moves
threatened by the South Korean presi-
_ Tune 27, 1953
dent which Clark mentioned were:
(1) “refusal to recognize a cease-fire;
(2) launching of a South Korean drive
northward; and (3) an order to the
camp guards*to allow the “‘anti-Com-
munist’’ North Korean captives to go
free.
Just after Clark’s message reached
Washington, a high State Department
official remarked to this writer, “We still
have to reckon with some irrational acts
of Rhee.”
HAVING been warned, what did the
United States do to thwart Rhee’s efforts
to scuttle the armistice? The straight
answer, to the best of our knowledge, is
nothing. General Clark and United
States Ambassador Ellis Briggs feebly
went on trying to induce Rhee to accept
the truce. Their suasion failed to con-
vince Rhee, who continued to be crude-
ly candid in advertising his intention to
prolong the war.
With the advance tip about the pos-
sible break from the prison camps, the
obvious move was to reinforce Ameri-
can guards whom the South Korean
guards outnumbered by about eight to
one. The excuse afterwards given for
failing to do this was that it might have
precipitated clashes between the troops
of the two countries. This explanation
has been shown to be very thin. After
Rhee freed the prisoners, General Clark
did dispatch more Americans from
Japan to help patrol the prison camps.
There were no resultant collisions be-
tween Antericans and South Koreans.
Senator Robert Hendrickson, New
Jersey Republican, has suggested a Sen-
ate investigation ‘‘to determine the ex-
tent of American culpability” in the
whole affair. We believe Hendrickson’s
proposal is good, but we would urge
one amendment. The five-nation neutral
commission named to supervise the
armistice is already available to go to
Korea. This is the most suitable body to
conduct such an inquiry and report to
the United Nations. It would avoid the
obvious weakness in Hendrickson’s plan:
the temptation for American politicians
to whitewash other American authorities
~ BLUNDER IN KOREA .. by Observer
involved in an international incident.
It is still touch-and-go whether the
armistice, now in shape for signature,
will be concluded. By demanding recap-
ture of all the freed North Korean pris-
oners, the Communists are asking some-
thing which only Rhee could give. But
to assign this job to Rhee would, as the
German saying goes, certainly be ap-
pointing a goat to be gardner. On the
other hand, Communist China and
North Korea are entirely justified in
calling for clarity on whether South
Korea will observe an armistice.
Another ugly aspect of these develop-
ments is that, even if we get the truce,
American troops will have to stay in
Korea much longer than should be
necessary. If we sit down with the Chi-
nese and North Korean Communists to *
discuss a gradual removal of foreign
forces from Korea, we shall have to
keep glancing over our shoulder. Our
soldiers’ task will be doubled by the
need to restrain South Korean troops
from renewing hostilities. As long as
Rhee is in power, he is just as capable of
ordering his men to reopen the war in
defiance of the U. N. as he was to direct
the release of prisoners despite his
U.N. “superiors.”
ONE OF the ironies of the situation
has been overlooked. Only a few days
before the war prisoners’ break, Dulles
had drawn from the mothballs for pub-
lication after the signing of the armis-
declaration written eighteen
months ago. The proclamation affirms
on behalf of the sixteen allied nations
fighting in Korea, the U. N.’s deter-
mination faithfully to carry out the
truce and warns the Communists of the
dire consequences of any breach, The
State Department had just won the
assent of the other fifteen allies to
this pronunciamento when our own side
gravely violated the truce agreement
even before it was signed.
Syngman Rhee’s outrageous coup
made the Eisenhower Administration
ridiculous in another respect. In the
week preceding the springing of the
prisoners, India and Switzerland had
937,
tie, a
ae.
wavered about joining the neutral com-
mission in Korea. They questioned the
YJ. N. command’s authority over the
South Koreans.
tancy, the State Department gave the
To dispel their hesi-
strongest imaginable assurances, first,
that the South Koreans are under the
United Nations command and, secondly,
that the United States—being charged
with the unified command—exercises
power over the prisoners-of-war camps.
Hardly had the State Department dished
out these solemn assurances when Rhee
—behind the back of the U. N. com-
a mae ee ,
mand—ordered the captives’ release and
smilingly defied President Eisenhower's
authority,
American policy now appears to be
to reward Syngman Rhee’s infamy. In
a weak statement,,Secretary Dulles pub-
licly reprimanded Rhee. In letters to the
evil old man of South Korea, Mr. Eisen-
reminded
Rhee of his broken promises. At the
same moment, however,
hower and General Clark
«Dulles is re-
ported to’have handed the visiting prime
minister of South Korea, Paik Too
Chin, a memorandum renewing and
EYEWITNESS
South African Racism .
Johannesburg
AFRICANS and policemen have been
exchanging stones and bullets for a good
many years, and most whites in South
Africa think it in poor taste to draw at-
tention to the fact. But of late the
clashes have been sharper and more fre-
quent, and the sense of a fatal dynamism
in the course of events breaks through
the surface of a daily life which is still,
for whites, luxurious and easygoing.
Few acts remain outside the grasp of a
legal system that tends more and more to
make a mockery of law. Every sordid
little fall from grace may expose the
offender to dire penalties. I noticed one
of these the other day when glancing
through a recent volume of Appeal
Court records, and I give it here “as a
reasonably typical example of the kind
of legalism which has taken the place of
every sane and decent ee oe of
human behavior.
In the case of R. v. B. and H. (Cape
Province Division) February, 1953, the
judge declared:
The accused in this case were charged
with a contravention of Section 1 of Act 5
of 1927.as amended by Act 21 of 1950, in
that accused No. 1, being a male Euro-
pean person, had intercourse with accused
No. 2, being a non-European female per-
son. . . . The accused both pleaded not
BASIL DAVIDSON is a British jour-
nalist who has spent much time in
Africa.
538
guilty but were found guilty by the
magistrate of Wynberg and were sen-
tenced to four months’ imprisonment with
hard labor. . . . The evidence adduced on
behalf of the Crown was to the effect that
at 12:30 en the morning of the 16th
August last year, Constable van Wyk,
with Native Constable Sikolo, went to a
tearoom called the Green Lawn Restau-
rant at Hout Bay. They went to a room
which both claim .was lit by an electric
light and they looked through the window
of this room and they saw the two ac-
cused having intercourse with each other.
The issue in the appeal, which failed,
was not whether the law should punish
fornication or whether the police were
justified in collecting their evidence as
they did but whether the woman in the
case was in fact a non-European. She
was able, during appeal, to show that
she was by birth a European—the law,
of course, only punishes intercourse be-
tween white and non-white—but that
availed her nothing. It was shown that
for some time before her arrest she had
been living ‘“‘as a non-European,” which
caused the magistrate to rule that she
was one legally, in spite of having two
white parents. “Race” in South Africa
is what it seems to be, not what it is.
THIS MATTER of race is nothing aca-
demic. Always corrupting and cruel,
racial segregation has become ferocious
in its consequences. The Group Areas
Act, enacted by the last Nationalist gov-
ernment and now about to be applied by
Basil Davidson
military” pact. Lest Rhee take too seri-
ously the various expressions of Ameri-
can anger, we again pledge him the
support of America’s armed power.
The least we have a right to expect is
that the offer of the United States mili-
tary guarantee be withdrawn. To pro-
ceed with Syngman Rhee as a treaty
partner is to put into this unbalanced,
sinister man’s hands a commitment that _
could be abused not merely to rekindle
the Korean conflict but to drag the
United States into another world war.
the new Nationalist government, is de-
signed to destroy the last formal possi-
bilities -of residential integration in a
country where white-and non-white are.
thrown more and more closely together
by economic pressures and cannot live —
without each other. Even if this act is ap-
plied with the usual “‘tolerance” allow- —
able in South Africa for inefficiency, it it
will mean the shifting of big urban pop-
ulations from one area to another and —
the loss of livelihood for many non- —
whites who have managed 0 open aaa .
or conduct small businesses in sections -
declared to be “white.” a .
To control the few whites who are —
prepared to make a stand against this —
mounting racialism, as well as all non-
whites, there is a law which comes |
straight out of “Mein Kampf.” You are _
guilty under the Suppression of Commu- —
nism Act if you —— any of the
“objects of communism,” now defined
by statute as “any political, industrial,
social, or economic change by disturb-
ance, disorder, or unlawful acts or omis- _
sions.” As counsel have argued, the —
charge of “statutory communism” can be -
brought against any black-marketeer, any
employer who systematically underpays
his workers, any group of men marching —
through the streets in protest against
anything without a permit—or, given —
the atmosphere of the lower courts, of
seeming to march—and, indeed, the:
Nationalist government itself for passing.
The Nai
, - the Separate Representation of Colored
Voters Act, which the Appeal Court has
declared illegal.
All this, though, is small beer when
set beside the acts of last February. De-
signed to crush the passive-resistance
movement against racial discrimination,
the Criminal Law Amendment Act and
the Public Safety Act raise dictatorship
to a racial fury hitherto exceeded only
by Hitler. The Public Safety Act
makes it possible for the government to
declare a state of emergency at any time
and to enact regulations for coping with
aimost any conceivable situation—one or
two reservations show that the measure
is designed principally to crush any form
of protest against racialism. The Crimi-
nal Law Amendment Act must be read
to be believed. Two provisions deserve
quoting in full:
1. Whenever any person is convicted of
an offense which is proved to have been
committed by way of protest, or in sup-
port of any campaign against any law or
in support of any campaign for the repeal
or modification of any law, or the varia-
tion or limitation of the application or ad-
ministration of any Jaw, the court con-
victing him may, notwithstanding any-
thing to the contrary in any other law
contained, sentence him to (a) a fine not
exceeding three hundred pounds; or (b)
imprisonment for a period not exceeding
three years; or (c) a whipping or (d)
both such fine and such imprisonment, or
(e) both such fine and such a whipping;
or (f) both such imprisonment and such
a whipping.
2. Any person who (a) in any manner
_ whatsoever advises, encourages, iricites,
commands, aids or procures any other
person or persons in general; or (b) uses
~
any language or does any act or thing
calculated to cause any person or persons
in general, to commit’ an offense by way
of protest against a law or in support of
any campaign against any law....
shall receive penalties set forth in Sec-
tion 1 except that the fine for incitement
may rise to £500 and the length of im-
prisonment to five years, the maximum
of lashes remaining generally at ten.
Furthermore, you are guilty under Sec-
tion 2 if you solicit, accept, receive, offer,
or give “any money or other article” for
the purpose of assisting any act of pro-
test involving breach of the law.
It is pointless to pretend that there is
any “rule of law” left in South Africa.
And it is worth noting, as a footnote,
that the first prosecution under the Crim-
inal Law Amendment Act was of a cer-
tain Arthur Matlala, an African of Jo-
hannesburg, who was arrested for acts
allegedly committed on February 26, six
days before the law was gazetted by the
government. The accused was guilty of
“incitement,” for which he received a
fine of £50 or six months’ hard labor,
and of soliciting money for the passive-
resistance campaign, for which he re-
ceived one year’s imprisonment and eight
strokes. The incitement consisted in the
fact that Matlala possessed a copy of
Fowler and Smit’s “New History for
Senior Certificate for Matriculation,” in
which “‘certain passages that dealt with
the French Revolution had been marked
in red and blue pencil. Among these
were passages describing how the people
of Paris had attacked the Bastille.”
ON MY ARRIVAL in Johannesburg I
was myself served with a notice by the
chief immigration officer declaring that
I had been a “prohibited immigrant” in
the Union since 1951, when I last re-
ported on South Africa. I should not
now be here but for an invitation to
Swaziland from the Commonwealth Re-
lations Office and the British Adminis-
tration there, which wanted to show me
the fine work they are doing in that
small territory in the way of forestry and
irrigation. I was eager to see a number
of people in Johannesburg but had no
time to make appointments.
One was Dr. Dadoo. I took a taxi to
his office and asked some Indians outside
if I would find him there. They shook
their heads and turned away. A wall of
suspicion shuts away the white man from
the non-white. Then I had a stroke of
luck. An Indian in a long white coat
came out on the pavement. He gave me
a hard questioning look, then suddenly
relaxed, for we had met two years be-
fore. This was Yusuf Dadoo, leader of
the South African. Indian Congress and
one of half a dozen non-whites who
have given supremely good leadership
to the organization of passive resistance
to racialist laws.
Others I have met in much the same
way, haphazardly, by good luck, and
others I have missed. They are marked
men, hemmed around with prohibitions
so all-invading that the police can arrest
them any time they choose.
There seems to be complete agree-
ment between the African and Indian
leaders, and their cohesion with the col-
ored leaders from the Cape is steadily
growing. This solidarity was reflected in
their followers during the months of
passive resistance, in Natal as well as in
the Cape and the Transvaal. According
to the best opinion I can gather in Jo-
hannesburg, it represents a turning-point
in South African history.
In spite of frantic efforts by the gov-
ernment, backed unconditionally in this
matter by the opposition United Party,
non-violent resistance by non-whites in
the second part of 1952 and the early
weeks of 1953 was able to achieve its
main objectives: to show that resistance
was possible, to unify the non-white
communities in resistance to racialism,
and to educate them in ways and means
of resistance. Unexpectedly large num-
bers of volunteers from the African,
colored, and Indian communities delib-
erately and pacifically courted arrest by
breaking some petty rule.
WHAT WILL happen next? The recent
restrictive proclamations and acts have
made it impossible for individuals and
small groups to keep on breaking regu-
lations, for the penalties are crushingly
severe. “The principle of non-violence
will be observed,” Dr. Dadoo told
me, “but we shall change our tactics.”
Walter Sisulu said the same thing.
They did not tell me what their new
tactics will be, and perhaps they have
yet to select them. With the National-
ists femaining in power, the struggle
is bound to be long and painful. The
leaders have apparently learned a great
deal. When the African National Con- °
539
ee
ee ee ere ere ee
gress began its campaign, it had only
5,000 dues-paying members; today, -ac-
cording to Walter Sisulu, it has 60,000. .
When the next round starts, the non-
white organizations will have a far
firmer and broader basis in the masses.
There is no doubt, I think, that it will
start sometime, though one cannot say
just how and when. Whether it will re-
main non-violent is more speculative.
The present leaders are-men of moderate
liberal or leftist views who are known to
condemn violence on political and re-
ligious grounds. The creed of Gandhi's
Satyagraha is paramount among the In-
diams and is said to be spreading fast
among the Africans. But the Nationalist
government has shown that there is noth-
ing it dislikes more than non-violent re-
sistance, which prevents its own favorite
response—violence. The government has
tried in vain to corrupt or intimidate the
* leaders of the non-whites. The influence
of these leaders has probably never been
Ike’s Labor Walk-Out
The Taft-Hartley Freeze
Washington
THE apparent decision of Congressional
Republican leadership and the Admin-
istration to put off revision of the Taft-
Hartley act until next year repudiates
a specific pledge made to labor by Pres-
ident Eisenhower during last year’s cam-
paign and in his State of the Union
message this year. It must be mentioned,
however, in any analysis of the Ad-
ministration attitude toward this contro-
versial measure that the law might have
been made even less acceptable to labor
than it now is by amendments on which
employer and management groups pre-
sented a united front while labor itself
was divided. It should also be noted that
the past four months have been relatively
quiet in the labor-management field and
the same situation may not prevail next
spring, when the question of revision is
scheduled to be taken up. Thus, if the
Republicans try to carry out their cam-
paign pledges in the coming year, the
risk to labor may be balanced by Repub-
lican reluctance to jeopardize the 1954
elections by enacting tougher amend-
ments.
Up to the time that the Senate Labor
Committee’s so-called ‘‘staff committee
print,” embodying proposed changes in
ROY W. WIER, Democratic Represent-
ative from Minnesota, is a member of
the House Education and Labor Com-
mittee who has been one of the leaders
in the fight against the Taft-Hartley law.
540
the act, was released by Chairman H.
Alexander Smith, there was some reason
to believe that the committee was on the
whole more friendly to labor’s objectives
than the House Committee on Education
and Labor. And since Senator Smith
declared that the ‘‘staff’”’ bill as presented
does not reflect the opinion of the full
committee or of the Republican majority,
that still may be true. But the proposal to
change the historic preamble which sets
forth labor's rights and the necessity for
protecting them and the proposal to
permit individual states to pass anti-
labor measures which will supersede
federal law are highly disquieting to
labor. Moreover, since the staff com-
mittee draft bill would open the way to
the political packing of the National
Labor Relations Board and give em-
ployers the right to determine whether
work performed is “useful or relevant,”
thus letting them make cuts in the work-
ing staff without collective bargaining,
it reveals a dangerous trend away from
President Eisenhower's pledge to make
the labor law one that would “merit the
respect and support of both labor and
management.”
The proposal to extend the require-
ment of a non-Communist oath not only
to employers but also to union members
who formulate and carry out trade-
union policy cannot be justified by any
testimony given before either the Senate
or the House labor committee. The
collection of such affidavits from the
by Roy W. Wier
the peace at a time wile the | ‘govern-_
ment, through a notoriously provocative _
police force, has done its best to break it.
In its blindness the government may: yet
deprive the non-white of this sane and
thoughtful leadership. It may yet drive
the non-whites to the point where any-
thing would be better than acquiescence.
Certainly the government and its sup-
porters will have only themselves to
blame if things get out of hand.
thousands of convention delegates, shop’
stewards, and others who make union
policy would bog down N..L. R. B. and
union procedure in a morass of paper
work,
Perhaps too much time should not be
spent discussing what may be only a
trial balloon, but the fact that the balloon
was sent up is a warning to all sections
e
of the labor movement that it will not- —
be easy to eliminate the evils of the
present act. ae
The Senate Labor Committee ap-
ptoached revision, of Taft-Hartley
somewhat differently from the House —
committee: Whereas the Senate group
decided to act on various amendments —
which have been submitted, the House —
committee is considering motions for
outright repeal of the laws and the sub-
stitution therefor of an amended Wagner _
act. Actually repeal is not possible at this —
time, We who favor it could today prob-
ably muster only seven of the twenty-six —
ee
.
‘committee votes, including my own. The
others, all Democrats, are Kelley of
Pennsylvania, Powell of New York,
Bailey of West Virgina, Perkins of
Kentucky, Howell of New Jersey, and
Metcalf of Montana. In addition we
could count on Elliott of Alabama and
Miller of Kansas to go along on several
major changes aimed at liberalizing the
law in favor of labor.
On the Republican side, Chairman
McConnell of Pennsylvania would prob-
ably support a number of pro-labor
amendments, most of them minor from
Jabor’s point of view. On such major.
matters as injunctions and boycott pro-
visions, two of the worst sections of the
present law from labor's standpoint, the
chairman is more likely to support
tightening than any relaxation. Definitely
unfriendly to labor’s position and pro-
Taft-Hartley are Gwinn of New York,
Smith of Kansas, Kearns of Pennsy]-
vania, Velde of Illinois, Hoffman of
Michigan, and probably Kersten of Wis-
consin. Berry of South Dakota and
Harrison of Wyoming, as well as Bosch
of New York, Holt of California,
Rhodes of Arizona, Wainwright of New
York, and Frelinghuysen of New Jersey
seem inclined to follow the views of
Chairman McConnell.
With such a line-up, it might well be
best for labor to avoid pushing for
changes at this time since any change
might be for the worse. Personally, I
would rather’ leave- the labor-law con-
troversy as aslive issue for consideration
at some more propitious time—-say, after
the 1954 elections—rather than waste
energy on meaningless modifications or
_ tun the very grave risk of making the
~ Jaw more biased and unfair than it is
— dow.
Under these circumstances, the Repub-
Jican decision to take no action on Taft-
Hartley at this session of Congress may
turn out to be an unintentional boon to
Jabor, although the disappointment of
_ several of labor’s chief spokesmen is
understandable. They had been given
certain pledges which are now being
~ withdrawn.
~
SOMETHING must be said, however, -
} about labor’s own approach to this con-
_ troversy. Labor presented no united front
_ in its presentations before the two com-
_ mittees, while the nearly 100 employer
a
— spoke almost with a single
. June 271953
DANAE. of 1
voice for amendments which would maké
Taft-Hartley an unmistakeable ‘“‘union-
busting” law. Some of the employers’
extreme proposals—the ban on industry-
wide bargaining and
strikes, the “‘states’ rights’ proposal and
the demands for opening up the injunc-
tive process to wide employer use against
unions—are so drastic a departure from
even the present unsatisfactory law that it
is tempting to look upon them as
“bargaining counters” put forward
merely to block enactment of Jabor’s
legitimate demands.
Labor, on the other hand, had no such
unified program. Even within the
there were marked differ-
ences of opinion as to the measures on
which most pressure should be brought.
A spokesman for one A. F. of L. union
advocated compulsory arbitration; the
head of another differed strongly. A
C. I. O. spokesman wanted to throw
“national emergency’ strike situations
into Congress; other Jabor spokesmen
argued that any proposals to deal with
so-called
duding the present eighty-day injunction
industry-wide
“national emergencies,’ in-
clause, were unnecessary because, they
said, there never has been a real “‘na-
tional emergency” strike.
SINCE THE coal shut-downs are most
often cited as “national emergency”
strikes it may be of value to quote from
the testimony of spokesmen for the
United Mine Workers. “In each year
when strikes have occurred,” they pointed
out, “the coal production was greater
than in the years in which there were no
strikes.’’ Results of detailed research by
industrial relations experts were intro-
duced to prove that in the past thirteen
years ‘‘a national emergency has never
actually developed.” The U. M. W.
made one telling point which, if under-
stood, would end the hysteria over strikes
which was primarily responsible for
Taft-Hartley in the first place. ‘Every
strike and lockout carries with it the
seeds of its own- determination and
solution,” a U. M. W. spokesman de-
clared, adding that “from the inception
of the strike, with the pressures on both
the strikers and the employers, the seeds
are really sown for a settlement of that
particular situation.”
Such testimony—and there were other
examples—went to the heart of the
whole Taft-Hartley controversy. But the
U. M. W. went on to advocate not only
repeal of Taft-Hartley but also the repeal
of the provisions of the Wagner act
which are still contained therein. The
coal miners probably could stand up to
such a situation but bow many other
unions could—particularly in the South?
Other labor advocates demanded only
such modifications of the law as would
relieve their own particular unions of
certain ‘onerous restrictions, ignoring the
welfare of the labor movement as a
whole. Thus labor's demands varied all
the way from pleas for repeal of all
labor laws, including even the basic
legal protection of the right to organize
and bargain collectively, to suggestions
for narrow and specialized changes which
were either unacceptable or unimportant
to other parts of the labor movement.
If anything points up the need for
Jabor unity, it is this situation in the
legislative field where. the employers
speak with one voice and labor speaks
with many. Congressmen who may be
wavering on vital Jabor questions cannot
help but be influenced when the voice
of labor is so confused. I recognize that
Jabor leaders are elected by their mem-
bers to advance the special interests of
their own organizations and only second-
arily to advance the interests of the labor
movement in general. But there are times
when labor must speak with one voice,
and this is one of them.
It is a tragic thing that labor, which
includes the vast majority of the citizens
of this country, is unable to make its
voice heard effectively in Congress. In
this instance the wrong done labor is
compounded by the fact that the present
Administration, though it admitted that
there were evils in the Taft-Hartley law,
has made no move to carry out its
pledges to correct them. Labor Secretary
541
Durkin has been kept under wiaps. The
Administration itself has remained silent.
Spokesmen for business knew weeks
ago that there would be no action taken
on Taft-Hartley at this session. Em-
ployers are predicting that nothing will
: a ‘Se es ae ae " Fee >it 3 oe 71
le done next year either, despise Pres- he said that” prompt “cor: action”
ident Eisenhower's public statement that
Taft-Hartley “must be changed—Amer-
ica wants no law licensing union-bust-
ing, and neither do I,” and despite
his State of the Union message in which
should be taken. Se eee NG e
The answer is obvious, Labor must —
speak with a strong and united voice —
at Congressional hearings and—above
all—at the polls in 1954.
Catholic Europe?
Setback in Italy
Rome
THE days of excitement are over, and it
is possible to view with detachment and
in some depth the panorama now un-
folding in Italy. The most solid im-
pression left by the elections is that the
Italians people has become politically
mature. It knows what it wants and is
too independent to be swayed by a pro-
gram of foreign aid or by American
encouragement of Italy’s ambition to
become a great power. I will never for-
get the crowds in the Piazza Colonna
the night it was announced that the
government had failed to get the abso-
lute majority which, under the new
electoral law, would have given it 380
out of the 590 seats in the Chamber. It
was an excited crowd, eagerly, intelli-
gently discussing the returns; refusing
to go home to bed in the hope of late
news. Next morning when I visited the
headquarters of the Italian Socialist
Party, which this time had gone to the
polls with an independent list and not
under the protection of the stronger
Communist Party, I found the same
enthusiasm, together with a feeling of
ptide in its enhanced power.
But it was not only in opposition
circles, whether left or right, but among
government supporters as well that one
sensed a recognition that a new era had
opened for Italy. De Gasperi was the
first to understand the significance of
the vote. While some of his collaborators
consoled themselves with the majority of
a dozen or so that the government finally
mustered in the Chamber, the Premier’s
first post-election statement, made in an
interview with the newspaper Messagero,
courageously put it on record that he was
impressed with the strength of commu-
542
nism in Italy, De Gasperi knows better
than anybody else that, in the pre-elec-
tion period inaugurated by the adoption
of the,new electoral law, every possible
argument was used against the Commu-
nists. The events in Eastern Europe, the
trials, the splits within the Italian Com-
munist Party (which now appear to have
been exaggerated), the failure of the
strikes which it organized—all these,
and more, were used as evidence that
communism was on the decline.
BUT THE success of the Italian Socialist
Party was an even greater shock to the
government cohorts. The official theory
was that Pietro Nenni and his followers,
without the support of an alliance with
the Communists, hardly had a chance of
success. The theory was effectively ex-
ploded. It is not only that the seventy-
five deputies elected by the Italian So-
cialist Party, together with the 143 Com-
munist deputies, represent a consider-
able force; it is also that the electoral
gains of the two left-wing parties have
Pietro. Nenni
by J. Alvarez del Vayo
put them in a more favorable position ~
to sway popular feeling. One Italian —
out of every three voted for the extreme
left, Since the army is based upon uni-
versal military service, it can safely be
assumed that at least a third of the
Italian armed forces would strongly ob-
ject to risking their lives in an anti-
Communist crusade. In broader terms,
the elections proved to the Premier as” 4
to his opponents that the period of — )
American tutelage based on the power tor
give or withhold dollars is over.
But the immediate problem facing
De Gasperi is that of safeguarding his
parliamentary control. With his yee
of sixteen he technically has the margin
required for continued leadership of the
present coalition. Dr. Adenauer became
Chancellor in Bonn by a majority of only ;
one vote and he is still Chancellor. But ;
the Itahans today are not like the West
Germans, nor is it a matter of statistics
alone. The parties which fought at the —
side of the Democrazia Cristiana—the —
Saragat Socialists, the Liberals, the Pac- —
ciardi Republicans—emerged from the —
election with their prestige destroyed. —
Saragat himself now considers his situa-
tion to be so unpromising that he has
announced to his friends his intention of ©
giving up the post of Secretary General —
of the party. The Republican Party has —
also been so badly beaten that one of its
most intelligent leaders, La Malfa, after —
being informed that the government had —
failed to win the popular majority, spon- i
taneously declared to journalists: “In the |
next Chamber we shall be only specta-
tors.” He might have | added that the —
Republican spectators “will be only a
handful—five deputies. The Liberal Pa y
has been reduced to the romantic ideal
*
{3
chess game “that will Seth. statt at
- Montecitorio Palace, they will be only
_ pawns.
_ Their foss of popularity is in direct
relation to their pro-Americanism. This
_ is an important fact to bear in mind.
+ As the smallest parties of the govern-
ment coalition, they felt even more
obliged than the Chistian Democrats—
still the largest Italian party, even after
their defeat—to support the policy of
_ Washington. They were the most open
and the most militant champions of
NATO, and this was one of the chief
causes of their poor showing.
De Gasperi will certainly think of a
- more solid party, now in opposition, to
take the place of these deflated allies.
The shift will require some considera-
tion as it is not free from risk. His choice
is narrow in any case. To build a really
stable majority he will have to bring into
his coalition either Nenni’s Socialists or
the Monarchists—the latter, of course,
by far the more likely choice. But at the
_ outset he is trying to form a new Cabinet
_ with the constituent elements of the old
_ —the leaders of his own Christian
Democratic Party; two or three Saragat
} Socialists, if they are willing to stay in
the government and risk losing what
popularity they still have; one or two
_ Liberals, if they can reach an agreement
CPS
St EA
Se ey
we
.
MER er oe.: o b
on terms; and one Republican, supported
by his four colleagues in the Chamber.
But such a combination would be weak
and unstable and could not possibly con-
tinue the unconditional pro-American
foreign policy of the past.
THE CONSEQUENCES of ‘the Italian
elections extend far beyond the borders
of Italy. The results are a heavy blow to
the grand design of a Roman Catholic
Europe that was already in the making.
A year ago, this idea was personified
by three powerful Catholic leaders: De
Gasperi, Schuman, and Adenauer. Amer-
ican liberals and partisans of the world-
government idea have greeted with en-
thusiasm the prospect of a united
Europe, acclaiming the achievements of
Strasbourg and the Schuman Plan as long
steps in that direction. They apparently
did not realize that the united Europe
slowly taking shape was a Catholic
Europe and that behind it was the Vat-
ican. Pope Pius XII had subtly and
discreetly won for his plan the backing
of many non-Catholic anti-Communist
European politicians as well as the key
men in American diplomacy. He used
his great powers of persuasion to con-
vince them that.the battle against Russia
‘and communism could be won only
under the leadership of the church, This
was clearly stated in an editorial in the
Corriere della Sera of June 11, comment-
ing on the elections: “In a struggle that
presents so many common characteristics
with the wars of religion, the only sym-
bol that can be opposed to the sickle and
hammer is the Cross.”
- It looked as if the Papacy was trium-
phantly returning to the most glorious
moments of its political past, when it led
the fight against the revolutionary forces
of the time. As I have noted before, the
church had this time gone further than
in previous elections to campaign openly
for a Christian-bloc victory. As the head
of an independent state, the Pope could
not vote; but those who saw his sister,
a person so very spiritual and frail, so
very Pacellian, carried on a litter to the
election booth, realized that the call to
arms in the battle against the anti-Christ
had sounded! As a Spaniard, I have had
some experience of what the Catholic
church is capable of on such occasions,
but I have never seen it as aggressive in
Spain as it has been in Italy these past
weeks.
The dream of a Catholic Europe,
aided and financed by a Protestant
America, faded last week as the votes
were counted. Faded but did not dis-
appear. It will not be abandoned, though
it may revive under changed auspices
if the balance of government power
shifts to the right. A profound fear is
keeping the dream alive—the fear of the
political awakening of the workers.
Unesco s Travail
“McCarthyism i in Paris...
E
..
Pa Paris
HUMAN rights and the rights of inter-
* national civil servants are in the center
of the conflict that has now been raging
for months between Unesco—and par-
ticularly its Staff Association—on the
one hand, and the State Department, the
_ F.B.L, and Congress on the other. One -
may think what one likes of Unesco:
the British Government, for example,
_tends to consider it as a luxury from
which the British taxpayer doesn’t get
EXANDER WERTH is The Na-
’s Paris correspondent.
27, 1953
full value (though in fact he spends on
it only a penny per head per year).
However, attention in Paris and else-
where is today centered on neither the
achievements nor the alleged short-
comings of Unesco, but on the resistance
that not only the Staff Association but,
by and large, the organization itself is
putting up against McCarthyite intimida-
tion. The other day the head of the
United States delegation to Unesco cir-
culated. to every American in the organ-
ization something called a “progress re-
port,” on the current loyalty investiga-
tions. The document contained the clear
by Alexander Werth
threat that if the “‘loyalty situation’ at
Unesco was not clarified, it was very
likely that Congress would not vote the
appropriation for it, amounting to one-
third of its budget. The report stated
inaccurately that of all the United Na-
tions agencies, only Unesco still had a
number of Americans on its payroll—
three to be exact—who had not yet filled
in the loyalty’ questionnaires based on
the Truman order of last January. The
fact is that some Americans in other
U.N. agencies have also failed to fill
in these questionnaires on the ground
that Truman’s order, largely founded on
543
ee
Pare eee
the doubtful rulings of Trygve Lie’s
three “famous” jurists, was not appli-
cable to international civil servants. It is
certainly significant that F, I. C. $. A—
the newly-organized Federation of Inter-
national Civil Servants Associations at
Gentva—should not have hesitated to
engage the services of the eminent
Belgian jurist, Senator Rolin, who has
persistently challenged the legality of
Lie’s actions and the competence of his
three jurists, not one of whom has ever
had much to do with international law
{see The Nation, March 7}. Once Rolin
completes his report there will be fur
flying, one may be sure.
The Executive Board of Unesco has
been meeting in preparation for next
month’s general conference and has al-
ready reached three important decisions.
One is that Unesco is to join the Inter-
national Labor Organization Administra-
tive Tribunal. This means that any
Unesco employee who has been dis-
missed, or who has any other complaint,
can now appeal not only to the Appeals
Board of Unesco, but also to a still
higher authority. David Leff, an Amer-
ican who has been suspended with pay,
apparently intends to appeal to the
I. L. O. tribunal should he be dismissed.
Another decision taken by the Execu-
tive Board is to continue the present
“interim arrangement” by which loyalty
questionnaires are attached to Unesco
application forms in the case of United
States applicants for jobs. However,
Unesco specifically disclaifhs responsi-
bility for the questionnaimes, which are
considered to be entirely a matter be-
tween United States nationals and their
government. The arrangement was de-
signed to give Unesco time to get the
opinion of member states onthe desira-
bility of altering its application form as
urged by the United States, which wants
one of a more “inquisitorial” nature.
Almost without exception the opinions
so far received from member states have
544
been totally unfavorable to the American
‘suggestions. India, Norway, Switzerland,
and others have said they are perfectly
satisfied with the present application
form, New Zealand adding (not without
a touch of irony):
The New Zealand Government sup-
ports the decision that Unesco should
not endorse any questionnaire which is
not its own. Moreover, it would prefer
that the Organization should not under-
take the distribution of such question-
naires. . . . The correct procedure would
be to remind applicants from the State
concerned that certain purely national re-
quirements have been established by their
government and to advise them to apply
for information to the nearest agency of
that government.
In short, New Zealand took the posi-
tion that Unesco should have nothing
to do with loyalty questionnaires, and
should not get its hands dirty with fin-
gerprint ink.
This New Zealand statement, like the
recent statement by Lester Pearson to the
effect that the Canadian Government had
had nothing to do with the selection or
appointment of Canadians employed by
the United Nations or its agencies, is
another example of: the resistance to
McCarthyism which has_been displayed
even by Commonwealth conservatives
(or near-conservatives).
Thirdly, the Executive Board con-
firmed the view expressed by John W.
Taylor, the Acting Director-General,
that under existing Staff Regulations he
could not dismiss’ anybody for potential
misbehavior as proposed by the State
Department in a letter to him dated last
February 20. This fantastic letter pro-
posed: ;
. that after the results of the investi-
gative process are made available to him,
the Director-General will not employ, or
continue to employ, any United States
citizens who are demonstrated to be or are
likely to be engaged in subversive activi-
ties against the government of the United
States [emphasis added].
Then there is the case of David Leff,
an American citizen employed by Unesco
here who was summoned to appear as
a witness before a Federal Grand Jury in
New York. But Leff had had his pass-
port withdrawn (for no specified reason)
two years ago. Uncertain of ever being
able to get back to his job or to rejoin
his family here, he refused to respond
to the summons, asking that he be per-
* right in the middle of Paris, should one
ised os esti bnabeae at t the U nite od’
States Embassy in the place of his em-
ployment, i.e., Paris. This was refused. —
Leff was then suspended’ by the Acting
Director-General. The Staff Association, —
feeling that here was a_ particularly —
blatant case, protested unanimously
against the suspension. No charge had,
indeed, been brought against Leff; it —
looked to many as though the Ametican —
authorities had adopted a new technique
of ‘kidnapping’? Unesco employees —
whom they couldn't get dismissed—get —
them to America, and so let their employ-
ment by Unesco lapse automatically
through their inability to return. What
makes the matter all the more serious
is that the passport weapon is being
more and more widely used against
United. States citizens considered po-
tentially disloyal. The whole thing makes
liberal Europeans squirm,
IT IS GOING to be a hard fight for _
Unesco, because Washington, as seen
from here, is preparing to bring out
against it all its biggest H-bombs. Cut- —
ting off the money is one. Another is the —
new McCarran bill already passed by the
Senate which should stop all this liberal
nonsense of not allowing people to be —
fired for being /ikely to do this or that.
The bill provides that anybody who —
accepts a job in the United Nations or
any of its agencies, or who continues to
work there without having gone through
a loyalty clearance, is liable to a $10,000 —
fine and or five years in jail. So if, fifteen
years ago, you gave a dollar toward a q
Spanish Republican ambulance you may —
be “for it” . or if, like Leff, you~
worked for UNRRA in Yugoslavia just
after the war.
News from Washington suggests to
Paris observers that important people
there have got their knife into Unesco —
and indeed into the United Nations. Itis”
beginning to look from here as if the —
attack on Unesco might prove merely a —
minor prelude to a much bigger drive
against the U. N. itself. In short, with
McCarthyism performing at its worst
inside an international show-window —
really be surprised at the “erosion” of
Europe’s solidarity with the United —
States which, according to the London |
Sunday Times correspondent in ‘Wash-
ington, is making Presidént Eisenhower
feel like a distressed mother hen?
: The Natio NU
STILWELL’S MISSION TO CHINA.
By Charles F. Romanus and Riley
Sunderland. Department of the Army,
Government Printing Office. $5.
THE RIVER AND THE GAUNTLET.
By S. L. A. Marshall. William Mor-
_ row and Company. $5.
REPORT ON MAO’S CHINA. By
Frank Moraes. The Macmillan Com-
pany. $3.75.
FIVE GENTLEMEN OF JAPAN. By
Frank Gibney. Farrar, Straus and
Young. $4.
| TIBET AND THE TIBETANS. By
' Tsung-lien Shen and Shen-chi Liu.
Stanford University Press. $5.
f
b
,
:
7
a
>
¢
i
a
&
4 ISTORY, it often seems, is made up
of classical tragedies—of men
doomed by circumstance, of great lead-
ers insensitive to the fatal change of
| climate, of political movements crum-
bling apart. One is reminded of this on
reading the latest instalment in the
army's expanding and magnificent story
of World War II. ‘Stilwell’s Mission
; o China” is a Greek tragedy, in which
. strong man battles elusive or un-
faithful men and historic forces he can-
j not overcome. This human tragedy is
f, uperimposed on the far broader tragedy
| of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomin-
sane, fighting their traditional battles in
théir traditional ways, without awareness
‘of the doom staring into the doorway. I
do not know if the authors had read up
on'Euripides before taking up the study
of the thousands of documents that have
|_ gone into this book. I do know that this
th ick report of a military mission, with
its ‘rich detail of campaigns fought or
planned, soon takes the shape of a
dl assical tragedy, through which the hero
n 1oves to his inevitable personal disaster.
_ Chosen to command the projected
~~
M ARK GAYN, foreign correspondent
and author of “The Fight for the
ific” and “Japan Diary,” spent many
ws in the Far East.
Lessons of Asia
A Review by Mark Gayn
landing in North Africa, Stilwell was
sent instead to China when another
officer is thought to be reluctant to take
up the assignment. His tasks are simple:
“To increase the effectiveness of U. S.
assistance to the Chinese Government
for the prosecution of the war and to
assist in improving the combat efficiency
of the Chinese Army.” This, in Febru-
ary, 1942, is the begirining of the trag-
edy. Soon Stilwell finds himself before
obstacles of pride, ignorance, ahd tradi-
tion, “the whole tangled structure of
Chinese politics, culture, and society.”
Chungking hesitates to move some
troops; it denies lend-lease supplies to
others; and at. all times the Chinese
troops are badly equipped, badly trained,
undernourished, and ineptly led. Chiang
does not wish to sacrifice his men in
action; nor does he wish to do anything
(Colonel Dorn reports to Washington )
“but hoard the materiel in order to per-
petuate [his regime} after the war.”
Stilwell’s desperate efforts to train thirty
divisions of Chiang’s troops in India are
short-circuited at every point because,
Stilwell feels, Chiang does not wish the
commander of this force to challenge his
authority in the future. And, above all,
the ruling group in Chungking—Chiang
himself, General Ho Ying-chin, T. V.
Soong, and the two clever sisters, Mme
Chiang and Mme Kung—is won over
by General Chennault’s advocacy of an
inexpensive air war. A brilliant air tac-
tician, Chennault undertakes to bring
Japan to its knees with little more than a
force of 150 fighters and 76 bombers.
Chennault joins the antagonists, and
the historic conflict moves on to Wash-
ington. T. V. Soong enlists Harry Hop-
kins, and they are joined by Lauchlin
Currie ina backstairs campaign to gain
President Roosevelt's support.
As in all Greek tragedies, no one
wins. Chennault gets the President’s ap-
proval, but six months later he finds his
battered air force being pushed out of its
poorly defended air fields. Colonel Dorn
records that ‘Soong expressed the opin-
ion that the present regime would be out
of a job six months after the war was
over. He ought to know. . . .” Soong
wins his battle with Stilwell, but he lives:
to see his own prophecy come true. And
after the President repudiates Stilwell’s
insistence on a guid pro quo from
Chiang Kai-shek, Stilwell prophetically
forecasts his own departure. The book
does not end with Stilwell’s recall, but it
does conclude on a note of imminent
tragedy. (One can only speculate on
whether Eisenhower would have become
President had Stilwell been sent to
North Africa, as planned.)
SEVEN YEARS pass, the scene shifts to
Korea, and another masterly army his-
torian, S. L. A. Marshall, records a re-
lated tragedy. This time it is the story of
how the Chinese Communist forces de-
feated the United States Eighth Army on
the Chongchon River. If the authors of
“Stilwell’s Mission’ prefer to tell their
tragedy in the muted tones of army re-
ports, Mr. Marshall chooses to recount
it in the terms of its impact on individ-
ual Americans. He omits the broader
aspects of that November defeat. Yet,
they cannot be wholly ignored. Thus, the
author records that General Walker was
not happy about the march on the Yalu
ordered by General- MacArthur in the
fall of 1950, and that Chou En-lai’s
warning of China’s intervention threw
Walker's headquarters into ‘‘a dread ap-
prehension.”” But even the warnings of
Walket’s Intelligence had to be worded
carefully, for “the merest mention of
Chinese intervention’’ sent the South
Korean commanders into a panic. In
fact, the Korean Defense Minister urged
that the advance toward the Yalu be
halted. If the Eighth Army Intelligence
was aware of the danger, the Intelli-
gence in Tokyo apparently was not. Two
days before MacArthur flew off to Wake
Island ‘to tell President. Truman that
Chinese intervention was not a plausible
or potent threat in the war,” the first
Chinese prisoners had already been cap-
tured.
MacArthur's drive north was planned
with disdain for the Chinese, and with
that bold abandon which had won him
so many battles. It had, in fact, become
a race, and the South Korean troops
were already on the Yalu when an
American unit ran into a major ambush
545
i ES ER
er ee
Sa
far below the river. Somehow, some-
where the Chinese had crossed the Yalu
undetected, and hid themselves until
they were ready. When they did strike,
the Eighth Army discovered it was faced
not by three regiments (as the first Chi-
nese prisoners testified), but by three
full armies, backed by three more.
The stage set, Mr. Marshall proceeds
to unfold the tragic story—the confusion
and fear, the failure of some and the
superb performance of others, the suffer-
ing and the heroism. In preparing this
report, he must have spoken to thou-
sands. He now tells their story, from the
moment the Stonewall Company, 129
strong, walked into the developing
battle and saw the next morning with
only 34 men alive. The story shifts from
company to company, and then to bigger
formations; from soldiers to officers to
generals, none of them yet able to grasp
the magnitude of the Chinese attack.
There are memorable flashes: the ma-
chine-gunner on a knoll suddenly seeing
a Chinese regiment trotting down a dry
river bed just a few yards away from
him; the Koreans, deep in retreat, who
had come through a supply dump, and
looked like merchants going to a fair;
the Chinese regiment in South Korean
uniforms marching so nonchalantly while
buzzed by suspicious United States air-
craft that it was left alone, later to do
great damage in the Eighth Army’s rear;
and the G. I. who fought a lone battle
in the middle of enemy formations, and
who, on emerging in the morning with
his machine-gun and both his feet
frozen, laughed and said, “I feel happy
as hell.”
Thus the story develops from the
earliest skirmishes, to the Chinese break-
through, and then to the nightmare of a
roadblock in which the retiring Allied
units were caught in enemy crossfire. It
is a heroic and chilling story, beautifully
told. It is also a story with a lesson for
the West. The defeat came as much
because of our faulty Intelligence as be-
cause we failed to understand what had
happened in China between 1943 and
1950.
WHAT IT is that has transformed the
sick and ill-trained Chinese soldier of
Stilwell’s day into the highly skilled
fighter on the Chongchon is analyzed at
length, and with considerable intelli-
gence, in still another excellent book,
546
Frank Moraes’s “Report on Mao's
China.” Mr. Moraes is an Oxonian and
editor of the influential Times of India.
In the spring of 1952, he visited Red
China for six weeks as a member of the
official Indian cultural mission. Mr.
Moraes is frankly repelled by what he
found, though he maintains a judicious
impartiality.
most of the facets of Chinese life, from
“brain-washing’’ to education, land re-
form, and China’s relations with Mos-
cow. The people, he finds, have either
embraced Maoism passionately, as a faith
that was so notably lacking under
Chiang, or accept it passively as the only
way to survive. The combination of
faith, political terror, and some real
material achievements holds China to-
gether as nothing has held it before.
And, as never before, an individual has
been taught to take pride in the collective
effort.
As an intellectual, Mr. Moraes is es-
pecially perturbed by what has happened
to men of intellect. Thought, he finds,
“is a government monopoly,” schools
have become vehicles for impressing
Marxism on young minds, and the
Chinese Communists are ‘“‘well on the
way to winning young China.” But he
also finds that the intellectuals have
become “creatures of the State to whom
their minds are mortgaged.” Under the
Kuomintang, the intellectuals backed the
Communists as the lesser evil. ““Now,”
he finds, ‘they seemed less certain... .
Nothing burned itself so strongly in my
mind as {their} mental furtiveness.”
What makes this book particularly
interesting is that Mr. Moraes views
China through Indian eyes. For Nehru,
he points out, Marxism is “an academic
exercise.’ For Mao Tse-tung, it is “a
practical panacea for many ills and a
system adaptable to his country’s needs.”
“When during the war Nehru said that
black-marketeers should be hanged tothe
nearest lamp post he was using a figure of
speech. When Mao says it he means it.”
With this comes a difference in dyna-—
mism. Mao regards China as the leader
of Asia, and may yet launch a move for
the economic “liberation” of Asia from ,
the “tyranny of capitalism.” Nehru also
wishes to be rid of the last vestiges of
European domination, but he sees in
communism a great danger against which
freedom is the best defense. ‘Force is
certainly not the answer to Communism.
In Asian chine Coane cat
‘Mao's China’’ encompasses:
overcome only by countering the cor
tions which create it.”” India and Chit
thus supply the two main approaches to”
the problem. “If China proves that her
system of goverment ensures economic
security . . . without detracting from
{the people’s} sense of freedom, Asia
will be lost to Communism. If India, on
the other hand, demonstrates that demo-
cratic government can ensure not only
economic security but individual liberty,
then Asia will be won to democracy.
What India and China are today in fact
doing is wrestling for the political soul
of Asia. That is why India’s role in
Asian affairs is crucial.” ry
This is a thought-provoking book pro-
viding a look at China from a new angle
—and without the simulated passion that
one finds in so many more superficial
volumes on the subject.
“e
FRANK GIBNEY’S book is an attempt
to retell the history of Japan in terms:
of its impact on five individuals, from |
the emperor to a peasant. Much of the
material is familiar, but the story is skil-
fully told, and if one has the urge to
learn something of Japan's history, the’
ways of her people, and the effects of
the defeat, all in one easy sitting, he can
do no better than turn to Mr. Gibney
for help.
A word, finally, about.a choroughilg
fascinating volume on a little known
Asian topic. “Tibet and the Tibetans” ;
was written by a former Chinese Resi-
dent Commissioner in Lhasa and his
secretary. Both show themselves to be %
not only astute observers of folkways,
but also possessors of a subtle sense of
humor, The book devotes only five pages
to the post-war political developments,
but it is fortunately long on the subjects
that seem closer to the authors—such
subjects as Lamaism, polyandry, picnics
a la Lhasa, the hunt for a new Dalai
Lama, and the complexities of govern-
ment for, and by, a living god.
Together, the five books woul make
any publishing season a happy one. But
the first three of them also bear impor-
tant lessons, for unless wé can learn
by our errors of the past decade, and
adjust our policies and attitudes to the
flow of history, we may find our future
strewn with tragedies. Mr. Marshall's
magnificent book is a reminder of how
costly such tragedies and errors can be.
More on the Brontés
THE BRONTE STORY. By Margaret
Lane. Duell, Sloan & Pearce-Little,
_ Brown. $5.
| This popular biography of the Bronté
family, by the English author, Margaret
Lane, the Countess of Huntingdon, leans
i: rather heavily on Mrs. Gaskell’s “Life
; of Charlotte Bronté.” But it does include
valuable material either unknown to or
_ suppressed by Mrs. Lane’s eminent pred-
ecessor, and the later contributions of
Bronté scholars to a family legend
which was completely Victorian and
hardly less stark than the House of
Atreus. There are interesting sections
_ here on the secret history of the Bronté
_ dream-kingdoms of Angria and Gondal,
| i begun in childhood and continued, with
| a fantastic prolificness, well into matu-
i tity. Previously deleted passages in
/ Charlotte's letters to her Brussels teacher,
_M. Heger, also suggest that her feelings
were not merely platonic; and there is
| the detailed story of Mr. Nicholls’s
"courtship against the violent opposition
of her father. Other missing elements of
‘the legend, conveniently summarized,
with a certain modesty and competence
of tone, are useful to anyone interested
|
i :
in
i:
f
|
|
|
I
"biography can be more than “a foot-
“mote... to her incomparable text,” the
_ reader ae do well te know the orig-'
_ ital biography first, which still remains
a work of art in its own right.
ns. oe 50.
Ba eae Constant flourished—if the
rd can be applied to the life of a
in one of the great heydays of gal-
‘lantry; namely that period when the
eighteenth century was turning into
had made the grand—if frequently brief
—passion at least as much a duty as it
s a pleasure. Since “for once conven-
tion favored rather than frowned upon
liaison, the turnover was rapid and
in the Brontés, But if no post-Gaskellian _
4 nineteenth and the rise of sensibility.
the game were often troublesomely will-
ing. Perhaps that fact had more to do
than is usually admitted with the per-
plexities of a writer whose he-would-
and-he-wouldn’t relations with various
women dragged on for years and whose
“Adolphe” is generally considered a
masterpiece of emotional self-analysis.
The present book is the first Eng-
lish translation of a long-lost but recently
recovered autobiographical fragment
which describes under the thin disguise
of fictitious names Constant’s thirteen-
years’ hesitation between that domineer-
ing maneater Madame de Staél and the
twice married but gentle and submissive
Charlotta von Hardenberg with whom
he later contracted what appears to
have been a happy marriage. Less harsh
than Stendhal and more straightforward
than Proust, Constant has something in
common with both; particularly the fact
that one half of him can stand aside
while the other half is deeply involved.
One is always having to deal with what
he is trying to feel, with what he thinks
he is feeling, and with what he actually
does feel. Often if not quite always he
himself knows which is which. “Cecile”
is a significant addition to his canon.
A Frenchman’s View
THE GREAT AMERICAN PARADE.
By H.-J. Duteil. Translated by Fletcher
Pratt. Twayne Publishers. $3.75.
This book, according to its publishers,
presents ‘‘the strange portrait of America
that Europe accepts.’’ That is surely an
exaggeration even if it has been a best- »
seller in France, Belgium, Italy, and
other countries. No doubt many if not
most Europeans accept the author's
standardized strictures on Hollywood.
On the other hand, his views of the
Negro question are those of Paris, Texas,
rather. than Paris, France. In short, this
is an idiosyncratic rather than a repre-
sentative European account of America,
the work of a Frenchman who from in-
ternal evidence appears to be a conserva-
tive, a snob, and, although he would
vehemently deny it, a kind of philistine.
American readers are likely to be more
amused than resentful of his obiter dicta.
They will observe that his research into
American history has been sketchy and
that he has a tendency to indulge in
the most sweeping generalizations—for
instance, in his section on racial origins,
which shows strong anti-Irish and anti-
Italian prejudices. But they will also
note with shame Mr. Duteil’s account
of his detention on Ellis Island, where
he was subjected to outrageous bullying
until he produced proof that he had
“some very rich friends in the United
States.”
“Catholics Don’t Adore Mary”
says Knights of Columbus ad
— Read —
MARY: MOTHER OF JESUS
OR QUEEN OF HEAVEN?
by Charles W. Amlin
Then draw your own conclusion
This book is an examination of historical
evidence based on faith in the truth that
makes men free. It shows two Marys: one
the symbolie goddess of Catholic doctrine;
the other the lovely human being of both
Catholic and Vrotestant Bibles.
Cloth $2.25 Paper $1.25
. Order direct from
ISLAND PRESS
470 West 24th Street, New York 11, N. Y.
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ee a hee
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All About Women
WOMEN TODAY. Edited by Eliza-
beth Bragdon. Bobbs-Merrill. $4.
A collection of excerpts and articles,
previously published elsewhere, dealing
with modern women, “their conflicts,
their frustrations, and their fulfilments.”
The editor is to be congratulated on
gathered together so many in-
teresting and representative pieces. In
having
the final phase of our progress toward
the full emancipation of woman books
*-such as this can help to clarify the
issues.
Southern Apologist
WHERE MAIN STREET MEETS THE
RIVER. By Hodding Carter. Rinehart.
$4.
This is, generally speaking, an easy-
to-read success story of a man whose
talents and efforts were recognized by
the right people at the right time. It is
written in a cheerful manner that makes
one glad such happiness is still attain-
able, especially in a field so notoriously
Unfortunately,
the dust jacket proclaims the book to be
“the personal testament of a man who
neurotic as journalism.
has become the spokesman for the new
South.” And when Carter indulges in
regionalistic polemics, one’s hackles rise.
On the problems of the South he
adopts the conventional “and you're an-
other” attitude toward “professional
South-baiters.” At one point, with ap-
parent seriousness, he equates the “‘mis-
treatment’ of the Penobscot Indians in
Maine with the lot of the Southern
Negro. He attacks at great length the
Tuskegee lynching reports, citing crimes
in the North that he says could just as
well have been included. And he joins
the “Southern constitutionalists’”’ in their
opposition to civil-rights legislation. He
presents each social and economic gain
in the South as if it were a miracle in
bootstrap lifting and gloats over those
Northern industries which have de-
camped to Dixie to take advantage of the
“willing labor.”
Ironically, Carter's compendium of
racial and religious inequities in the na-
tion at large serves to buttress the case
for federal legislation protecting minori-
ties and makes all the more untenable
the position of those who block enact-—
ment in the name of “Thomas Jeffer-
son's illimitable freedoms.”’ If all white
Southerners of good-will enjoyed: Car-
ter’s influential status, perhaps the region -
could right itself without any legislative
or judicial coercion. But too many are
just plain citizens. They might fight Jim
Crow through their labor unions, their
church groups, or in ad boc committees,
but they are harassed and thwarted by
state and local segregation statutes. Nor
does Hodding Carter speak for them.
Theater. ~
Harold Clurman’
Tel-Aviv
N 1949—the occasion of my last visit
to Israel—the population was seven
hundred thousand. Today it is a million
and a half. Tel-Aviv, the country’s larg-
est city, now has a population of four
hundred thousand. There are three per-
manent dramatic companies here.
The Israeli theatrical enterprises oc-
cupy permanent quarters; presenting a
varied program of plays forty-eight
weeks a year on the repertory basis of
alternating performances. The Habimah
company’s current success is Maxwell
Anderson and Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the
Stars,”’ renamed “Cry, the Beloved Coun-
548
try,” the title of Alan Paton’s novel of
which it is a dramatization. Molnar’s
“Liliom” was also being done when I
arrived but it was not a success.
While the latest productions are
shown six nights a week in Tel-Aviv,
part of the Habimah company presents
some of the less recent productions in
Jerusalem, Haifa, and in the smaller
cities, as well as in the coopetative
settlements. These productions include
Maeterlinck’s ‘Blue Bird,’”’ Ibsen’s “Peer
Gynt,” and a contemporary Israeli play
called “I Am the Ship’s Captain.’
One of the most fascinating aspects of
the Israeli theater to me is the intensity
Romain’s
suffer from that unevenness of style
and diveraitgs ) ac a
of my production of ae 5 *Caes and
Cleopatra” plays the title role in “Peer
Gynt” and is the director of Ibsen’s
“John Gabriel Borkman,” in which he
also acted this season, as well as the
director of a new production of Jul es
“Knock” which he did |
another theater. While I am rchcardl
“Caesar and Cleopatra,” Joseph Bulov in n
an adjoining hall is working on Mary
Chase’s “Mrs. McThing,” while in still”
another room a new Israeli play is being
directed by an actor who also appears in’
“Peer Gynt” and is the Appolodorus 4
of our Shaw production, Le
There is extraordinary interest here in
the theater—and sharp rivalry - among,
the different organizations and their
various champions. In many quarters, it
is fashionable to speak of the Habimah
as old hat (due to its Muscovite origin
in 1919 with the famous production of
“The Dybbuk’’) but it is my belief that.
this opinion is itself old hat. The Habi-
mah is as representative and as “modern”
as any of Israeli theaters. Among certain
people the favored company is that of
the Chamber Theater, most of whose
actors are in their early thirties. Th ir
great success now playing is hag
“St. Joan.”
tion, (IF this is a fault, it is a fault e
may well envy.) Most Israeli productions
which frequently accompanies the efor s
of those who. strive to be original at
“new.” (A naturalistic box-set hae
set is in New York.) The effect of
straining for novelty is that the pr
tions nearly always have a lively
even when they are artistically un
grated or amateurish. What saves 1
of these productions is an occasiona
sound concept on the part of the dire
—frequently foreign—but more oft
remarkable acting performance. _
The Chamber Theater’s “St. Joan
easily superior to the Theater Guild’s
uninspired revival two seasons aaa Vi
fat less money than the Guild sper
its visually ee show, the Char
spaciousness and Se Its mair
however, is a young -actress—
Porat—whose Joan is the most rins
‘touching of all the Joans I have seen
_ (Sybil Thorndike, Katharine Cornell,
Uta Hagen). Porat, who was born in
Germany, is half-Jewish and has just re-
cently learned Hebrew and become a citi-
zen of the country. I note this fact only
because it is symbolic of the cultural
c phenomenon that the Israeli theater
; ae
eriious, not altogether satisfactory, but
thoroughly economical setting—fash-
ioned by Joseph Carl, a talented Austro-
+ English designer—a setting which looks
like some of those done in Berlin and
_ Moscow in the twenties but which serves
the practical purposes of the present
piece very well. But again the highlight
of the production is the grandiose
in plicity,-the deeply moving feeling
| which Aaron Meskin brings to the cen-
tral role. As “Lost in the Stars” is a
musical play, Meskin, who has long been
) the outstanding dramatic actor of_the
© Israeli stage, is obliged to sing a con-
| siderable portion of his part. What is
remarkable about his performance in this
respect is that because his singing is that
of an actor, it is more effective in the
circumstance than trained vocalization
D might be.
en energetic, wide-ranging profes-
FE
.
.
C ON AMORE,” the new Lew Chris-
om -tensen piece presented by the New
eo rk City Ballet, begins pleasantly
and amusingly; but apparently it is easier
"to begin something than to continue it
d bring it to a conclusion in a clear
development, as Christensen did
rilliantly in ‘‘Filling Station,” and
doesn’t do in “Con Amore.” Head-
yson of Mr. Christensen’s San Fran-
co Ballet Company, which first pro-
d the piece last March; and Miss
ey’s dancing in the opening scene
very lovely. And Jacques d’ Amboisé
d another opportunity to display his
ing spins and leaps.
lost of Jerome Robbins’s “Fanfare”
ents ns beyond a professional
Soren 4 : wi
; F Satay
“Lost in, the Stars’ is done in an in- ;
a ¢ a
< oT pe 7,
~
Ay 7 >
“
-sionalism—together with ardent ambi-
‘tion—is characteristic of all the better
actors in Israel. Shimon Finkel’s Peer
Gynt is arresting by the amplitude of its
attack, its incessant vigor, and its fidelity
to the intention of the Swedish director
who staged and designed the production.
I saw it under unfavorable technical
auspices at a performance in an ill-
equipped house in Jerusalem, and cannot
speak knowledgeably of all aspects of
the production, but it nevertheless made
me realize for the first time how pro-
found and imaginative a play “Peer
Gynt” can be when sympathetically pro-
duced in an unfettered theater.
Israelis complain that they have not
produced a native drama worth mention-
ing. In fact, they complain about every-
thing in their theater. It becomes a
visitor's duty, therefore, to point out to
them that these complaints are them-
selves a sign of their country’s youthful
ferment, and that, putting aside all social
and material considerations, Israel has
good reason to be proud of its theatrical
accomplishments. Perhaps when Israel
is more developed it will learn to make
an artistic virtue of its primitive crude-
ness. Suffice it for us to say at present
that compared to the least of the Israeli
actors and directors, the entire professton
in America is unemployed.
Music
B. H. Hagein
resourcefulness in filling the stage with
movement; but in this setting of Britten’s
“The Young Person’s: Guide to the
Orchestra” Robbins contrives three epi- F
sodes of brilliant comedy for-the bas-
soons, the trombones and tuba, and the
percussion. These are the only ones that
show a relation to the characters of the
instruments and the music: another not
very funny bit of comedy for the double
bass has no relation to what Britten has
written for the instrument.
“The Filly,’ Todd Bolender’s ballet
about horses, didn’t come off.
CONCERNING HIS orchestral arrange-
ment of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Opus
106 (‘“Hammerklavier”) Weingartner
wrote: “On making a close examination
“This is a book-burning. .. !”
Fora LIFT and to Fight McCARTHYISM
. Own and Play
MANDEL vs. McCARTHY
actual recording of the sensational
televised hearing
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BOX 175, RADIO Omer STATION
New York 19, N. Y.
RODGERS e HAMMERSTEIN’S
New Musical Comedy
Me Julia
with ISABEL BILL JOA
ey HAYES McCRACKEN
MARK JACKIE
R WALSTON DAWSON KELK
Air-Cond. MAJESTIC THEATRE, W. 44 St.
& Eves. at 8:30. Mats. Wed. and Sat., 2:30
H YUL BRYNNER
RODGERS « HAMMERSTEIN’S
The King and I
A Musical Play
with CONSTANCE CARPENTER
Air-Cond. ST. JAMES THEATRE, W. 44 St.
Evenings at 8:25: $7.20 to 1.80. Matinees
Wednesday & Saturday at 2:25: $4.20 to 1.80.
of Beethoven's style of writing and con-
struction in this sonata, it becomes more
and more difficult to believe that an
orchestral conception should not have
been present in his mind.” But listening
to the transcribed first movement I find
it impossible to hear anything but writ-
ing for the piano that is less effective
in orchestral translation. And its effect
is lessened further by the devitalizing
performance by Kurt Graunke with the
Bavarian Symphony (Urania).
Of the Musorgsky pieces played well
by Susskind with the Philharmonia
Orchestra (MGM) —the excerpts from
“Khovantchina” and ‘The Fair at Soro-
chinsk,” ““A Night on Bald Mountain,”
a Scherzo (1858), an Intermezzo Sym-
phonique (1867), and the Turkish
March “The Capture of Kars’’—every
one except the Intermezzo Symphonique
is described as edited by Rimsky-
Korsakov or Liadov; and however engag-
ing some of them are, one isn’t hearing
what Musorgsky wrote. The Inter-
mezzo is a fine piece; and if it really is
unedited it provides additional evidence
that what Musorgsky completed needed
no editing by anyone else.
Tchaikovsky’s seldom-heard Piano
‘Concerto No. 2, even with its dull mo-
549
ee ee ae
ee ee eae
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Crossword Puzzle No. 521
BY FRANK W. LEWIS
)
ACROSS
What Singer’s troupe should have
followed without much resistance?
(5, 8)
Knight without a lot of armor. (5)
See 26 across.
Settlers, not necessarily from
Panama. (9)
These days are fast with some
people, (5)
Sometimes applied to what might be
evil nonsense, but it’s fine and clear,
on the ball! (4, 8)
and 8 down. Old timer? (12, 5)
This composer is in understandable
hardships. (5)
Gone without in France—but they
kept the Nazis busy! (9)
Walking like Chaplin? (9)
and 11 across. Seems as though they
ought to raise wheat! (5, 9)
Complain, by the way, with a
retinue. (8, 5
DOWN
Deal in what grasping people often
seize. (6)
Noted mineral extracted from °
water. (9)
Another old timer? Watch the hours
flow by. (9)
Winds and rocks. (5)
Proclamation. (5)
Readers are Invited to send for a free copy of Mr. Lewis's
requests to Puzzle Dept.,
7 Bon mot re that of which Nanki- —
PTE ee
[sap Saat daled
Poo was once second. (8) :
8 See 19 across. ¢
9 One of those laid low at Bannock-—
burn? (7)
15 Came into this in the ride. (9)
16 Short and stubby, and a big bore!
(9)
17 Women seem to, compared with
men. (7)
18 Sort of rock about the passageway,
with the entrance into it operatic.
(8)
20 Sandwiches now are recognized as
this. (6)
21 Employing this gun is bad! (5)
23 With a copperhead, it should go at
least partly underground. (5)
24 Not genocide, but the finish of some
races! (5)
-*
<0
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE No. 520
ACROSS:—1 RESTRICTED; 6 WILD; 10
INSIDER; 11 ASUNDER; 12 FAIRWAYS;
13 CATCH; 15 LINKS; 17 IN BAD ODOR:
19 COMPOUNDS; 21 STATH; 23 JOUST; 24
HIERARCH; 27° CAISSON;
29 STEM; 30 HALF GAINER,
DOWN:—1 and 4
SUSTAIN; 3 RIDER; 7 INDITED; 8 DARK
HORSES; 9 SUICIDES; 14 BLACKJACKS;
16 SCOTTISH ; 18 BAS- RELIEF; 20 and 8
down MAURICE EVANS; 22 AUCTION; 24
HPNNA; 25 ARENA; 26. PEER. ’
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and “Kol Nidre,”
wat
| ments, is a better work than the popular
No. 1. I can imagine musically more
imposing piano-playing, than Margot
Pinter’s in the performance with the
Radio Berlin Symphony under Rother
(Urania).
Strauss’s ‘Aus Italien,” the first of his
tone poems (it preceeded “Macbeth,”
which preceded ‘Don Juan’’), is luxu-
riant, diffuse, and not interesting. It is
played well by the Berlin Radio Sym-
phony under Rother (Urania).
Other things to skip: Prokofiev’s Sym-
phony No. 7, played by Ormandy with
the Philadelphia Orchestra (Columbia).
Schénberg’s “A Survivor from Warsaw”
played by Swarowsky
with the Vienna Symphony and Hans
Jaray, narrator; and his Second Chamber
Symphony, played by Hafner with the
same orchestra (Colurhbia). William
Schuman’s Symphony for Strings, played
by Steinberg with the Pittsburgh Sym-
phony (Capitol).
Aksel Schiotz’s.voice lacks its former
fluidity and is a little monotonous in
color in performances of Beethoven's
“An die ferne Geliebte’”” with Horszow-
ski, and Bach’s Cantata No. 189 ‘‘Meine
Seele rihmt und preist” with Wummer
(flute), Tabuteau (oboe), Alexander
Schneider (violin), Tortelier re
and Veyron-Lacroix (harpsichord), r
corded at the 1951 Perpignan faa
(Columbia).
Hardly a day in recent aos without
its press release from Remington about
the earth-shaking events to follow from
its engagement of Laszlo Halasz as
director. And now at last a record pro-
‘duced by Mr. Halasz—the first of
series called Recital and Encores, of
which the earth-shaking feature is merely
the new title for the old and objection-
able jumbling together of every kind of
piece including encore pieces. In this
case it is songs by Purcell, Schubert,
Brahms, Wolfe, Duparc, Fauré, and Mas-
senet, with John Jacob Niles’s arrange-
ments of some gambling songs as the
encores. I don’t care for the Brahms, the
French songs, and the encores; but all
are sung superbly by Mack Harrell. To
appreciate how well he sings Wolf's
‘Abschied,’ among others, you would
have to have the words; and Mr. Halasz’s
earth-shaking innovations don’t include
supplying the needed texts of the songs
rather than the useless information about
them. sg
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RESORTS
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ADIRONDACK HEAVEN
e LES PINE
¢ MARTHA SCHLAMME
* LEON BIBB plus Many more
¢ Folk & Square Dancing, orches-
tra, cocktail lounge, curio shop
e 9 Tennis Courts, seni riding,
bicycling, ete.
¢ All water sports on 60- acre
private Crystal Lake
CRYSTAL LAKE LODGE
Coe NEW YORK
Phone: 3830 . Phone: TU 2-0477
SLM
Tae adult resort that is 2 “different”
Pottersville, N. ¥.
On SCHROON LAKE
STAFF DIRECTORS
Alfred Geto—Entertainment
sulos & Anita Adolphe—Folk Dancing
Peter Seeger—Festivals
Gerald Fried & His Orchestra
All Sports—5 Championship Tennis Courts
Resort Phones: Chestertown (N. Y.) 2830 or 9684
City Office Phone: CO 5- 0490
LEAH OKUN, director
INDIAN LAKE LODGE, Indian Lake, N. Y,
The “different, informal” Adirondack Lake-
shore Hotel accommodating 85 congenial,
intimate guests. All Sport facilities, Entertain-
ment, Dancing, ete, Cozy rooms, some with
private baths. Superb Viennese-Hungarian
Cuisine and Pattisserie. Excellent service,
moderate rates. For folder, information and
reservations—Dachinger, EVergreen 73-0012 or
Indian Lake 2782. Direct bus from Dixie
Hotel to Indian Lake,
Las
sco
Cine. U L LY
JULY 4th WEEKEND—Gala Program
July 3 to July 5—$18 per person
Entertainment and Dancing Nightly to Unity Band
Boating * Swimming ¢ All Sports
$40 & $43 WEEKLY (no tipping)
includes everything
For t.formation and reservations, write to
1. Union Square, Rm. 610, N. Y. 3; AL 5-6960—6961
PICTURESQUE. HIDEAWAY on 200-
acre estate, private lake, virgin woods,
waterfalls, swimming, boating, fishing. Near
golf and summer theatre. Delicious food.
Informal atmosphere. Rooms with private
bath. Small» group.
Also 4room apartment, charmingly fur-
nished, facing waterfalls and 1l-room cabin
with fireplace and screened porch on an
island in our lake. Complete housekeeping
facilities.
LAKE LOUANNE, Old Clinton Road,
Westbrook, Conn. Phone: CLinton 6-2465.
FESTIVAL HOUSE now open. ot pre-
season rates. Excellent summer theatre on
premises free to guests. Walk to Tangle-
wood. Unusual vacation experience. Write
Bruno Aron, Lenox, Mass. Phone: 367W.
551
— aes EP a cel
i
P
Ga Se Lee
Bh eT
oar sett
Books and prints...
at sensational savings
MAIL THIS COUPON WITHOUT DELAY
Please send me, postage prepaid, the book bargains circled below:
peenere book shops. Dept. N2 222 Fourth Avenue, New York 3, N. Y.
E (0 Enclosed find $_____ () Send C. O. D.
8 13 19 20 21 30 4l 79 84 85 90 91 94 “97
98 TOP S1O4 21065 10827 tin 14 205°. 214° 219° 230° +378) 7450" 537
541 545 546 547 552 573 636 638 639 644 646 647 649 650
657 * (669-675 . 677-684" 690 702 719) 726) 7289729" 730) Jol soe
J33)) 795! 736" 738 2739) 740) “746 “747 VAD 75 les oe so4
City. Zone—__—_State
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Add 25c per title for deliveries outside U.S. A. and possessiuns.
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SHY AA OS A RS CS YE A CS A DY A
WHEN IN NEW YORK CITY—VISIT THE CONVENIENTLY LOCATED MARBORO BOOK SHOPS
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(near Stern's) (off Fifth Avenue) (near Carnegie Hall)
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751. SOLDIER’S ALBUM.
SHAEF Pictorial History of the War in Europe. Come
aes by Col. R. E. Dupuy and Lt. Col. Herbert
regstein. Hundreds of magnificent photographs and
a running commentary of text tell the stirring story
of the assault, penetration®and collapse of Fortress
Europe. Handsome, 9” x 12” volume. Pub. at $5.00.
Only .97
97. LAUTREC: LA CLOWNESSE.
This painting by Toulouse-Lautrec of a celebrated
woman clown in the Parisian Circus is one of his
most popular and colorful works. Now you can have
a superb true-to-the-original reproduction of La
Clownesse (The Seated Clown) for your home. This
Jarge 20” wide x 24” high (actual printed area)
print makes a striking center of interest for any
room. The dramatic use of pinks and yellows with
black has been handled in Lautrec’s inimitable
manner. Pub. at $10.00. Very special, only 1.98
30. UTRILLO: MONTMARTRE.
A superb full-color reproduction of one of the most
charming Parisian scenes ever painted by Utrillo.
Actual picture size measures 20” high x 24” wide.
Ideal for framing. Pus. at $10.00. Now only 1.98 f
726. THE ANALYTICAL CONCERT GUIDE. *« ©
Edited by Louis Biancolli. An indispensable aid to
the enjoyment and understanding of symphonic |
music . . . over 300 symphonies, tone poems, over- ¢
tures, and concertos examined by the best musical “J
annotators. 732 pages. Pub. at $7.50. Only 3.95
728. BARCHESTER TOWERS.
By Anthony Trollope. A nicely printed and hand-
somely bound edition of Trollope’s masterpiece. Imp.
from England. Only .97
730. THE IMMORTAL BOHEMIAN: é
An Intimate Memoir of Giacomo Pucgini. By Dante a
del Fiorentino. The brilliant composer comes to life %
in this vivid word picture by Puccini's close friend.
Illus. Pub. at $3.50. Only 1.49
731. CHARLIE CHAPLIN:
THE GREAT GOD PAN.
By Robert Payne. Here is a definitive and exciting
book about the most beloved character in the
world—the immortal Jittle tramp. Many photo-
graphs. 312 pages. Pub. at $3.75. Only 1.98
732. A QUEST FOR GANDHI.
By Reginald Reynolds. A significant and thoughtful
biographical study by a young writer who lived in
Gandhi's own household. Pub. at $3.75. Only .97
733. THE BOOKMAN’S LONDON.
By Frank Swinnerton. The famous novelist has writ-
ten this genial, authoritative guide to the life, history
and tradition of the London literary world. Hlus.
with nearly 100 photographs, caricatures and draw-
ings of the great and near great. Pub. at $3.50.
Only .97
719. MR. LINCOLN’S CONTEMPORARIES.
172 Portraits by Mathew Brady. Text by Roy-Mere-
dith. This handsome, over-sized book contains 172
portraits by ‘‘Mr. Lincoln's Cameraman’’ of men
and women who lived in Lincoln's time.
Pub. at $6.00. Only 2.98
650. SEXUAL LIFE IN ANCIENT GREECE.
By Hans Licht. Thoroughly explains the sexual back-
ground of the philosophy and art of Ancient Greece.
Deals with marriage customs; the human figure; fes-
tivals; Greek literature; sexual relationships; prosti-
tution; homosexua! love; etc. Beautifully bound, 556 3e
page volume. Illustrated. Only 5.88
546. THE FAR SIDE OF PARADISE.
By Arthur Mizener. Best-selling biography of F.
Scott Fitzgerald. Illustrated with photos. Pub at $4.00
Only 1.49
746. THE SMITHSONIAN SERIES.
12 Volume Set. Charles Greeley Abbot, Editor-
In-Chief. 1800 illustrations — many in color.
Authorized and prepared by the Smithsonian In-
stitution in Washington. A great treasury of
man’s knowledge and achievement, comprehen-
sively covering such subjects as Minerals; Insects;
Birds and Beasts; Great Inventions; Fishes; Am-
phibians and Reptiles; Shelled Creatures~ and
Geological History; Wild Animals;- Plant Lore;
North American Indians; etc. Handsome, durable
red library binding. Pub. at $100.00.
Complete 12-volume set, only 49.98
747. HISTORY OF RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY.
By N. O. Lossky. A comprehensive and complete
survey of the development of Russian philosophical
thought—the only such history in the English lan-
guage. 416 pages. Pub. in 1951 at $10.00. — “a
Special 3.88 ©
669. BILLY BUDD AND OTHER STORIES. a
By Herman Melville. Introduction by Rex Warner.
In addition to Billy Budd, this 304 page volume in=
cludes Benito Cereno, Piazza and four other short?
stories. Only 1.49 —~
573. SHAKESPEARE. ;
By Mark Van Doren. Informative, readable essays on 4
each one of Shakespeare’s plays, by a great modern 4
critic. Soft cover Anchor book. -85
646. SHORT NOVELS OF DOSTOEVSKY.
With a biographical and critical estimate by Thomas 7%
Mann. Six complete novels: The Double, The Gams © pha
bler, The Eternal Husband, Uncle’s Dream, The #"
Friend of the Family, Notes from Underground. 8117 po
pages. : . pecial 3.49
el)
ie VUES
0 photographs d Stieglitz-
vorld-famous Reacticen photographer. Each is repro-
duced on sepaiste sheet of heavy 12” x 16” glossy
_ stock with such fidelity that it is difficult to tell that
they are not actual photographic prints. Limited
quantity; Pub. at $7.50. Special, only 2.98
90. LAUTREC: SILK-SCREEN PRINT. _
- Giant-size 24%,” high x 18” wide (actual picture
size) silk-screen reproduction of Toulouse Lautrec’s
_ most devastating satirical painting—Y vette Guilbert.
Pub. at $10.00. Now only 2.98
547. BARON AT THE BALLET.
_ By Baron and Haskell—two of the world’s great bal-
let erts. This large 814” x 11” volume contains an
incredible collection of 280 photographs including
8 in full-color. Pub, at $10.00. Only 4.88
1. LAUTREC: SILK-SCREEN PRINT. :
re area 17144” wide x 24” high. Superb silk-
screen reproduction of Toulouse-Lautrec’s famous
lis Revue Blanche. Now you can view this great im-
q-Atessionict painting in the size it was-meant to be
} “seen. All the bold sweep of Lautrec’s vivid colors
if perfectly *reproduced by the most skillful printing
| craftsmanship. Prized by home decorators—magnih-
) cent for framing. Pub. at $15.00. Now only 2.98
450. THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM.
In two volumes, by Harold Bayley. An inquiry into
the origin of certain letters, words, customs, fairy-
tales, folklore and mythologies. Handsome, perma-
nent binding. Imported. Both volumes, only 12.44
| 94. DEGAS BALLET DANCERS.
| With startling authenticity, these 10 superb reproduc-
tions capture all the poetic imagination and delicate
understanding of Degas’ prized ballet sketches. Each
plate measures a full 17” x 13”... . each is printed
on a color tinted paper individually chosen for the
| particular subject. Frame them for your home—you'!|
find no finer portrayal of the ballet’s rare grace and
beauty! Pub. at $7.50. nly 2.98
219. MY SISTER ANDI.
By Friedrich Nietzsche. Not only a family tragedy. of
| towering sadness, but a vastly important philosoph-
_ ical discourse as well. Written in an insane asylum
.. . it took 60 years before it could be published.
‘The publication of these strange, intimate revelations
rocked the literary world. Pub. at $4.00. Only 2.95
|
108. PICASSO: CHILD WITH DOVE.
| This, the most charming of all Picassos, is a
splendid reproduction by Skira of the oil painting
| | from the collection of Lady Aberconway. Mount-
| ed on a heavy 20” x 26” sheet (to facilitate
‘| framing), the actual picture size of this appeal-
ing figure is 13” wide x 19” high. Pub. at $6.00
Now only 1.98
649. SEXUAL LIFE IN ANCIENT ROME.
| By Otto Kiefer. Sexual activities in early Rome
| clearly and analytically explained. Authentically dis-
: es Roman sadism in sex, free love, savage spec-
es, marriage, religion, philosophy, literature, etc.
1) page volume. Illustrated. Only 4.88
. EDWARD WESTON PHOTOGRAPHS.
Camera on Point Lobos—a magnificently reproduced
collection of 30 of Weston's great photographs.
Probably, this generation’s most significant book on
photography. Each photo is finely printed on a coat-
d 1414” x 1114” plate suitable for framing. Spiral
ound. Pub. at $10.00. Only 3.88
5. THE JOY,OF CHINESE COOKING.
y Doreen Yen Hung Feng. A ‘gourmet’s delight,
t ete with succulent dishes, a wealth of anecdotes
legends and 60 of the most charming illustra-
tions ever to grace a cookbook. Pub. at $7.50.
: Only 2.98
99. DEGAS: BALLERINA IN BLUE,
Incomparable silk-screen reproduction of the cele-
brated Edgar Degas ballet figure. This delicate sketch
a young ballerina against a brilliant cobalt blue
ound has been perfectly reproduced by Amer-
est silk-screen craftsmen on a_ high-quality
and-made stock. This superb ‘‘Seated Ballerina’’
easures 24” high x 1834” wide (actual picture area)
—ideal size for framing. Pub.’ at $7.50. Only 1.98
_ SHORT DICTIONARY OF MYTHOLOGY.
. G. Woodcock. Prominent names in classical
story and mythology together with the most con-
picuous incidents associated with them. Pub. at
$375. | Only .97
205. ARTIST’S MODEL.
By John Everard. Comprehensive picture gallery of
the human figure. Over 1200 photographs, mostly of
| mudes. 15,000 word text by the well-known painter
‘and author, Charles Simpson. Imported. Only 7.88
545. DICTIONARY OF WORLD LITERATURE.
Ed ted by Joseph T. Shipley. A survey of the forms
and techniques of the various literary arts, their prin-
les and problems, arranged in dictionary form for
dy reference. Prepared with the collaboration of
260 scholars, including G. A. Borgese, Andre
faurois, Lewis Mumford and Allen Tate. New and
completely revised edition. 453 pages. Pub. at $7.50.
a Only 2.98
‘39. ART ET INDUSTRIE. =
mported from France! Two volumes of this famous
ach periodical. Numerous articles on architecture
interior decorating; in both 914” x 12” volumes.
| article profusely illustrated with photographs
wings, many in full color. English transla-
Pub. at $6.00. Both volumes, only .97
————
aed
c SHORT NOVELS OF COLETTE.
Edited by Glenway Wescott. ‘'Colette’s descriptions
of the actual physical manifestations of a love affair
make Lady Chatterly seem one-dimensional.'"—New
York Times. Six complete novels, 775 pages.
pecial 3.49
(690. PETER CARL FABERGE, .
By Henry Charles Bainbridge. Rare collector's item!
Handsomely cloth bound 9” x 12” library edition of
the life and work of the world-renowned goldsmith
and jeweler to the crowned heads of Europe. 126
full-page plates (17 in full-color) reveal the design
and craftsmanship that made Faberge famous. Only
750 copies exist in all America. Pub. at $35.00.
Now only 12.50
79. MATISSE: SILK-SCREEN PRINT:
Arbre en Fleur—extremgly colorful giantsize repro-
duction of Matisse’s priceless original. 21” high x
27” wide picture area. Pub, at $10.00. Only 1.98
98. RAOUL DUFY: SILK SCREEN PRINT.
Words alone cannot do justice to this truly remark-
able reproduction of a gaily dressed Harlequin in a
Venetian Plaza. This remarkable picture has been
called the essence of Dufy’s art. It will lend poetic
charm and elegance anywhere it is displayed. Actual
picture area measures 18” wide by 24” high. Using
12 separate colors silk-screen artisans have created an
incredibly faithful reproduction that captures the
tare decorative quality and luminosity of the im-
pressive original. Pub. at $15.00. Now only 3.88
684. BALLET.
By Cecil Beaton. As designer, photographer and
connoisseur Cecil Beaton’s life and activities have
centered on dancers and dancing. Here are his
striking recollections of the ballet, set down in pun-
gent prose and illustrated with over 100 of his superb
photographs and dozens of drawings. Pub. at $3.50.
Only 1.98
214, MODERN ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY.
Ed. by William H. Mikesell. Twenty-five of the
nation’s most eminent psychologists discuss diag- .
nosis and treatment of all abnormal psychiatric con-
ditions. 880-page volume. Pub. at $10.00. Only 2.98
738. CAHIERS BLEUS: Fashions from France.
Fabulous collections of the exquisite creations of
Christian DIOR, Jacques FATH, Jean PATOU, Jean
DESSES, SCHIAPARELLI, and 19 others. Inspired
dress, hat, coat, and accessory designs reproduced in
color in this magnificent 10” x 14” portfolio. 33 actual
fabric swatches are tipped-in throughout its pages.
Includes chart of 96 new fashion colors. Translated.
Pub. at $12,00. Only 1.98
111, DUFY: THE BLUE MEDITERRANEAN,
Redecorating? This beautiful reproduction of Raoul
Dufy’s Mediterranean at Nice will add an en-
chanting note to any room in your home. The
famous Casino at Nice with its palm trees and
sandy beach are pictured against the azure Medi-
terranean sea. Reproduced by the superbly color-
ful silk-screen process, this 22” wide x 18” high
(actual picture area) print is ideal for framing.
Pub. at $15.00.
19. MATISSE: GIRL WITH MANDOLIN.
Rarely, if ever, have you seen anything to match the
breathtaking true-to-the-original quality of this full-
color si/k-screen reproduction. This giant-size (1514”
high x 21” wide plate size) silk-screen print was
reproduced directly from the extremely colorful and
characteristic original that Henri Matisse painted in
Paris in 1946. Only limited quantity available at this
low price. Pub. at $15.00. Only 2.98
537. PORTFOLIO: GRAPHIC ARTS ANNUAL.
Fabulous collector’s item! Magnificent 10” x 13”
volume with far more than 200 different reproduc-
tions; drawings, photographs, etc.—many in full
color. Contains examples of the finest printing crafts-
manship in the world. Articles include: Calligraphy
Skira’s Books, Stereoscopy, French Marble Papers,
etc. Superb reproductions of works by Goya, Cartier-
Bresson, Shahn, Calder and others. Pub. at $7.50.
Now only 2.49
104. PICASSO: THE WHITE CLOWN.
You have never seen this famous Picasso painting in
a more striking reproduction. It has been hand-
screened in full color by the skilled silk-screen proc-
ess on an elegant, textured cocoa brown stock. The
actual picture area measures 13” wide by 20” high—
a size preferred by home decorators for framing.
Limited quantity! Pxb. at $10.00. Now only 1.98
21., LAUTREC: MOULIN ROUGE.
Absolutely perfect facsimile of Mowlin Rouge—the
famous Lautrec Dance Hall Poster. This faithful
silk-screen reproduction measures a giant 3114” high
x 23” wide plate size. You'll be proud to have the
work of this great artist in your own home. Frame
it to add beauty, grace, and a gay touch to any room.
Pub, at $20.00. Now only 2.98
552. THE RIDDLE OF EMILY DICKINSON.
By Rebecca Patterson. The strange story of Emily
Dickinson and her ‘‘too-much-loved’’ woman friend.
Pub. at $4.50. Only 1.49
639. GREAT SHORT NOVELS OF
HENRY JAMES.
Edited by Philip Rahy. Unique collection of his best
and most oped short novels, many of them nowhere
else available. 800 pages. Special 3.49
754. INNOCENTS FROM ABROAD.
By Kenneth Harris. Entertaining view of America as
seen by a member of the. Oxford debating team.
Pub. at $2.50. nly .88
Only 3.88
nating text. Pub. at $5.00.
Printed in the U.S. A by Stetneore Pruss, 1NG., Morgan & Tohason Aves., Brooklyn 6, N. * ee 173
702. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’S
OWN STORY.
Edited by Donald Day. From thousands of letters,
from his speeches, from his private and state papers,
Mr. Day has culled these passages that reveal Roose-
velt in all his humor, his personal magnetism, his
keen insight into politics, and into the hearts of the
people. 461 pages. Pub. at $4.00. Only 1.49
20. TEN JAPANESE PRINTS,
From the originals at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. All the subtleties of shading and delicate pastel
beauty of the full-color originals reproduced in the
minutest detail on large 11” x 17” unbacked sheets.
These 17th to 19th century prints include Hokusai’s
celebrated Great Wave Off Kanigawa and other fa-
mous works by Shunsho, Hiroshige, Harunobu, etc.
Text by Alan Priest. Pub. at 7.50. Now only 2.98
85. KLEE: SILK-SCREEN PRINT.
Fascinating reproduction of Klee’s Harlequin. No
matter how long you look at this 20” wide x 24”
high (picture size) painting you will never tire of
its bright colors and exciting design. Decorators
recommend this print to add a note of brightness
and life to any otherwise somber room.
Pub. at $7.50. Only 1.98
735. ARCHITECTURE THROUGH THE
AGES.
By Talbot Hamlin. The story of building in rela-
tion to man’s progress. Over 650 pages of the
most Sor PES BSDSr YE authoritative and interesting
history of architecture. 330 plates plus 117 text
illustrations portray an amazingly wide range of
architectural examples. This beautifully bound
book has been praised by numerous outstanding
authorities. In every aspect it is a truly outstand-
ing work. Artist, designer and the general reader
will find this volume intensely interesting.
Pub. at $7.50. Only 3.88
736. TRADITION AND EXPERIMENT IN
MODERN SCULPTURE.
By Charles Seymour, ae Provocative comparison of
various forms of modern sculpture. Fully analyzes
the contrasts and similarities of the work of various
sculptors with the works of ancient sculptors. Dis-
cusses the works of Noguchi, Gettinger, Smith, Flan-
nagan, Gabo, Brancusi, Matisse, Rodin, and many
others. This soft-bound, 8” x 101%” volume illus-
trated with 63 magnificent half-tone reproductions.
Pub. at $2.50. Only .97
91. DEGAS: SILK-SCREEN PRINT.
The Ballerina—teproduced by the silk-screen process
exactly as Degas created it. This charming drawing
on a 1744” x 2414” pastel rose background is one of
Degas’ most wanted works. Perfect note of elegance
for your home. Pubsat $7.50. Only 1.98
84. GIANT-SIZE MIRO MURAL,
The daring and brilliance of Miro’s figures in white,
red, black, green and chartreuse are skillfully im-
posed on a background of graded blues and whites.
The mural is a magnificent frieze 10 feet long by 9
inches high—an unusual size which is ideal with or
without framing for den, game room, foyer or to fit
in with any modern decor. In three sections. ©
Pub. at $45.00.
230. APOCALYPSE BY DURER.
This famous series of 16 wood cuts has been carefully
re-engraved and printed on special lithograph paper.
Each 13” x 18” plate is an individual art masterpiece
Only 7.88
superb for framing. Durer’s rugged strength and agi- *
tated lines are fused into a vital example of majestic
power and classic severity. Pub. at $5.00. Only .97
13. DUFY: REGATTA ON THE THAMES.
Giant size silk-screen reproduction of this much
praised Dufy water scene. Printed on a heavy weight
sheet measuring 25” wide x 21” high. Pub. at $15.00,
Very special, only 2.98
541. GREAT NOVELISTS AND NOVELS
By W. Somerset Maugham. Illustrated with pen &
ink portraits of the authors. Maugham describes the
greatest novels of the world and the men and women
who wrote them. Pub. at $3.00. Only .97
378. MOTHER GOOSE.
179 favorite Mother Goose rhymes, with 16 illus-
trations in full-color and 230 in two colors. Full of
color and fresh delight for children of all ages.
8” x 1034” volume. Only .88
749. EXOTIC CEYLON.
120 photographs by Lionel Wendt. Unusual and
brilliant scenes of primitive landscapes, nudes, heads,
fantasies, etc. 8”x1034”. Pub. at $10.00. Only 3.88
644. GREEK PLAYS IN MODERN
TRANSLATION.
Edited by Dudley Eitts. Eleven complete plays:
Aeschylus—Agamemnon, Eumenides, Prometheus
Bound, Sophocles—Electra, King Oedipus, Oedipus
at Colonus, Antigone, Euripedes—The Trojan Women,
Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis. 610 pages. Special <—
647. THE PERMANENT GOETHE.
Selected by Thomas Mann. ‘‘A great treasure house »
of literature. This book will probably not be equalled
in our time.’’—Philadelphia Inquirer. 100 selections.
700 pages. Special 3.49
752. THE VATICAN. >.
By M. Therese Bonney. The Vatican and its sovereign
territory IN PICTURES. The eighty pages of mag-
nificent photographs are supplemented by a fasct-
Only 1.49
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June 6, 1953 ~~
20¢ ; . be
_- Does
Silence =
Mean
Guilt?
THE FIFTH AMENDMENT CONTROVERSY =
7
The Nation Scores Again!
= Throughout the country people are talking
about The Nation’s timely, provocative article Ae :
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The Journal, National Education Association
. the clearest analysis of the problem and explanation of the approach
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Minority Leader, New York City Council
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REV. A. A. HEIST,
Citizens Committee to Preserve American Freedoms
Huntington Park, California
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the ethical foundation which is so necessary if law is to remain linked with
justice.” DANIEL FINE, M.D.,
Peter Bent Brigham "Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts
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